Super Bowl

PITTSBURGH - The Ravens' improbable Super Bowl run ended with an uncharacteristic performance by Joe Flacco. Finally looking like a rookie quarterback in the playoffs, Flacco made critical mistakes that cost the Ravens in a 23-14 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers in yesterday's AFC championship game. The sixth-seeded Ravens (13-6) rebounded from a 5-11 season because of the big arm and poise of Flacco. But they couldn't return to the Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla., because of him. With a windchill of 15 degrees at Heinz Field, the NFL's top-ranked defense turned Joe Cool into Joe Cold.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - Arizona, here they come, and Kurt Warner had better watch out. What the Philadelphia Eagles possessed in patience and trust, the New York Giants lacked in sense of urgency yesterday. Donovan McNabb and Brent Celek scored touchdowns while Eli Manning could do little more than produce field-goal drives. The result earned the Eagles a shocking 23-11 win over New York at Giants Stadium and gave them a trip to Arizona to take on the Cardinals in the NFC championship game Sunday.

At this time last season, coach Brian Billick had the Ravens close to clinching a playoff berth. Now, instead of talking about winning a Super Bowl, he has to explain why he isn't worried about losing his job. Ravens@Chargers Today, 4:15 p.m., chs. 13, 9, 1090 AM, 97.9 FM Line: Chargers by 8 1/2

MIAMI -- Well, at least Paul Tagliabue didn't get into the Hall of Fame. That would have been the ultimate compound insult. The Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl. The Museum Man in Canton. The official reaction from Baltimore would have been a collective dry heave. Tagliabue didn't get past the first vote, which has to be some consolation for all the disenfranchised Baltimore Colts fans who hold him responsible for the expansion snub of 1993. Who knows how responsible he really was, but his cavalier statement that the city would be better off using its expansion money to build another museum still rankles after all these years.

On that overcast January day from which the Ravens have not yet recovered, Steve McNair threw to tight end Todd Heap on the goal line and found safety Antoine Bethea instead. Baltimore football history shuddered and pivoted on that pass. A 13-3 team that had seemed poised to return to the Super Bowl spent the rest of the day chasing the Indianapolis Colts in a touchdownless, 15-6 loss in the AFC divisional playoffs. The Ravens were on the road to ruin. The Colts, who had lost three of their last five regular-season games and given up 375 rushing yards in one of them, were on their way to a Super Bowl championship.

MIAMI-- --It's the quintessential dopey Super Bowl week question: If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be? This year, there's a legit answer, at least if you ask the two coaches, the Indianapolis Colts' Tony Dungy and the Chicago Bears' Lovie Smith: a coaching tree. Well, Dungy has a tree. Smith is one of its products. This tree is unique in a couple of ways - it's one of the more recently planted, since Dungy has been an NFL head coach for only 11 years, and its branches include primarily, although not solely, African-American coaches.

Over the course of his career with the Indianapolis Colts, quarterback Peyton Manning has been paid to: flick his little brother's earlobe, confess an affinity for cooking shows, hatch out of a football, cheer for deli workers, utter the word "doggone" on national television, meditate and wear a toupee. He's done it all cheerfully, and why not? Along with his $98-million, seven- year contract with the Colts, Manning reportedly has the most lucrative endorsement setup in the NFL, pitching for companies such as Sprint, DirecTV and Mas- terCard even though he's never so much as appeared in the Super Bowl until now. And even if the Colts were to get clobbered in Sunday's game against the Chicago Bears, experts say Manning's advertising stats probably won't be sacked because his marketing allure stems more from his personality than his performance.

The NFL has gone to great lengths to promote parity and, in most instances, has achieved its goal. Only one glitch in former commissioner Paul Tagliabue's grand vision of the cream, as well as the crud, rising to the top: The AFC in general - and the New England Patriots in particular - is messing with this mandate. By winning the Super Bowl six times in the past seven years and eight in the past 10, including three titles in a four-year stretch by the Patriots, the AFC has clearly distanced itself from what once was the more dominant half of the league.

Michael McCrary and Rob Burnett remain unconvinced. For a good part of this season, media and fans have showered the current Ravens team with questions about whether it is reminiscent of the 2000 squad that won the Super Bowl . Ravens coach Brian Billick and the players have shied away from making any such comparisons, and McCrary and Burnett - two critical cogs of the 2000 defense - did the same. "I don't think it's fair to anybody but especially them," Burnett, a former defensive end, said of the current team.

MIAMI -- Six years removed from being the Ravens' Super Bowl-winning quarterback, Trent Dilfer is more emotional about the events that followed the victory. Dilfer remains extremely bitter about Brian Billick's decision to replace him with Elvis Grbac after the championship season and doesn't plan to speak to the Ravens coach again. "He grossly misunderstood the talent of that football team, myself specifically," said Dilfer, who is working for the NFL Network at this year's Super Bowl.

