Sometimes the lord really does giveth. When Pittsburgh Steeler Kordell Stewart materialized out of nowhere in 1995 as a baby-faced, wide-eyed, second-round draft choice from the University of Colorado, it was like he had been beamed down from heaven—delivered into the decrepit concrete doughnut of Three Rivers Stadium for the express purpose of serving as Yin to then-starting-quarterback Neil O'Donnell's efficient but unspectacular Yang: a fast, versatile, explosive rocket the Steelers could ride to the Super Bowl, and, as the sports almanacs will forever say, did ride to the Super Bowl.
   Pretty much immediately, Pittsburgh wanted more. Football-addicted Steelers fans couldn't help but drool at the notion of the ludicrously mobile and athletic Slash—as he was called back then—as starting quarterback. If the defenses dropped into pass coverage, he could tuck the ball and carve them up with his speed and elusiveness. If they stacked the line of scrimmage to defend the run, he could stab them deep with his strong arm. If they played him straight, he could pass on the run or run on the pass. Stewart wasn't just a mere offensive threat, he was the future of the Steelers and maybe—in those heady pre-Michael Vick, pre-Donovan McNabb days—the National Football League itself: an athlete at quarterback.
   With O'Donnell's post-Super Bowl departure for the New York Jets (next stop: obscurity), Stewart's installation at quarterback became no longer a matter of if but when, and how. And after backup QB Mike Tomczak magically willed the Steelers as far as a divisional playoff game in New England in 1996—with Stewart taking over in short-yardage situations and as a last resort in that final, foggy playoff loss—our beloved Slash finally got his chance to start. And as the sports almanacs will forever say, he played terribly. But the whole team did, and anyway, it was foggy, so we let him off the hook.
   Fast-forward the instant replay to 5 October 1997 at Baltimore, a little more than halfway through the game. Having struggled to tread water in his first four outings—proving himself an inaccurate, slow-thinking passer and somewhat of a nincompoop when it came to choosing the right time to run—Stewart is sinking fast in the clear autumn sun. He has thrown three interceptions, setting up three Baltimore touchdowns. The score is Ravens 21, Steelers 7. Then Stewart magically gets his groove back, squares his shoulders, and gives the individual athletic show of the NFL year, going eleven-of-fourteen for one hundred eighty-one yards with two touchdown passes, running like a man possessed, or being chased by an escaped circus lion. To cap it all off, he breaks a planned QB run for a fabulously, even sexily fast and agile seventy-four yards and a touchdown. He collapses victoriously into the end zone, his teammates mobbing him when they finally catch up, which takes a while. It's the sort of thing boys dream about when they're alone in the back yard on a crisp, fall day, football in hand: a coming out game, wherein our protagonist (which in my case was always me) is proven to be a genius visionary after all. Final score: Steelers 42, Ravens 34, Kordell 1,000,000.
   The rest of that 1997 season is a dream, almost. Stewart stays on his roll, makes almost everyone else in the league look like they're running drunk in molasses, and rides it all the way to the final moments of the AFC Championship Game, played in Pittsburgh. Here, Stewart's nagging tendency toward the occasional spectacularly bad decision results in a few decisive turnovers, and the visiting team, Denver, goes on to win the Super Bowl. Dream over.
   But a funny thing happens on the way to a return to greatness in 1998: the glorious return was nowhere to be found. Stewart plummeted out his groove, lost his confidence and his national badass, future-shoe-in-for-the-Hall of Fame poise, and was once again an inaccurate passer and a gifted runner without much instinct. The Steelers tanked hard and missed the playoffs.
   But it was far, far worse than that. Rumors of dubious origin circulated around Western Pennsylvania's rolling hills questioning Stewart's sexuality—the greatest of insults in the homophobic, machoistic world of football. Stewart was booed mercilessly at home games. After one particularly dismal home loss, a crazed Steelers fan dumped an Iron City on Stewart's head—a low-down, dirty move the drunkards among the Steelers faithful usually save for returning, former-Steelers quarterbacks. By the end of a terrible 1999 season, Stewart—increasingly scared, scarred, confused-looking and ineffective—was demoted to wide receiver. And that, pretty much, was that.
   But just when we were all praying the lord would taketh Stewart away—to Cleveland, to Baltimore, to Dallas, anywhere—his would-be replacement, Kent Graham, proved himself to be slower-thinking and less accurate (to say nothing of significantly less mobile) than his predecessor. With Graham lobbing interceptions at random and looking very much the washed-up, never-was backup QB he was, Stewart suddenly didn't seem so bad. Again, we were awed by the possibility of Stewart. Maybe '98 and '99 weren't his fault after all. Maybe it was a lack of consistency by the offensive coordinators. Maybe it was the lack of a quarterbacks' coach, or anything resembling a good mentor.
   We didn't realize, as we were watching Stewart once again make superhuman plays to draw the 2000 campaign to an improved 8-8 finish, as we watched him pilot a hyper-talented 2001 squad to a 13-3 finish and another AFC Championship Game, that we were once again being strung along, making a deal with the devil, getting caught up in the possibility of something instead of its reality. As Stewart, in the last third of the season, began to throw more interceptions than touchdowns, we were oblivious. After all, we were winning, weren't we?
   Perhaps, in the end, Stewart was a victim of his own elusive success. The Steelers' regular season dominance last year elevated expectations for the 2002 campaign to heights not seen since the Seventies. So it was that in week five, with the Cleveland Browns slow-motion-spanking the Steelers 13-6 at Heinz Field in the fourth quarter (fresh after two more spectacular ass-thumpings on the part of the New England Patriots and Oakland Raiders), the possibility of Stewart zapping out of it and going on another season-long tear simply was not enough. The Steelers needed a quarterback capable of completing passes, and more than that, staring down the barrel of an 0-3 start, they needed a win.
   Out strode the sharp-thinking, fast-throwing, composed, confident-in-spite-of-his-recent-XFL-tenure Tommy Maddox. He drove the Steelers down the field for a touchdown, and eventually the win. The Maddox-lead Steelers—gaining a reputation for an efficient, dangerous offense—are 4-1 since then, including three 30-point-plus games.
   The reality of Stewart, from what he has shown us in eight years, is that he is a mediocre QB who, when the stars line up correctly, can sometimes get on a spectacular, highlight-film roll. But in a league in which jobs and, indeed, entire careers are constantly on the line, where there are only sixteen games a season, that simply isn't enough. So it is that Stewart will almost certainly be gone by the end of the off-season.
   Yes, sometimes the lord, or fate or Allah or Lennon, or whatever we may or may not believe in, really can giveth. But sometimes, by and by, we see those gifts not for what they are, but for what we want them to be. Kordell, maybe the problem was that you were never really human to us, you were always Slash or the second coming of Terry Bradshaw. Or something even more than that. Maybe, by and by, you were only ever a dream.

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