The Pittsburgh Steelers are no strangers to games played in wild weather. The team was set to play their AFC Wild Card on Sunday, but inclement winter weather in Buffalo has pushed the game back to Monday at 4:30 EST. Even if the conditions have lightened up for the game, the Steelers and Buffalo Bills will still have to deal with the winter elements. Two-time Super Bowl-winning offensive tackle Max Starks played in his fair share of whacky climate games during his nine years protecting quarterbacks in Pittsburgh. He detailed that guys in his position love a good hard-fought snow game.
Starks joined former teammate Trai Essex and his podcast co-host, Cleveland Browns’ superfan Rody Rodawalt, on their Friday edition of Pod Me Up to discuss the Steelers’ first playoff game since January of 2022. He told the pair that offensive linemen appreciate playing in games with flakes of white falling.
“Because we get to go forward,” he said about why snow games are favored by offensive linemen, “You start to see a defense literally on their heels and there is literally no better feeling in the world than that. That’s why you relish in the snow.”
Starks said that while he loved getting up for games in the snow, he wasn’t a fan of games in the bitter cold. He said in those bitter-cold games without precipitation, you don’t even want to touch the ground because of how cold it is. Snow, he said, means that it’s warm enough to get precipitation, and you can push it out of the way. In contrast, he added it’s much nicer than playing in crazy rain because that’s when you get miserable.
In the snow, he explained the biggest strength for an offensive line is that the pass rushers trying to get downhill on you have a tougher challenge. He said that because traction is more difficult on a snow-covered field, the defensive players have to widen their stances to stay upright and take more choppy steps to not fall.
“When you get to this weather in Buffalo, your cleats don’t grab because you’re having to dig through snow,” he said. “Snow packs down and crunches but it never goes away, so your spikes don’t grab. It’s a lot easier to post and stabilize yourself going forward and defensive linemen don’t like that because he can’t anchor.”
Starks will be on the sideline for the broadcast and said he wishes he was running up and down the field rather than standing stationary this week.
Steelers’ Starks Recalls Some Big Time Moments In The Snow
Whenever snow games are brought up in Pittsburgh, the 2005 classic game against the Chicago Bears when Pittsburgh put the snow tires on “The Bus” is the gold standard. Starks was in his second season in the league and started at right tackle for that memorable Week 14 game at Heinz Field, with Essex opposite him at left tackle. He vividly remembers Jerome Bettis going down the sideline and being able to break some big runs because the Steelers’ powerful offensive line was pushing the Bears’ defense back.
Bettis ran for 101 yards on 17 carries, breaking a 39-yard run late in the third quarter, to go along with two touchdowns. Willie Parker had started the game for Pittsburgh but struggled in comparison, with 68 yards on 21 carries.
While it came after his time in the NFL, Starks said in preparation for the game that’s now on Monday, he rewatched Pittsburgh’s trip to Buffalo in Week 14 of the 2016 season. The Steelers ran the ball 42 times, with star running back Le’Veon Bell taking the bulk of the work.
Bell ran for a franchise-record 236 yards and scored three times to help the Steelers come out on top with a 27-20 win. Starks remembers Bell running over Bills defenders in that game and thinks that Najee Harris will have to do the same type of thing for Pittsburgh to be in the game on Monday.
