Column: Playoffs? Don’t talk about playoffs!

James Harrison flattens the Chiefs’ Alex Smith for a third-quarter sack Sunday at Heinz Field. — GETTY

Here they go, indeed. The Pittsburgh Steelers, proud as they once were, are almost back.

And I know that not because they’re back in the playoffs for the first time in three years, not because it was the defense that pushed them through by crunching the Chiefs, 20-12, not because that defense is “attacking instead of guessing” in the words of Jason Worilds, not even because that defense was fueled by a fully reborn James Harrison, the facet that undoubtedly offered the most familiar feeling of all on this sunny winter’s Sunday at Heinz Field.

No, I know this because they still want another piece of the Bengals.

“Want ’em bad,” Ramon Foster was saying afterward. “You look at how this has been setting up for weeks now, and this is what we’ve wanted. Beat Cincinnati, and the division’s ours. And if we get ’em again in playoffs, that’s OK, too.”

“We still have another game,” Ben Roethlisberger said. “I told the guys that we were going to get questions about being in the playoffs, but we still have another game. It’s a divisional game and it’s at home, so we’re not looking past that. We’re going to treat that like a playoff game like we’ve had the last three weeks.”

“We realize what next week is,” Mike Tomlin said. “It’s a big week for us.”

Well, good job by the QB. Or the head coach. Or whoever got the sentiment rolling around the room, but was it was pretty much universally shared:

The scenario is as simple as it gets: The Steelers are 10-5, the Bengals are 9-4-1, and no matter what happens when the Broncos visit Cincinnati Monday night, that sets up a singular showdown next weekend at Heinz for the AFC North Division title. The Ravens assured that by somehow losing to the Texans’ 19th-string QB Sunday. And much later at night, NBC snapped up Steelers-Bengals, through the miracle of flex scheduling, and pushed it back to a prime-time 8:32 p.m. kickoff.

Playoffs?

You’d have had a better chance of getting Jim Mora to talk about playoffs.

This is about the Bengals. It’s about the Bengals for a month now. It might be that way not just next week, either, but also the following week given how the playoff picture is shaping up.

And if you want to understand why that matters so much to these men, independent of any asterisks earned in the standings, one fine way to begin is to dust off a copy of the Steelers’ official Super Bowl XL video. Near the end, there’s a precious sequence where Bill Cowher is being interviewed during the celebration Downtown, and he blurts out that the feeling of winning a championship, his first and only championship, a championship that crowned Jerome Bettis, Hines Ward and others for the first time was “like beating the Bengals or another team in the division.”

Beautiful, right?

It’s hardly uncommon. That’s been the AFC North psyche since its inception. The Ravens have been the most reviled, of course, but it’s always been about all three. When the Ravens would beat the Steelers, they’d go on to the Super Bowl. When the Steelers would beat the Ravens, ditto. And when anyone other than those two sat at the top, it hasn’t exactly been a chore to work up a good lather. Uneasy lies the head, as they say.

The division, this division, represents the real muscle-flexing, the real macho in the mindset. And that facet should never be undersold in understanding football.

“It’s what you live for as a player in the AFC North,” Foster said. “Everybody knows what this division’s about. Everybody’s seen all the teams here having winning records. Everybody knows the kind of football we play. This is what you want, man. This is it.”

“We’re going to enjoy this game,” Heath Miller said. “Our big game is next week.”

These Steelers aren’t perfect. These aren’t your grandfather’s Steelers or even your older sister’s Steelers. They blew it against the Bucs, Jets and Saints, and a lot of those same issues were exposed again Sunday, with Alex Smith picking on the secondary for his first 300-yard game all season and with the No. 1-ranked offense often going unfed in the red zone.

And yet, here they go.

Here they go because, to date, no opponent has turned up a counter for the magic between Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown. They’ll shut down Le’Veon Bell if they choose — the Chiefs matched the Falcons in that strategy and success, with his being held to 63 yards — but never AB. Brown had seven catches for 72 yards and a TD, extending his NFL record to 31 consecutive games with at least five catches.

Here they go because the tight end is looking like the Heath of old rather than an old Heath, eating up open ground across the middle Sunday with seven catches for 68 yards.

Here they go because Cam Heyward, Lawrence Timmons, Stephon Tuitt, Worilds and Harrison continued to get so much of a push up front that the secondary could be relegated to a secondary concern.

And man alive, there needs to be a special mention for Harrison and his seven tackles, 1.5 sacks, two other tackles for losses and two quarterback hurries. He’s 36 going on 26.

“It’s not me. It’s God. I’m old and slow,” Harrison said with no trace of a smile. “God’s driving the bus, and I’m just riding.”

Here they go, above all, because of team toughness and togetherness, an assembled resiliency that’s been unmistakable in every game save for the loss to the Jets.

I’m not sure this team is much more talented than its two 8-8 predecessors. The difference, if you ask me, is much more in the intangibles. Some of that has to do with the inspirational returns of Harrison, Brett Keisel and, as a leader, Ike Taylor. All three undoubtedly recognized this could be their final season and responded with the requisite fire. Some of that has to do with the maturity of Bell, Heyward and a couple of young players, not least of whom is the vastly underappreciated Vince Williams. 

Some of that has to do with just plain old getting better.

I asked Tomlin how it felt to make the playoffs in such an up-and-down season: “The big thing is that we’ve evolved throughout. We were young at the early stages of the year. Same guys, but they’ve matured through the process. That maturation process is sometimes not easy. We were a highly penalized group early. We got control of that. We’ve started minimizing big plays. We’re doing what teams need to do this time of year, which is ratcheting it up and being a more difficult team to beat. We’re beating ourselves less, which is good.”

All are fair points, particularly the one on penalties. Those problems are tough to remember now, they were so long ago, and no, don’t for a second count the silly taunting call Sunday on Willie Gay. Same goes for getting better. This is six consecutive December wins, and it’s a second consecutive year of the team improving.

Tomlin and the coaches deserve credit, though I’ll bet it’s only grudgingly given, if at all.

The players deserve credit, as well, obviously. If that 35-32 loss to the Saints following the bye week was the season’s low point, then what does it say about the group that they set the goal at that time to win all of their final four games and take the division?

I’d credit the fans, too, except we’re still waiting on Pittsburgh’s best in this regard. There were nearly 5,000 no-shows for a no-weather-issue Sunday matinee in which the team home team could have — and ultimately did — clinch the playoffs. The ones who did show made noise but hardly the crescendo of years past.

Maybe they’re waiting for next week, too.

Tomlin was asked later in his press conference how important it would be to win the division, and his answer was almost as telling as Cowher’s a decade ago: First, he laughed. Then, he replied, “Very. I mean, that’s what we came here for, the hardware that we pick up along the way in terms of our ultimate goal. But we realize how significant division play is. We’re supporters and proponents of division play.”

Spoken like a man who knows his team’s got somewhere to go.