Monday, November 29, 1999Defense: from deficient to dominant
Heath, Copeland help squad live up to potential
BY TOM GROESCHEN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
PITTSBURGH — The Bengals defense stopped the Steelers cold when it counted Sunday, which left the players wondering what could have been in this 2-10 season.
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Steelers quarterback Mike Tomczak is sacked by Michael Bankston during the fourth quarter.
(AP photo)
| ZOOM |“It's cool that we won, but we know we're better than we've played,” defensive tackle Oliver Gibson said. “We've just had too many situations where we didn't all come to play on the same day.”
Sunday, nearly everyone on the defensive side came to play in the final minutes. The Steelers' final four possessions — all with the Bengals clinging to a 27-20 lead — ended like this:
• 1. On 4th-and-4 at the Bengals' 33-yard line, QB Mike Tomczak is sacked by linemen John Copeland and Michael Bankston. (11 seconds left in third quarter).
• 2. On 4th-and-1 at the Bengals' 44, Jerome Bettis is stopped for no gain by Bankston and safety Lawrence Wright. (9:52 left in game).
• 3. Punt (4:42 left).
• 4. On 4th-and-6 at the Bengals' 26, a Tomczak pass is broken up by cornerback Rodney Heath inside the 15-yard line. (54 seconds left in game; Bengals run out clock).
Heath, whose two interceptions included a 58-yard return for a touchdown, had a huge day. The rookie from Western Hills High School led the team with eight tackles and five passes defensed.
But Heath, while grinning broadly as his hometown media crowded around for postgame interviews, couldn't help but remember the one that got away. Last week vs. Baltimore he muffed an interception with 11 seconds left, and the Bengals lost 34-31 on a field goal at the final gun.
“I told you all that if I got another chance, I was gonna take one to the house,” Heath said. “I felt I let the team down last week. There were a lot of games, like that one, that we could have won this year.”
Copeland, the seventh-year defensive end and former No.1 draft choice, was another who appeared frequently on your TV screen Sunday.
Copeland has been streaky throughout his career, getting a few sacks in the earlier part of the season and then getting blanked for several weeks. But Sunday, he was a man possessed as the Steelers finally resorted to double-teaming him despite the Bengals' four-man defensive front.
Copeland was in on 11/2 sacks over the final two quarters. He stopped Bettis on a key 3rd-and-1 situation. And he broke through to nail Tomczak for a nine-yard sack to force a Steelers punt, although the sack was incorrectly credited to Gibson and Bankston on the media press box sheet.
“Somebody needed to step up, so I decided to do it,” Copeland said. “I got into one of those zones, one of those football zones, and I refused to be stopped.”
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Bengals defenders Steve Foley, Lawrence Wright and Billy Glanville celebrate with their teammates after stopping the Steelers on a fourth down try during the fourth quarter.
(AP photo)
| ZOOM |Copeland was one of four starters on the defensive line as the Bengals again went with a 4-3 starting front, which made its 1999 debut last week vs. the Ravens.
“That makes us more solid with the pass rush,” Gibson said. “It helps us stopping the run too. We figure there's no situation where you can block four of us.”
The Bengals' primary objectives, Gibson said, were to hold the Steelers to 17 points or less and stop Bettis. Bettis did get 81 yards, but averaged only 3.7 yards per carry. The Bengals held him under 100 yards for just the second time in nine career games vs. “The Bus.”
The four-man front also en abled the Bengals to get more push up front and take heat off its young secondary, which has had trouble covering receivers for most of the season. The Bengals entered the game with only six interceptions, tied for lowest in the NFL.
“It's a lot easier to cover when you get pressure like that,” Heath said. “I knew the defensive line was getting pressure stopping the run, and I can sit back and play the pass a lot more, too.”
Tomczak was sacked only twice after taking over for Kordell Stewart in the first half, but was hurried several times.
Bankston said last week's game, when the Bengals had a season-high seven sacks, built confidence. He also said the line played the final minutes with playoff-like intensity.
“There's always that pressure, you're always thinking that a bomb can connect back there,” he said. “That's why we had the mind-set that we can't give them anything. We just kept coming.”
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Defense: from deficient to dominant