5. From Baltimore and the AFC North to Hollywood

A multitude of bucket-list items have been detailed for you. The Steelers’ rich history has also been covered. Now it is time to venture out to the rest of the NFL, from road trips to take to the significance of Steelers rivalries—present and past. There is no better place to start than in the AFC North, with a certain team that raises the temperature more than any other.

The Steelers and Baltimore Ravens don’t agree on much. One could say up and the other would say down. Then they would roll up their sleeves and brawl over it.

The two AFC North rivals did find common ground on the official retirement of Joe Greene’s No. 75 jersey in 2014.

Not that the Steelers consulted the Ravens about it after Greene requested they retire his jersey during the November 2 game against Baltimore at Heinz Field. But John Harbaugh was downright giddy after learning during a conference call with Pittsburgh reporters about Greene picking the Ravens game for his jersey ceremony.

“Did he really?” the Ravens coach said. “I will take that as an honor. Wow, that’s something pretty special.”

So is the Steelers-Ravens rivalry, and Greene picking their game to have his jersey retired affirmed that. The man literally traded punches (and kicks) with the Browns during his career. He played his last down more than a decade before the Ravens were born. Yet Greene knows that the Ravens are unquestionably the Steelers’ biggest rival.

He is also well aware that anything that can provide an edge when the two meet, such as the féting of a legend, could very well swing the outcome.

Pittsburgh held a 24–20 advantage in the win-loss column after the 2015 season, but two losses to the Ravens in 2015, who only won three other games, nearly kept the Steelers out of the playoffs. The teams, meanwhile, have split their 36 games against one another since 2000; half of those have been decided by three points or less.

“It’s a rivalry only when either team has the ability to win the game,” former Steelers running back Jerome Bettis said. “That’s what makes the rivalry, whenever we play we have no clue who’s going to win the game and that’s what makes it really special.”

The Steelers and Ravens were already well-acquainted when the NFL returned to Baltimore in 1996. That is because Art Modell yanked the Browns out of Cleveland and moved them to Baltimore. Modell renamed his team the Ravens and they traded drab brown and orange colors for purple and black. But, said former Steelers outside linebacker Jason Gildon, “they were still at heart the Cleveland Browns.”

It didn’t take long for the Ravens to shed that label. They won the Super Bowl in their fifth season behind a dominating defense, and since 2002, when Jacksonville and Tennessee moved to the AFC South, they have been locked into a bitter struggle with the Steelers for supremacy in the AFC North.

The acrimony between the two teams, interestingly enough, can be traced to the similarity of the two organizations.

Each places a premium on stability as well as building through the NFL draft. Each organization also prides itself on playing a physical, blue-collar brand of football that embodies the ethos of its city.

Those systems collide when the Ravens and Steelers play, making those games organizational tests of soul. Add to that the stakes that are usually involved when the AFC North rivals meet and it is easy to see why this is as black and blue a rivalry as there is in all of sports.

The physical toll these games exact can be staggering.

Steelers rookie running back Rashard Mendenhall broke his shoulder blade less than a half into his first Ravens game in 2008. Five seasons later, Le’Veon Bell, another Steelers rookie running back, got knocked out while trying to score a late-game touchdown in Baltimore.

Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger still says Ravens linebacker Bart Scott’s sack in 2006 in Baltimore is the hardest hit he ever took. Two years later, Ryan Clark delivered arguably the hardest hit in a rivalry fueled by them when the Steelers safety leveled Ravens running back Willis McGahee at the end of the AFC Championship Game.

And when Scott threatened to kill wide receiver Hines Ward after a 2007 game it wasn’t because the Steelers had clobbered the Ravens 38–7 on national TV. Scott was upset because Ward had blown up him and Ravens safety Ed Reed with blocks.

“Hines played the game the way strong safeties play the game,” former Steelers guard Alan Faneca said. “Strong safeties get a lot of little cheap licks because they’re not always accounted for, especially in the run game, but they get to come up and make a tackle albeit eight yards down the field. Hines kind of rubbed most teams wrong.”

Faneca said the Ravens did the same to the Steelers.

“They loved to talk about it and talk about how good they were and we were a team that loved to show you how good we were and prove it on the field,” said Faneca, who played in 21 Steelers-Ravens games. “They were big talkers. We were big doers.”

