The Pittsburgh Steelers got off to a rough start in the 1996 season, losing 24-9 to the Jacksonville Jaguars. In that game, Pittsburgh saw star OLB Greg Lloyd suffer a torn patella tendon in his left knee, which knocked him out for the entire season, and QB Jim Miller, who barely won the starting job over Mike Tomczak, was pulled at halftime. During an appearance on the Pat McAfee show on Thursday, Bill Cowher, who was Pittsburgh’s head coach in that game, broke down the quarterback situation and the funny exchange he had with Miller after taking him out of the game.
“Our first game that year in 1996 was in Jacksonville. Opened up against Jacksonville. So you have to go through that quarterback battle we had. No one really won it, so I thought, ‘who did best coming off the bench?’ Because no one’s really winning it. I thought Mike Tomczak, he’d been there, done that before. Jim Miller, here’s your chance to start. At halftime of the game, I pulled Jim Miller. I benched him, I put Mike Tomczak in. And Jim Miller comes up to me, at the time, he says ‘Coach, why’d you pull me out, I didn’t do anything.’ I go, ‘There lies the problem. You didn’t do anything,'” Cowher said. “I put Mike Tomczak in, and he took us to the playoffs that year.”
At the time Miller got pulled, he was just 9-17 for 83 yards. Tomczak didn’t do much better, going just 3-4 for 24 yards with an interception, but Tomczak was a solid option for the rest of the season, as the Steelers went 10-6 before bowing out in the Divisional Round to the eventual AFC Champion New England Patriots. He finished that year with 2,767 yards and 15 touchdowns with 17 interceptions, as the Steelers relied on RB Jerome Bettis and his 1,431 yards and 11 touchdowns.
The next season, it was QB Kordell Stewart who took over. Cowher told McAfee that Stewart was in the running to play quarterback in 1996, but the Steelers needed help at receiver and he thought Stewart was still one of their better wideouts. He had 17 receptions for 293 yards and three touchdowns in 1996, while running 39 times for 171 yards and five touchdowns. He did also play some quarterback in ’96, including in the season opener, where he went 0-2. For the season, he was just 11-30 for 100 yards with two interceptions.
It’s a fun story to look back on, but the 2023 Steelers are going to look to avoid the same fate that the ’96 team had when they play the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday at Acrisure Stadium.
Here’s an NFL Countdown clip of that 1996 season opener, via SW561 on YouTube.
