GAME FACE

Even in March, Steelers coach Bill Cowher has a case of January Madness.

The Monday after the Pittsburgh Steelers' AFC Championship loss to the Denver Broncos, Bill Cowher is planning for the Super Bowl. Not the game that's two weeks away in San Diego, but Super Bowl XXXIII—a full 54 weeks off— in Miami. Close to 50 men file through Cowher's office, from 10:15 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. For seven hours, he does nothing but listen and talk while his players bare their souls, taking an occasional sip of water so he can keep on talking. Rookies, stunned by the season's sudden end, search the coach's face for answer. Veterans, who have been this close before, are also hurting. This is getting repetitious. Cowher has performed this rite as head coach after a Steeler playoff exit six years in a row. "It's very theraputic for me and hopefully for teh players," he says of these marathon sessions. "It's important to give a guy a chance to say anything he wants to say or get his true feelings about where he stands with the team or what his role is."

Still thirsty, but satisfied that he has ended the season on a positive note, Cowher heads home to unwind.

The unwinding lasts all of Tuesday. On Wednesday, the unmistakable feeling of screws tightening begins again. "I start looking at all of the free agents who are up, and reality kicks in," Cowher says.

Reality is the exodus that has become another rite for the Steelers. Each year, Cowher's roster takes a licking, but the team keeps kicking its way into the playoffs. If Cowher had been captain of the Titanic, they would still be selling cruise packages, not movie tickets. The Bill Cowher most people see is the explosively emotional sideline coach who almost tackled Jacksonville's Chris Hudson during a return of a blocked field goal last season. But there is another Bill Cowher, one whose stoic wisdom during the critical days between the Pro Bowl and the NFL draft (April 18-19 this year), keeps the Steelers afloat. There is a distinct possibility that Pittsburgh, behind a wiser Kordell Stewart at quarterback, will be even better next season than it was in '97, when it went 11-5 in the regular season and came within three points of Super Bowl XXXII.

"It's hard to be fiery for 12 months," Cowher says. "It's even harder to manufacture fire. I know when the season is over, I'm drained. I'm tired in an emotional sense. In the two or three months after the season, I'm not the way I am in season. In the off-season, you have to take each situation as it comes."

Over the past six off-seasons, the Steelers have lost 32 players, including 22 starters, through free agency. Five departed following Pro Bowl seasons. But that's not all. "We lose coaches too," Cowher says. Indeed, 10 coaches, including four coordinators, have left during that same span. This winter, Cowher nearly lost his boss, director of football operations Tom Donahoe, to the Seattle Seahawks. Cowher ppleaded with Steelers owner Dan Rooney to not let Donahoe go. In the end? Seattle balked, Donahoe stayed and Cowher had his first victory of the off-season.

Some losses followed, though. Most notable was Pro Bowl wide receiver Yancey Thigpen, who signed with the Oilers for $21 million over five years. Veteran offensive tackle John Jackson joined the Chargers (six years, $26.5 million) and guard Tom Myslinski went to the Colts (three years, $3.8 million). Still unsigned is promising young linebacker Jason Gildon, who could become Cowher's fifth starting linebacker to leave in six years. Pittsburgh didn't want to lose any of them, but Donahoe and Cowher decided that the man they really needed to keep was Pro Bowl nose tackle Joel Steed.

Cowher is not one to panic. Three Rivers Stadium doesn't bring in enough revenue to allow the Steelers to keep all the players they develop, and because of that, Cowher accepts that four or five starters will become free agents every year. If he wanted to, he could start worrying about the batch that goes free in '99: wide receiver Charles Johnson, tight end Mark Bruener, fullback Tim Lester, linebacker Levon Kirkland, safeties Carnell Lake and Darren Perry and kicker Norm Johnson. Two or three will re-sign before next winter, but some will leave.

The off-season's finish line is the draft. "You might have 78 guys on your roster by the time the draft is over," the coach says. On that roster is 98% of the coming season's team. That's when the coaching begins and the roster bleeding ends. "It's frustrating," Cowher says of losing good players to free agency. "At times, it's disappointing, but when the dust clears Sept. 1, we'll have a 53-man roster and 46 guys to play on game day."

Working from the premise that he will always have a base of 17 quality starters, Cowher keeps his options open from the draft until the team assembles for its first minicamp June 1. His main job during that time is talking to players and reinforcing the notion that the team is indeed committed to winning.

That the coach is a workaholic is no surprise; most coaches are. What distinguishes Cowher—besides his sideline spontaneity—is his note-taking. His neat scribblings are almomst an art form. Kansas City Chiefs coach Marty Schottenheimer, who talked Cowher into coaching during his final years as a linebacker for the Philadelphia Eagles, thinks Cowher's notetaking skills are second only to on. "The only guy who writes smaller," says Schottenheimer, "is Darvin Wallis, who's been with us since 1982. Darvin cna get the Koran on the back of a postage stamp."

Stenography is an especially useful skill for a coach. Lost in the thrill of a three-hour football game are the endless days of meetings, and Cowher's schedule is loaded. In February, he spent three long days meeting with coaches and members of the league's Competition Committee discussing rule changes, instant replay and possible adjustments to the tampering rules involving coaches. In March, he's set to spend another week with Competition Committee matters, then attend the owners meeting in Orlando.

