The Pittsburgh Steelers, coached by NFL Hall of Fame legend, Bill Cowher, played against the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving Day in 1998. The game was a close one that headed into overtime. However, it isn't a play or the score from that game that is most remembered - it's a coin toss.
JEFF KOWALSKY / AFP via Getty Images
The Lions and Steelers collide in 1998.
It isn't a new story for Steelers fans, Pittsburgh is expected to roll into a game and easily defeat a lower-ranked team, but instead struggles a bit before pulling out the win at the last second or not. And that is exactly what happened that Thanksgiving.
The Steelers were 7-2 and the Lions were 4-7. It was expected that Pittsburgh would blow into the Pontiac Silverdome in Detroit, stuff the Lions, and give fans a reason to be thankful. But that's not what happened. Instead, the game led to an immediate officiating change and caused then-head coach Bill Cowher to blame running back Jerome Bettis for their streak of bad luck.
Bill Cowher Blames The Season's Slump On Jerome Bettis
Cowher recently appeared on his former quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger's podcast, Footbahlin With Ben Roethlisberger. This story was one Roethlisberger, who was only 16 when it happened, and his co-host Spencer Te'o asked Cowher about.
"This was a classic, it was 1998, we were 7-4 at the time and it was a Thanksgiving Day game. We'd gone to the playoffs six straight years on our way to go into a seventh straight time. Well, we go into overtime, so they go to do the coin flip and I'm on the sideline."
The Steelers sent Bettis and defensive back, Carnell Lake up to do the coin toss. During that time, whoever won the coin toss wanted to possess the ball first in overtime. If they scored - a field goal or a touchdown - the game immediately ended with that team winning. The opponent would not get a chance to possess the ball. Cowher said that made getting these coin tosses correct crucial, it almost makes it blind luck whether you will win the game or not.
"I don't know what's going on. That was at the time you don't even get the ball once, whoever got the coin flip was huge. So the coin lands and he says, 'Ok, Detroit's ball' and all of a sudden I see Jerome going, 'NO NO NO!' And Carnell Lake going, 'NO NO NO! That's not right, he called tails!' I'm like, what's going on? And the official, Phil Luckett, God bless them both (also referring to an earlier story told about Gordon McCarter) to Luckett I asked, 'What happened?' Carnell goes, 'Coach, I heard Jerome call tails' and Phil goes, 'No he called heads' and I said, 'What do you want me to do?'"
ESPN
Steelers safety Carnell Lake
Cowher said there wasn't anything he could do about it. The refs heard Bettis call "heads" and so heads it is. However, it later came out that Bettis might have done what a lot of players did then, which is called "heads tails" since the players were expected to call out heads or tails while the toss was in the air. Immediately following the Steelers-Lions Thanksgiving Day debacle, the NFL changed the rule saying the call must be made prior to the coin being tossed.
"It's like two kids coming up, I got Carnell Lake and Jerome Bettis, two guys I would leave my kids with, I would trust them to the end and they're both going, 'I called tails' and Phil goes, 'They called heads.' I don't know, I wasn't there. Then we lose, they get the ball, they come back, kick a field goal. Charlie Batch was the quarterback at the time. Truth be told, we lost every game after that. From that game on, we lost the next four games and ended up 7-9. And so I blame Jerome Bettis. He did go 'head tails' and obviously that has to be one of the reasons why now it's called before it flips."
Footbahlin With Ben Roethlisberger
Steelers' Ben Roethlisberger and Bill Cowher discuss coaching with Spencer T'eo.
Steelers did in fact miss the playoffs that year for the first time in seven years and it marked Cowher's first losing season as a head coach. 1999 wasn't much better, the Steelers went 6-10, their worst record under Cowher, and again missed the playoffs. The team did not bounce back until the 2001 season when they won the AFC Central but fell to the ultimate champions that year, the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship game.
And just think, Bettis is to blame for that whole streak of misfortune, if only he'd called the coin toss correctly.
Do you recall that coin toss? What did you think at the time? Did Bettis say heads or tails? Click to comment below.
#SteelerNation
