The Pittsburgh Steelers returned to the Super Bowl after a 15-year absence to play the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl XXX. The NFC had won the previous 11 championships and the Cowboys were 13.5-point favorites over the black and gold as the game approached. The Steelers defense was one of the most vicious units in their illustrious history led by Greg Lloyd, Kevin Greene, Rod Woodson, and Levon Kirkland.
Bryan DeArdo, who writes for CBS Sports, spoke with Kirkland and asked if the Steelers took it personally that the Cowboys were such heavy favorites over the Steelers and if Dallas didn't take them seriously as an opponent:
“I think they did,” Kirkland recalls. “I think they thought, ‘We’re the Dallas Cowboys, we’re going to run over these guys.’ They didn’t understand that we were from Pittsburgh. We weren’t going to be punk’d by nobody. I don’t care if you won two of the last three Super Bowls.”
Pittsburgh started slowly and after the Cowboys raced out to a 13-0 lead, it looked like the Steelers were simply outmatched. The Steelers defense began to stiffen in the second quarter and just before halftime, Neil O’Donnell connected with Yancey Thigpen to pull the Steelers within a touchdown:
"We just kind of settled down," Kirkland said. "If you've never been in that situation before, it's a big deal. Even if you're a seasoned pro, it's a little nerve-wracking. I think once we settled down and we stopped them, held them to a field goal, we felt like, 'OK, we can play with these guys, we can stop these guys.' And we were really good against the run."
The 1995 Steelers were a prideful group, but virtually none of them had Super Bowl experience, and the AFC during those years was considered vastly inferior to the NFC. Emmitt Smith was in the prime of his run to become the NFL’s All-Time leading rusher and had already won a Super Bowl MVP in 1993 against the Buffalo Bills. In his previous two Super Bowl appearances, Smith rushed for over 100 yards. In Super Bowl XXX, the Steelers held him to 49 yards and less than 10 yards in the second half.
The Steelers pulled to within 20-17 with under five minutes to play in the game. They desperately needed a stop and Kirkland came through with a huge sack that forced the Cowboys to punt the ball back to Pittsburgh. The 275-pound middle linebacker charged through the line with malice in his heart as he chased Troy Aikman:
“It would have been the highlight if we would have won,” Kirkland concluded. “If Emmitt doesn’t clip me at the end, I probably would have hit Troy Aikman to the next week. If we don’t turn the ball over, I think we win that game by at least two possessions. They took us a little lightly until we were in the game, then it was like, 'Whoa, these guys can play with us.'”
The Steelers quarterback promptly threw the game away after the defense gave them the ball back. O’Donnell found a wide-open Larry Brown and after nearly scoring, Smith put the game out of reach moments later with one of his nine second-half yards. Brown set up all 14 of the Cowboys second-half points with crucial interceptions and returns deep into Steelers territory.
Super Bowl XXX was a painful loss for Pittsburgh and the AFC. It would take two more years for the conference to break the NFC stranglehold on the Super Bowl and Pittsburgh would not return to the Super Bowl for another 10 seasons. The Steelers lost to the eventual Super Bowl Champion Denver Broncos in the AFC Championship Game and fell into a deep funk for three seasons that nearly cost Bill Cowher his job.
The defensive unit from the 1995 team is often forgotten because they lost that Super Bowl. Woodson and Greene did make the Hall of Fame, but Carnell Lake and Greg Lloyd, despite having the credentials to warrant consideration, are virtually ignored. If O’Donnell hadn’t turned Brown into the MVP of that game, they might very well both be in the Hall of Fame.
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