All along, he fills notebooks. During an eight-day pre-draft session with Steeler scouts in February (which will be repeated in ealry April), Cowher wrote tiny notes until his hand hurt. "I will write reports on close to 200 players," he says. "I'll write everything about them, and my fingers will start cramping." From his briefcase, Cowher will pull pages from a binder on which he has written reams about the college prospects he met at the Feb. 5-9 NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. "Dependable," "tough" and "productive" are inscribed next to the players' names. "Dermontti Dawson lookalike," he writes about one.

Sherman Knows Passing

Cowher's off-season days at the Steelers office are long and lean. Upon his return from the Combine, his scouts presented a series of oral reports on the top 200 players, spending 15 minutes on each guy. But those sessions were abruptly cut short when Cowher found himself searching for a new offensive coordinator. On Feb. 12, the Dallas Cowboys hired Chan Gailey, a Steeler assistant for the past four seasons, as their new head coach. But Cowher, ever prepared, already had a list of six potential replacements: John Mackovic, the former Texas coach; Minnesota Vikings quarterback coach Ray Sherman; Galen Hall, the former Florida coach; former Miami Dolphins quarterback Don Strock; Alan Borges from UCLA; former Buffalo Bills coach Kay Stephenson; and former Indianapolis Colts head coach Lindy Infnate. Infante holds a special place in Cowher's personal history: He was the offensive coordinator on Schottenheimer's Cleveland Browns team that went 12-4 in 1986, when Cowher was the Browns' special teams coach.

So strong is Cowher's faith in Infante that he considererd ditching his run-dominant system if Infante wanted to bring in more passing schemes. "Lindy was probably the only one I talked to for whom I thought it would be worthwhile to change the system," he says. But Infante opted to stay out of coaching and keep collecting paychecks from the Colts. So Cowher hired Sherman, the Vikings' quarterback coach. With Sherman, they won't need to change the system, just reshape it a bit. "I think part of our strength has been the ability to maintain the same system year in and year out, so the players stay comfortable," says Cowher. "Ray really had a background with a lot of different passing offenses. That allows us to get some freshness, maybe bring some new ideas to the table."

Now I Know What Chad Brown Went Through

To lighten the tiring days, Cowher tries to mix in a little recreation, playing racquetball on his lunch breaks. But this guy can't take it easy. A high ankle sprain just like the one that hampered former Steeler linebacker Chad Brown in 1995, sidelined Cowher in February. That has forced him to leave the competition to his wife, Kaye, an AAU league basketball coach, and his daughters Meagan Lyn and Lauren Marie, who play hoops. Cowher spends the extra time reading the newspapers. "Coaches probably read papers more in teh off-season leading up to the draft than in-season," he says. "That's how you find out about the trips people are taking and about the interests a particular team may have. Lots of times, the first you hear about these things is hwen you wake up and read the paper. You think, 'Holy smoke! I can't wait to get inot the office and find out if this is true.' "

Cowher won't miss a sports section during the 77 days between Feb. 2 and the last day of the draft. The news keeps him current, and the off-season stories are less opinionated. When his game face starts returning around the May minicamp, Kaye Cowher becomes the family news reader. "She kind of lets me know about any quotes that would be pertinent to me," he says. "I don't think it serves me any purpose to read newspapers during the season. Everybody can make the calls after the fact." Besides, by that time, Cowher's first concern is his team.

This Is A Good Team

How will the Steelers replace Thigpen? Last season's second-round pick, Will Blackwell, will push Courtney Hawkins for Thigpen's starting job. Charles Johnson, meanwhile, will assume the role of Stewart's "go-to" receiver. Similarly, since John Jackson has left the offensive line, Cowher could move Justin Strzelczyk from right to left tackle and give Jamain Stephens or Paul Wiggins a chance. If he had lost Steed, Oliver Gibson was the backup. Good as Gildon is, there is an endless supply of backups, including Earl Holmes and Carlos Emmons.

To make certain his talent pool never dries up, Cowher and his assistants have been grooming 13 backups drafted over the last three years, spending extra time with them during the off-season and minicamps. Cowher feels he has the core of a team good enough to make another championship run. But he won't make his final determinations until after the draft. He knows better. Two years ago, he didn't feel comfortable with his running game until the Steelers swung a trade for Jerome Bettis. Last year, he chose Stewart as his quarterback over Mike Tomczak after the draft was over, and Cowher knew he had a receiving corps of Thigpen, Johnson and Hawkins.

WRs. DL. CBs. LBs

"The draft has changed," says Cowher. "It's not just predicated on needs, but on situations, like who you already have under contract, the length of their contracts, how things will unfold in upcoming years. If you don't draft with future contracts in mind, you might end up in the situation we had last year with three comers leaving all at once."

On draft day, the Steelers will be looking for receivers, defensive linemen, cornerbacks and linebackers. Then, with most of his team assembled, the note-taking, newspaper-reading, philosophical Cowher will begin transforming into the Cowher that Schottenheimer remembers as his special teams coach 13 years ago. "He used to run up and down on the sideline on the kickoff coverage. It was like we had 12 guys. I don't know how many times he ran into officials."

"The football game is the fun part," Cowher says, though he might have added that the long chess match that precedes the game can also be fun—if you don't mind the exhaustion and the cramped hands from making all those notes.

The tough part? Well, for Cowher, it might be having to play next Jan. 31—and losing two crucial weeks of planning for Super Bowl XXXIV.

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