Whether in the warm promise of winter or the cold reality of winter, whether it’s hard by the Three Rivers or emanating from some remote dateline, the approach of any and every Steelers game is treated religiously like some looming cataclysm.
Once in a smuggler’s moon, the mandatory hyperbole will actually line up with the import of the matchup, such as when the Steelers and their tormenting New England Patriots turn up on the same acreage and you get the best football available — two teams that despise each other, two franchises drenched in National Football League success (30 divisional titles combined since 1994), two of the game’s all-time elite quarterbacks, two of the profession’s best head coaches.