 Three Rivers Stadium, the site of the game | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Date | January 14, 1996 | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Stadium | Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | ||||||||||||||||||
| Favorite | Steelers by 11 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Referee | Bernie Kukar | ||||||||||||||||||
| Attendance | 61,062 | ||||||||||||||||||
| TV in the United States | |||||||||||||||||||
| Network | NBC | ||||||||||||||||||
| Announcers | Dick Enberg, Phil Simms, and Paul Maguire | ||||||||||||||||||
The 1995 AFC Championship Game was the championship game for the American Football Conference (AFC) for the 1995 season.[1][2][3] The game was played on January 14, 1996, at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers, who hosted the Indianapolis Colts for the chance to play the winner of the National Football Conference (NFC) in Super Bowl XXX in Tempe, Arizona.
While it was considered a mismatch between an expected Super Bowl contender (Pittsburgh) and a Cinderella team (Indianapolis) in the week leading up to the game, it turned out to be very competitive, going down to the last play of the game when Colts quarterback Jim Harbaugh threw a Hail Mary pass that was ruled a dropped pass by officials in the end zone by the intended receiver, Aaron Bailey. The dropped pass gave the Steelers a 20–16 victory and sent them to Super Bowl XXX, the team's first Super Bowl appearance since Super Bowl XIV sixteen years earlier.
The game would mark a turning point for both franchises. For Steelers head coach Bill Cowher, it would be the first of only two times the Steelers would advance to the Super Bowl during his 15-year tenure at home, as the team would host the AFC Championship Game five times between 1994 and 2004 but would lose all but one of them, this game being the one exception; they would win the game on the road in 2005, and eventually Super Bowl XL, as the NFL champion for the 2005 season. For the Colts, it marked an unexpected period of success in the mid-1990s for a franchise that otherwise struggled between its 1984 move to Indianapolis (as well as the team's last few years in Baltimore before that) and the team drafting Peyton Manning with the number one overall pick in the 1998 NFL draft.
The game has been ranked among the best Conference Championship games in the history of the National Football League by several publications, including Sports Illustrated,[4] ESPN,[5] AOL,[6] and several local publications throughout the United States.[7] NFL Films would go on to feature the game in both its ongoing NFL Films Game of the Week and NFL's Greatest Games series.
- ^ "AFC Championship - Indianapolis Colts at Pittsburgh Steelers - January 14th, 1996". Pro-Football-Reference.com.
- ^ Top 5 Hail Mary Plays: 1995 Colts vs. Steelers - NFL Videos. NFL.com. Retrieved January 24, 2015.
- ^ Doyle, Gregg (January 5, 2015). "Colts saw the great Harbaugh, not the grating one". IndyStar.com. Retrieved January 24, 2015.
There was the 1995 AFC championship game against the Steelers in Pittsburgh, when the Colts trailed 20–16 in the final minutes
- ^ "Most Popular". CNN. Archived from the original on January 27, 2010.
- ^ "NFL's Greatest Games - 1995 AFC Championship: Indianapolis Colts at Pittsburgh Steelers - Friday, Jan 15, 2010 - mReplay Livedash TV Transcript - Livedash - Search what is being mentioned across national TV". www.livedash.com. Archived from the original on September 11, 2012. Retrieved June 6, 2022.
- ^ "Cowher's Greatest Games: No. 2, 1995 Season Steelers-Colts AFC Championship". www.aolnews.com. Archived from the original on July 18, 2012. Retrieved June 6, 2022.
- ^ "Steelers' best/Worst moments in AFC title games - AltoonaMirror.com - Altoona, PA | News, Sports, Jobs, Community Information - the Altoona Mirror". Archived from the original on January 24, 2011. Retrieved December 30, 2011.