The clock strikes midnight for Big Ben

PITTSBURGH -- The best story of the NFL season, the one about the kid who was going to take his team where no rookie quarterback had gone before, ended on a night every bit as cruel as it was cold. And man, was it ever cold.

With the temperature at 11 degrees for kickoff and ice floes jamming the Ohio River alongside Heinz Field, Ben Roethlisberger threw an interception on his first pass and never quite regained his footing, slipping, sliding and stumbling to his worst performance in the biggest game of the Steelers' remarkable season. That was no surprise.

The man who greased the skids has been making fools of quarterbacks for longer than Roethlisberger has been on the planet. Sometime genius and full-time Patriots coach Bill Belichick was already a half-dozen years into his career and drawing up defensive schemes for his fourth team by the time Big Ben was born.

"I don't know if there was a better quarterback back there, whether he makes the plays or not. But you saw what they did to Peyton Manning last week," Roethlisberger said, "and what they did to a rookie this one."

The kid showed up Sunday already at a crossroad, rare for someone whose tenure in the league was measured in months. But such was the fever that took hold in Pittsburgh after Roethlisberger, rushed into the starting job after Tommy Maddox went down in the second game of the season, took over the controls of the offense and took off on an unbeaten run that would stretch to 14 games.

There were jokes about renaming the town "Roethlisburgh." The locals consumed pound after pound of beef jerky and burgers named after him, and made his No. 7 jersey the league's best-seller. Sales never slowed, even after their perfect quarterback proved only too imperfect in a 20-17 overtime win against the Jets a week ago. Theories abounded about which Roethlisberger -- the cool, confident passer or the skittish rookie -- would show up as the AFC championship loomed.

The answer came on the third play from scrimmage, even before some in the record crowd of 65,242 had finished snuggling into their seats.

Roethlisberger's first throw was high and hard, thudding off the hands of receiver Antaawn Randle El, then tipped by Pats corner Asante Samuel before teammate Eugene Wilson came up with it. That led to New England's first score, a field goal by Adam Vinatieri.

Roethlisberger wasn't as lucky the second time he threw an interception; Pats safety Rodney Harrison stepped in front of that one and returned it 87 yards up the left sideline.

"We knew he has happy feet," Harrison said afterward. "He throws the ball up. We knew we could make some plays on him.

"A veteran quarterback who's been in this atmosphere knows the pressure gets bigger and bigger."

The "veteran quarterback" Harrison had in mind was his own teammate, Tom Brady, who at 27 has three years and four more seasons in the NFL than Roethlisberger, and is already inviting comparisons with Joe Montana. Belichick made no such comparison, but his praise for Brady was even more revealing about the difference between the two passers.

"Tom, to me, is kind of the same guy every day and every game. I don't think the magnitude of the game or the crowd noise or the situation bothers him. He's able to focus on what he has to do," Belichick said. "There's no quarterback I would rather have."

Maybe not. But Belichick's second choice would almost certainly be a rookie like Roethlisberger. While the kid's numbers were brilliant for a first-year performer -- a 98 passer rating and a 66 percent completion percentage -- it's also true that the rest of the league began to make up ground as the season wore on.

He threw nine touchdowns and three interception in his first six starts; only seven touchdowns and eight interceptions in his last eight. And besides the kid's stutter-step against the Jets in the crucible of the playoffs a week ago, there was this telling stat: Since taking over in New England, Belichick was 13-0 facing a quarterback for the second time in a season.

"They did a little bit of everything," Roethelisberger said. "They rushed two or three guys, dropped eight or nine in coverage, and it's hard to sit back and try to make the right play.

"They threw the book at us."

Roethlisberger had a dozen excuses available: inexperience, an injured thumb, a running game that suddenly lost much of its grit and most of its punch, a game plan so unimaginative that he never had a chance. He didn't avail himself of even one.

"Not everything is fair," Roethlisberger said. "You have to realize that. Only one team is going to end the season the way they wanted to, and that is the Super Bowl champs. We will rebound. This will be a big offseason for me and this offense."

And with that, the kid turned, walked through the door and out into the bone-chilling cold, a little bruised and a lot smarter for the lesson the genius and his defense had just taught him.

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press.