In the waning moments of a game in which the Pittsburgh Steelers were losing to the New England Patriots last Sunday night, NBC’s Cris Collinsworth hit an important point when he said that the Steelers’ response to the loss—rather than the loss itself—would reveal who the Steelers really are. 

The Post-Gazette’s Jerry Micco had the same idea towards the end of his chat during the game, saying something like this: “If they don’t come out breathing fire next week against Oakland, this team has some very serious issues.”

Yesterday against Oakland, the Steelers desperately needed to make a statement in their second consecutive Statement Game.

Just did it, baby.

Pittsburgh borrowed a storyline from the 1970s, using a suffocating defense and a physical style of play to thump the first-place Raiders.  The Steelers won by 32 points, despite having two touchdowns taken off the board and racking up enough penalty yards to cover the distance from Heinz Field to PNC Park.  

The showdown with the Raiders was a game Pittsburgh needed to win for many reasons: primarily, to stay in the AFC playoff race, and secondarily, to right the ship after last weekend’s debacle. 

You could argue that it was the biggest game of coach Mike Tomlin’s career, as a loss would’ve produced another round of questions regarding a second straight late-season collapse.

That's not Emmanuel Sanders, and that's not Darren McFadden.

What should be encouraging for the yinzers out there is not just that the Steelers won but how they won.

It’s no secret that the Pittsburgh defense has become the front line of the NFL’s new War on Concussions.  Yesterday they were singled out yet again, with nearly a half-dozen questionable calls going against them, including an indefensible flag on Ryan Clark for hitting a guy below his shoulder pads. 

Poor James Harrison has already been fined almost 13 percent of his yearly paycheck for doing pretty much what he’s been doing his entire career—careening around the field and hitting people.  Hard.

It may have caught up with the Steelers a week ago, when they seemed afraid to come within two steps of Tom Brady.  They played passively and looked worried that the next hit they dished out would empty their wallets.  New England shredded them for 48 points, the most given up by a Steelers team in five years.

Perhaps that humiliation was the spark that lit the fire.  Or perhaps it was a fresh round of whispers that they are too old, too slow and too injured to remain an elite defense. 

Maybe it was the sight of a Raiders team that ruined their ’09 season with a comeback win.  Whatever it was, the defense showed that they were going to play their way, on their terms, that the league wasn’t going to be able to fine them into submission, and that they were going to hit early and hit hard and hit often.

This, of course, resulted in a record-setting afternoon where the Steelers were flagged for 14 penalties—at least half of which were questionable, including all six (six!) personal fouls—for 163 yards, which nearly equaled the Raiders total offensive output for the day. 

There were plenty of skirmishes after the whistle as both teams chirped at each other all game long.  Richard Seymour landed a vicious right hand to Ben Roethlisberger’s mug, sending the Steelers quarterback to the canvas and Seymour to the showers.  In other words, this may have closely resembled those old Steelers-Raiders games your daddy used to tell you about.

The fact that the Raiders were on the wrong end of this beating should not be taken lightly.  This was the so-called rebirth of one of the NFL’s great rivalries, on par with only a few others, such as 49ers-Cowboys or Patriots-Colts.  The pundits were right:  If the Steelers didn’t show up for this one, they were in some serious trouble.

Turns out the Raiders were the no-show.

The team that gave Pittsburgh the most trouble were the guys in striped shirts.  Yet the Steelers didn’t let up, hammering every receiver that went over the middle, gang-tackling Darren McFadden every time he touched the rock and pummeling quarterback Jason Campbell so much that he eventually ended up on the bench. 

Someday, Tom Cable may become a signature NFL announcer...and be the face of his own video game franchise...and be afraid to fly...and still hate the Steelers.

Hopefully the NFL learned their lesson today.  The Steelers aren’t going to change their style, no matter how much you flag them.  In a perfect world, this would be the turning point, kind of like when the other team stops trying to run the ball on the Steelers because they know it won’t work.   

But this is the NFL in 2010, where players can be flagged, fined, suspended, guillotined, and possibly hanged, drawn and quartered for…well, for playing football.

Maybe someday we will see a slow-motion clip of Richard Seymour clocking Ben Roethlisberger as the NFL Films music plays in the background, with a shot of Tom Cable brooding on the sideline as Tomlin does his best dead-serious stare.   

Maybe this will be remembered as the day the Steelers and Raiders played their first “important” game since the late 70s and the rivalry was officially renewed. 

But it will be immediately remembered only for the officiating, something that we hear much too often these days.