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By Greg Doyel, CBSSports.com National Columnist

PITTSBURGH -- At halftime of this graphically physical football game, I jotted down a single question on my notepad. I'd already seen a fumble, an interception, crunching hits, waylaid players, concussions, sprains, two touchdowns and two field goals. But I hadn't seen one player. Not really. So I wrote down this question:

Where's Ed Reed?

And then late in the game, there he was. The Hall of Fame bound safety, the anchor of the most grueling defense in football, made a vintage Reed play. He dropped into coverage, leaped for an interception, grabbed it and decided that wasn't good enough. Nope. He got good and greedy, taking his stolen football and running it down the field and then cutting from one sideline to the other before finally bulling into the end zone.

So there it was. The kind of play that has made a legend of Ravens safety Reed.

Only it was turned in by the safety on the other team. By Pittsburgh's Troy Polamalu.

And it was the reason the Steelers won, or at least clinched, their spot in the Super Bowl. After more than three quarters of big hits, Polamalu's play was the sledge hammer to the Ravens' head, a 40-yard touchdown return with 4:24 to play. What had been a two-point knee-knocker had become a 23-14 lead for the Steelers, and 4:24 later that's how the AFC Championship Game ended.

Sometimes, the hero of a game makes you nauseous. Sometimes it's Brett Favre or Terrell Owens or someone else who doesn't deserve the adulation. Polamalu deserves it, and not just because he's a good guy. He deserves it because he had become, impossibly, the forgotten guy.

Impossible, I say, because in six NFL seasons Polamalu already has been picked for five Pro Bowls. He has been an All-Pro twice, and he's only 27. He'll make it into the Hall of Fame some day, and that day will be exactly five years after he retires. He's that good.

But in this game, he was the "other" safety.


'That play is going to go down in history,' Larry Foote says of Troy Polamalu's INT retrun for a TD. (Getty Images)

. ... Reed wasn't that guy Sunday. Part of it, most of it, wasn't his fault. Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger stayed as far away from Reed as possible, limiting his opportunities. That's what quarterbacks usually try to do, of course, but Reed finds a way to make an impact, usually by being where he's not supposed to be -- not where his coaches expect him to be, and definitely not where the opposing quarterback expects him to be.

The Ravens had the ball and plenty of time to get into field-goal range, and a field goal is all they needed. They trailed 16-14, and Joe Flacco -- who had a bad day but had just completed a 20-yard pass to Todd Heap -- was trying to move them down the field. But on third-and-13 from the Baltimore 29, Polamalu stepped in front of Flacco's high fastball for Derrick Mason. Polamalu ran straight ahead toward the end zone, thought better of it, changed direction and followed a convoy of blockers until pushing past a Ravens offensive lineman into the end zone.

How did Polamalu describe his return?

"I was just running for my life," he said.

Great guy, but awful quote. That's why you go to one of his teammates, like linebacker Larry Foote, for a better comment. And Foote provided a doozy.

"That play is going to go down in history," Foote said. "You'll see the Immaculate Reception (by Franco Harris in the 1972 playoffs), and you'll see the Troy Polamalu interception."

Oh, and there's something else you need to know about the Polamalu interception. It won the game, yes, but it put the Steelers into the Super Bowl. Which Super Bowl? Super Bowl XLIII.

If you don't know your Roman numerals, check out the back of Polamalu's jersey.

That's Super Bowl 43.

And links to more good ones....