Any relief the Ravens might have gotten in the secondary is nearly gone as veteran cornerback Samari Rolle contemplates retirement. Rolle, though, has one major piece of advice for his partners in the defensive backfield. And Rod Woodson, the former Pro Bowl safety and cornerback with the Steelers and Ravens, agrees with him. There is no way to compensate for a weak secondary that is ranked No. 22 in the NFL, allowing 241 yards per game. Somebody has to make plays. "Everybody in the NFL watches film," Rolle said from his home in Florida.

David Tyree has been to the sports mountaintop. But he has been to the bottom, too. There is hardly a better example of humility in sports than watching a Super Bowl hero beg for a job. But right now, just having a job is something to be grateful for, and Tyree - who signed with the Ravens this week, primarily to fill the void on special teams left by Brendon Ayanbadejo's season-ending injury - is extremely grateful. "I'm thrilled," Tyree said. "To arrive on a football team with the amount of depth and talent that we have here in Baltimore, I'm thrilled to just be another piece to the puzzle.

In Sunday's season-opening 38-24 win over the Kansas City Chiefs, the Ravens' offense generated not only team records, but also a buzz around town. Last season, no one ran the ball more than the Ravens did. On Sunday, only one team passed more than they did (not surprisingly, it was the Arizona Cardinals). So, could this signal a shift to a pass-first attack? Ravens offensive coordinator Cam Cameron simply shook his head. In his eyes, throwing the ball just adds an air of unpredictability to the Ravens' offense.

I can't remember ever picking a team I covered to win the Super Bowl. I didn't when I covered the Ravens in 2000. But I did this year. Why? It starts with the defense. This defense already looks better than last season's. It's tremendously strong up the middle (Haloti Ngata, Kelly Gregg, Ray Lewis, Ed Reed). It has excellent speed at the corners (Fabian Washington and Domonique Foxworth). It has at least five players who are at or near the top of their position in the NFL: Terrell Suggs, Ngata, Gregg, Lewis and Reed.

When you arrive at M&T Bank Stadium for today's regular-season opener between the Ravens and the Kansas City Chiefs, you're going to be hard-pressed to find anyone who doubts that Joe Flacco and friends are going to fight deep into the playoffs this season. Really, there's going to be so much purple passion bubbling up around Camden Yards that it might even leave a ring around Oriole Park. And why not? The Ravens shocked the NFL world last year when their rookie quarterback and rookie coach took them all the way to the AFC championship game, and now they are a year older and a year wiser and, you would think, a year better than the team that fell a couple of big plays short of the Super Bowl.

The Ravens are among the usual contenders in the AFC along with the Indianapolis Colts, Pittsburgh Steelers and New England Patriots. Those teams have established quarterbacks while the Ravens have a work in progress, second-year player Joe Flacco. Two of the major issues in 2009 are whether Flacco can raise his game enough to carry the Ravens to the Super Bowl and whether he can become a dominating quarterback like New England's Tom Brady, Indianapolis' Peyton Manning and Pittsburgh's Ben Roethlisberger.

In the span of a year, the Ravens' major question mark has gone from who's throwing the ball to who's catching it. When quarterback Joe Flacco drops back to pass, his go-to receiver (Derrick Mason) is a 35-year-old whose offseason included shoulder surgery and a brief retirement. His deep threat (Mark Clayton) didn't play a down in the preseason because of a hamstring injury. His third target (Kelley Washington) had one catch last season and joined the team in the middle of May after a tryout.

He lives in Upperco, in a weathered old farmhouse on 46 acres that he bought for a song when he retired from football. There's a sweet spring-fed pond out back full of catfish and bass, a vegetable patch stuffed with sweet corn and beans, and a woodpile large enough to keep the home fires burning all winter. Fred Miller doesn't want for much. And if he did, you wouldn't hear a peep from the 69-year-old tackle, a mainstay of the Baltimore Colts' defensive line in their heyday. A three-time Pro Bowl selection, Miller spent a decade here (1963-1972)

He played only four years with the Ravens, but when Rod Woodson enters the Pro Football Hall of Fame tonight, he'll be reopening the door for Baltimore. A defensive back, Woodson is the first Ravens player to be enshrined in Canton, Ohio. There, he joins 11 members of the Baltimore Colts, the last of whom - former coach Don Shula - was inducted in 1997. One year later, Woodson joined the Ravens, where he shored up the defense and helped lead them to a Super Bowl victory in January 2001.

When you look at the Ravens' defense, it's hard to find a weakness. The unit has a Pro Bowl player on the defensive line and a couple at linebacker and in the secondary. The Ravens might have as much overall defensive depth as they had in 2000 when they won the Super Bowl. But there is one problem area. The Ravens don't have a shutdown cornerback. They have solid players and good depth, but they don't have that big, physical corner who can take out the other team's No. 1 receiver. Ravens defensive coordinator Greg Mattison wants to find one before the Kansas City Chiefs come to Baltimore for the season opener Sept.