Steelers won't be yapping at Jets
Pittsburgh safety Ryan Clark says his team is more concerned with trying to beat the Jets than getting involved in a war of words. (Jan. 15, 2011) Credit: Getty Images
If the early signals can be trusted, expect the volume to go down on the pregame chatter between the Steelers and Jets, who will meet in Sunday's AFC Championship Game at Heinz Field. You have to figure both survivors are all talked out after beating bitter division rivals to reach the conference title game.
There was no shortage of vitriol between the Jets and Patriots in the AFC East and between the Steelers and Ravens in the AFC North, but though the Jets' 22-17 win in Pittsburgh on Dec. 19 was a hard-hitting affair, it left a residue of respect rather than hatred.
"We don't do a lot of talking," said rookie center Maurkice Pouncey, one of two Steelers who spoke to the media Monday in Pittsburgh.
Pouncey said the Steelers heard from Jets inside linebacker Bart Scott, a former Raven, and maybe a couple of Jets defensive linemen, but nothing out of line. "Every team has a guy that says something, but we don't really pay attention to it," Pouncey said. "It was a hard-fought game, and they came out with the win."
What Pouncey recalls about the previous meeting with the Jets was how defensive end Shaun Ellis moved inside to nose tackle toward the end of that game and tried a variety of moves to get upfield in an effort to get Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger on the ground.
"He's a great player," Pouncey said of Ellis. "Man, they are confusing. They do a whole bunch of stuff. A lot of their guys are walking around; they have a lot of DBs and a lot of linebackers in the game. You just have to prepare the right way for it."
On the other side of the ball, the Steelers' defense has built-in respect for Jets wide receiver Santonio Holmes, who was traded by Pittsburgh before this season.
"It would be crazy for me to say I don't think he's a great player when I said it the whole time he was here," veteran safety Ryan Clark said. "He makes big catches.
"We're really not going to concern ourselves with just one player because then you have Braylon [Edwards], Dustin Keller - who I think is one of the best pass-catching tight ends in the NFL - and LaDainian [Tomlinson] catching it out of the backfield. There's a bunch of first-round guys playing the skill positions for the New York Jets, so we need to do our due diligence getting prepared for them and knowing their tendencies. If they play the way they played [against New England], it's going to be a tough day for us."
The Patriots called the Jets "classless" for the way they celebrated their victory at Gillette Stadium, but Clark isn't concerned about any trash-talk issues this week. "They had story lines in the other places," Clark said. "There's not many good story lines with us. The only story line we have is six trophies, and we're trying to get another one."
That certainly is worthy of the Jets' respect.
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