Antonio Brown high-fives fans at Heinz Field after winning the AFC North Division title Sunday night. — GETTY

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

In the end, though it really wasn’t the end, there were as many sighs as smiles.

The Steelers, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the franchise that once owned the AFC North Division, the franchise built on a foundation of defense and toughness and tenacity, made it back to that summit by borrowing from all three traits on this special Sunday night at Heinz Field and besting the Bengals, 27-17, in a mano-a-mano matchup for the title.

And yes, it was truly special. I choose the term advisedly. Because, like most of the men on this roster, I recall London all too vividly.

“Yeah, London,” Ramon Foster was saying at his stall after all the caps and T-shirts had been doled out, after all the whooping and hollering of a “very happy locker room,” as Mike Tomlin described the initial postgame celebration, had died down. “I remember London. A lot of us do. That was … man, that seems like forever ago now, doesn’t it?”

Sure does, but it stuck with you, too, I’m guessing.

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Antonio Brown fends off the Bengals’ Adam ‘Pacman’ Jones in Cincinnati three weeks ago. — GETTY

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

A striking December sun splashed across the Steelers’ South Side fields Friday afternoon, and the din, somehow, was almost a mano a mano match for it. The adjacent rail line rattled and rumbled with the passing CSX freight train. The construction workers atop a still-skeletal office complex being built across those tracks hacked and pounded, whirred and clattered. And because all of that apparently wasn’t enough to envision how Heinz Field might erupt Sunday night, the young student the team employs to pump recorded crowd noise into practices was blaring four megaphone-sized speakers at 110 decibels squarely in the direction of the athletes.

“Red zone!”

That was Ramon Foster. Still can’t believe I could hear him from 50 yards away.

“Red zone now! Red! Red! RED!”

The big man’s got quite the big voice, suffice it to say, and it only got bigger as the Steelers’ first-team offense strode closer to the goal line. At this point, the ball had just touched the 20.

“Red zone! Red! Red!” came more calls from around the field, then even more after a Le’Veon Bell sprint up the middle pushed them a few yards closer.

And finally, when Ben Roethlisberger rifled the ball to Antonio Brown on a slick slant pattern, it became a crescendo. Even Mike Tomlin piped up.

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

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

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.”

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