Mythbusters, Football-Style

Sunday's television schedule called for the 12-hour "Mythbusters" marathon to end at 9 PM. In reality, though, the show merely moved a half-hour earlier from The Discovery Channel to ESPN.

"Mythbusters" can best be described as "Jackass" for people who learned to read. The hosts, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, have taken it upon themselves to scientifically prove popular urban legends. As often as not, "scientifically" -- as far as Savage and Hyneman are concerned -- means breaking or blowing something up.

That's something that anyone with a "Y" chromosome can appreciate.

Savage is a special effects expert who, according to the "Mythbusters" website, has worked on such films as "Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace" and "GalaxyQuest," although it's not clear whether he gets to take credit for Sigourney Weaver's disappearing uniform in that latter movie. He also once played Mr. Whipple's stockboy in a "Charmin" commercial.

Hyneman has worked on special effects on the "Matrix sequels.

Episodes of the show have dealt with such weighty issues as whether a penny dropped from a very tall building will kill you if it lands on your head (it won't), and if a cup of water will explode if a spoon is placed in it immediately after it is heated in a microwave to boiling (sometimes; I think it has to do with the movement of the water molecules).

Savage and Hyneman once attempted to find out whether birds can bring down small airplanes by hitting and shattering the aircraft's windshield. To do this, they shot chicken carcasses at the windshield of a junked airplane, which first required the construction of a chicken gun. That is, a gun that fires chicken carcasses.

No wonder the rest of the world hates us. With hundreds of millions of people going hungry every day on this planet, we're shooting perfectly good food at airplanes in a junkyard for entertainment.

It was almost midnight, and long after the "Mythbusters" marathon ended, when the day's final myth -- that the Steelers are a running team -- was busted in the closing minutes of Pittsburgh's 17-16 victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars.

If you believe the national media, the Steelers are a throwback team, not just to their 1970s era glory days, but to Pittsburgh's Bullet Bill Dudley and Whizzer White (that's the late Supreme Court Justice Byron White to you) era of the 1930s and '40s.

After a disastrous one-year flirtation with the passing game, which contributed to a 6-10 record in 2003, Pittsburgh went back to a conservative attack behind offseason acquisition Duce Staley and, more recently, a rejuvenated Jerome Bettis.

A cursory look at the numbers would seem to bear that out. In a four-game stretch in late October and November -- which has included wins over New England, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Cincinnati -- the Steelers threw on 98 of 291 passing plays for a rough percentage of 33 percent.

But this is a clear case of lying statistics. The Steelers, in fact, are a balanced team.

In the book "Football: The Inside Game," Bob Carroll and John Thorn, who also helped edit the "Total Football" books, broke down hundreds of football games and came to the conclusion that the key to victory often is to throw the ball effectively to establish an early lead, then suck the life out of the clock by running.

During their eight-game winning streak, the Steelers have been following that script perfectly. Unfortunately, a lot of observers look at the rushing totals for Staley and Bettis and coming to the conclusion that Pittsburgh is winning because it is running so well.

That's like looking at paintings of frontier settlers and coming to the conclusion that the Conestoga wagons are pushing horses westward. In the NFL, teams don't win because they run well; they're running well because they're winning.

And they're winning because they're throwing well.

For the first time in almost two months, the Steelers asked Ben Roethlisberger to win a game more or less by himself, and he did.

Not only was he nearly flawless passing -- 14-of-14 for 221 yards and two touchdowns with a near-perfect 158.0 passer rating -- but the rookie was 3-for-3 in driving the Steelers downfield for the eventual game-winning field goal.

For the second consecutive week, the Steelers couldn't break the 20 point barrier. But this time, it wasn't Roethlisberger's fault. Pittsburgh's offense was stymied by its own running game, 11 penalties, and the defense's inability to consistently stop Jacksonville's passing game, which limited the Steelers' own offensive opportunities.

Each of those four earlier games cited can be divided into two parts -- the early part, when Pittsburgh was establishing its lead, and late, when the Steelers were trying to kill the clock.

If the Steelers were a running team, they would be running the ball two-thirds of the time both early in the game and late. But it doesn't work out that way.

During that early part, when the outcome of the games was still in doubt, Pittsburgh threw on 72 of 153 offensive plays, 47 percent of the time, in the last four weeks.

Against Jacksonville, when the outcome was in doubt after the final gun, the Steelers ran on 20 of 45 plays, for a 44 percent ratio. There's a word for that type of offense.

Balance.

Adam and Jamie would be proud.