By Ron Griffitts
Contributing Columnist
Super Bowl LX was played on Feb. 5, 2006, at Ford Field in Detroit between the Pittsburgh Steelers (14-5) coached by Bill Cowher and the Seattle Seahawks (15-3) coached by Mike Holmgren.
Cowher’s offensive assistant was Ken Whisenhunt and his defensive coordinator was Dick LeBeau who had formerly held that job with the Cincinnati Bengals. His defensive backs coach was former Bengal player Ray Horton.
The Steelers were led on offense by 23-year-old quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, playing in his second NFL season who passed for 2,385 yards and 17 touchdowns.
The leading rushers were Willie Parker (1,202 yards, 4 TDs) and Jerome Bettis (368 yards, 9 TDs) while the leading receivers were Hines Ward (975 yards, 11 TDs) and Antwaan Randle El (558 yards, 1 TD) and the field goal kicker was Jeff Reed, who made 24 out of 29 field goal attempts.
They were led on defense by James Farrier (121 combined tackles), Larry Foote (102 combined tackles), Joey Porter (10.5 sacks), and Clark Haggans (9 sacks).
Holmgren’s offensive coordinator was Gil Haskell and defensive coordinators were John Marshall and Ray Rhodes, while the offense was led by quarterback Matt Hasselbeck who passed for 3,459 yards and 24 touchdowns.
The rushing leader was Shaun Alexander (1,880 yards, 27 TDs) while the leading receivers were Bobby Engram (778 yards, 3 TDs) and Joe Jurevicius (694, 10 TDs). The field goal kicker was Josh Brown who converted on 18 of 25 field goal tries.
The defense was led by Lofa Tatupu (104 combined tackles, 4 sacks, 3 interceptions), Rocky Bernard (8.5 sacks), LeRoy Hill (7.5 sacks), and Micheal Boulware (4 interceptions).
The game started slowly as neither team could get a good drive going with the only score in the first quarter being a 47-yard field goal by Josh Brown to put the Seahawks up 3-0.
In the second quarter, the Steelers got on the board with a one-yard Ben Roethlisberger run set up by a 37-yard pass play from Roethlisberger to Hines Ward and the Steelers led 7-3 at the half.
On the third play of the third quarter from their own 25-yard-line, the Steelers’ Willie Parker took off for a 75-yard run to the end zone and the score was 14-3 Pittsburgh.
The Seahawks, however, had a long run of their own on an interception of a Roethlisberger pass in the end zone caught by Kelly Herndon, who ran back 76 yards to the Pittsburgh 20-yard-line from which three plays later Matt Hasselbeck completed a 16-yard touchdown pass to Jerramy Stevens. The score was 14-10 after three quarters.
But the long scoring plays were not over as later in the fourth quarter on an end around run by Antwaan Randle El, he threw the ball to Hines Ward for a 43-yard touchdown score, making the score 21-10 which proved to be the final score.
Ward, who caught 5 passes for 123 yards and 1 touchdown, got the game MVP and both Ward and Steelers’ coach Bill Cowher went on to be TV analysts while two of Cowher’s assistants, Ken Whisenhunt and Bruce Arians, went on to become head coaches in the NFL.
Ben Roethlisberger is still playing in his 18th NFL season and has thrown for 63,562 yards for fifth place on the all-time list.
The Steelers were back to the Super Bowl in 2009 while Seattle returned in 2014.
Statistics for this article were from football-reference.com.
Ron Griffitts a contributing columnist for The Daily Advocate.