Joey Porter didn’t talk?

“Joey was a big talker too,” Faneca said, “but we did it first.”

The Ravens developed into such a rivalry during Faneca’s time with the Steelers that he said they represented coach Bill Cowher’s “two off weeks” during the season. Cowher was a master motivator but he didn’t have to do anything to get his players up for the Ravens.

That has continued since Cowher left the Steelers after the 2006 season, and if anything the Ravens and Steelers have become more similar.

Each hired young head coaches within a year of one another, and Harbaugh and Mike Tomlin have each won a Super Bowl while elevating the NFL’s best rivalry.

The Ravens hold a 10–9 series lead since Harbaugh and Tomlin became head coaches and 12 of those games have been decided by three points or less.

Tomlin is only 10–11 against Baltimore—he was a combined 29–8 against the Steelers’ other two division rivals after his first nine seasons—but a list of his greatest wins would have a serious crab cakes flavor to it. A strong argument can be made, in fact, that Pittsburgh’s five most memorable wins over Baltimore have come during Tomlin’s tenure. Agree? Disagree? Here are my five in order of significance:

Steelers 23, Ravens 14; January 18, 2009: The AFC North rivals have only met once in the conference title game and the Steelers put away the Ravens with one of the most electrifying plays in franchise history. Troy Polamalu dropped into coverage after reading the eyes of Joe Flacco and he intercepted the rookie quarterback. He didn’t stop there with the Steelers holding a tenuous 16–14 lead in the fourth quarter. Polamalu weaved his way 40 yards for a touchdown. Clark delivered the coup de grâce on the ensuing possession when he blasted McGahee with a shot so vicious that it knocked out both players.

Steelers 13, Ravens 10; December 5, 2010: Another one of Polamalu’s signature moments came with Pittsburgh trailing 10–6 in a classic Steelers-Ravens street fight. The Ravens did not account for Polamalu on a third-down blitz midway through the fourth quarter and he sacked Flacco, forcing a fumble that LaMarr Woodley recovered on Baltimore’s 9-yard line. Roethlisberger, playing with a broken nose, did the rest. He somehow dragged Terrell Suggs long enough to throw the ball away and avoid what would have been a killer sack on first down. Roethlisberger then threw a 9-yard touchdown pass to backup running back Isaac Redman on third down. The defense made the Steelers’ only touchdown stand up and Pittsburgh wouldn’t have won the AFC North—or make a run to the Super Bowl—if it hadn’t beat Baltimore at M&T Bank Stadium.

Steelers 13, Ravens 9; December 14, 2008: The Steelers credit Roethlisberger with 39 career fourth-quarter comebacks. None this side of Super Bowl XLIII was finer than the masterpiece he put together with the Steelers trailing 9–6. Roethlisberger completed seven of 11 passes for 89 yards after the Steelers had taken possession at the Ravens’ 8-yard line with just over three-and-a-half minutes left in the game. He capped a 12-play, 92-yard drive with a four-yard touchdown pass to Santonio Holmes that broke the goal line by mere inches, and the victory gave the Steelers a regular-season sweep of the Ravens for the first time since 2002. That proved to be the difference in the Steelers winning the AFC North—and the Ravens having to play at Heinz Field when the teams met a third time in late January.

Steelers 31, Ravens 24; January 15, 2011: The obituaries for the Steelers had started in the Heinz Field press box after the Ravens took a stunning 21–7 lead into halftime of an AFC divisional playoff game. But Clark—who loved to hit and talk and was built for Steelers-Ravens—forced a fumble and intercepted a pass in the third quarter. Both led to touchdowns. What stung the Ravens more: Roethlisberger completed a 58-yard pass on third-and-19 with just over two minutes left to play in a tied game. Antonio Brown, then a little-known rookie, secured the catch on the side of his helmet and the Tyree-esque grab led to the game-winning touchdown.

Steelers 23, Ravens 20; December 2, 2012: The Steelers trailed by 10 points in the first half and seven points in the fourth quarter against the eventual Super Bowl champions. That didn’t stop backup quarterback Charlie Batch from rallying the Steelers in Baltimore a week after they had committed a ghastly eight turnovers in a loss to the Browns. This is the Steelers’ most improbable victory over the Ravens, though the shine from it quickly faded. The Steelers lost their next three games to fall out of playoff contention.