Pittsburgh - Shouldn't Joe Flacco have fallen apart after coughing up that ball? That should have done it for him, and for the Ravens, and for the idea that a rookie quarterback could win his first NFL road start.
It didn't do it, though. What Flacco had done, how Flacco had played, how Flacco had acted as if he had been there before, had carried the Ravens through the thicket of another typical defensive battle at Heinz Field last night and pushed them in front 13-3 at halftime.
And after Flacco got caught in a Steelers sandwich back deep in his own end, when James Harrison - there goes that man again - separated him from the ball, when LaMarr Woodley dove on it, picked it up, danced with it into the end zone and flung himself into the stands? Well, not long after that, after the Steelers had wrenched momentum their way, stolen the lead and moved up 20-13, Flacco reverted to the composed leader he had been before.
How? It apparently is just how he is. He's not perfect, and he wasn't last night by a long shot. Several times he showed how much he has to learn, and of course he wouldn't have been in position to show his poise without his running game and his defense. But the Ravens needed him to pull himself together, shake off the turnover and give them a chance to win.
He did. "He pulled a rabbit out of his hat," wide receiver Derrick Mason said.
Down by a touchdown with 9:13 left, Flacco worked the ball back downfield, connected once with Derrick Mason on a third-down conversion, and watched Le'Ron McClain bull into the end zone for the game-tying points with four minutes left.
It didn't render the fumble insignificant - all it did was dilute its impact and, eventually, force overtime. Even tough the Steelers won, 23-20, it made everyone connected with the team, and everyone back in Baltimore, exhale. About the game and about the still-raw quarterback.
"I was all right. I understand I've got to protect the ball," Flacco said, " it's a big part of the game. But I was OK going back onto the field. I had to be."
Until the fateful fumble, of course, the quarterback who looked like a deer in the Monday Night Football headlights had been Ben Roethlisberger. Coincidentally, Roethlisberger had been the last rookie to pull off the stunt, in 2004, and the only one in the past 10 first-year quarterbacks to try it.
