It felt horrible at the time. Of course it did. And I'm not talking about Christina Aguilera fumbling the national anthem.
Although, come to think of it, Aguilera's flub could work as a theme here. She somehow turned "o'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming" into "what so proudly we watched at the twilight's last reaming."
Let's stick to the twilight part. The sun set on the Steelers that night and hasn't really risen since.
The date was Feb. 6, 2011. The time was around 10:30 p.m. The Steelers had just lost the Super Bowl to Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers in front of the second-largest crowd the game had ever seen (103,219) and 111 million television viewers, making it the most-watched show in American history.
"Toughest loss of my life," Troy Polamalu said in the postgame locker room.
"I don't feel anything but pain," linebacker James Harrison said. "We just lost a Super Bowl. How the hell do you think I feel?"
There's a reason only one team (2018 Patriots) since the 1972 Dolphins has bounced back to win a Super Bowl the year after losing one. Several reasons, actually. But one has to be this: Losing a game of that magnitude exacts an immeasurable emotional toll.
It can produce the kind of pain that lasts a lifetime. Three years later, with the Steelers headed into a 2013 game against the Packers, Ben Roethlisberger was asked if he'd thought about the Super Bowl since.
"Nope," he said.
Not even in game prep, watching the Packers?
"Nope."
Reporter: "Are you lying right now?"
Roethlisberger: "Maybe [laughs]. How do you not [think about it]? The Green Bay media asked me, 'What do you remember?' I said, 'Losing.' That's all that matters. That's all you remember from a game like that."
Antonio Brown had a more specific memory: "I just remember, after the game, the confetti raining down and seeing Hines Ward sitting on the bench."
One can only wonder what Ward was thinking. I'm guessing it wasn't, "This will send the Steelers into a biblical drought and turn them into an ordinary NFL franchise," but that appears to be precisely what has transpired.
Yes, it hurt at the time. And you knew the hurt would last. But who would have thought Super Bowl XLV would turn the Steelers into the Houston Texans?
Sorry. That's an insult to the Texans, who have won more playoff games than the Steelers since that day (four to three).
I'm sorry again, but it's impossible not to look back on Feb. 6, 2011, as a line of demarcation.
Start with this: Mike Tomlin had just reached his second Super Bowl in four years as coach. Would you have guessed his team would miss the playoffs 45.5% of the time over the next 11 years?
That will be the number if the Steelers miss again this season, and a loss Sunday in Green Bay would be a large step in that direction. It would drop them to 1-3, the first time that's happened since ... 2019?
Yes, such things are happening regularly now.
You know what isn't happening regularly? Playoff wins. The Steelers have just three since Super Bowl XLV. One was gift-wrapped by the Cincinnati Bungles. Another was hand-delivered by Matt Moore and the Dolphins.
It's not just the lack of playoff wins, though. It's missing the playoffs altogether or getting humiliated in historic fashion once there.
Tim Tebow, Blake Bortles and the Cleveland Browns come to mind.
Tebow hadn't won a playoff game before and never would again. Bortles will never win another one, either, I'd bet, and the Browns hadn't won a road playoff game since 1969. They also didn't have their coach, not to mention several players, and still put 48 on Tomlin.
It was so bad that Baker Mayfield barely knew a player who appeared in the Browns huddle, later referring to new lineman Blake Hence as a "a guy named Blake that I introduced myself to in the locker room."
The Steelers have not won a playoff game since 2016. They could miss the postseason for the third time in four years. They do not have a clear succession plan for Roethlisberger, and they ran a dump pass to a running back 6 yards behind the line of scrimmage on 4th-and-10 from the opponent's 11.
It's all quite sad, and it brings me back to that Super Bowl loss — a game the Steelers, based on their recent history at the time, figured to pull out.
Some whittle the loss to Rashard Mendenhall's fumble, but it was way more than that. The league's best defense took the field with 7:34 left, down three, and could not stop Rodgers on 3rd-and-10.
It really has never been the same.
Roethlisberger took the field with 1:59 left and the Steelers down five. You had to believe he had more magic in him. Why wouldn't you?
"We thought we had it," guard Ramon Foster said.
But alas, the magic was gone. The sun was beginning to set.
Who would have thought we'd still be looking for it nearly 11 years later?
