By ARNIE STAPLETON

| The Associated Press

Denver • Champ Bailey had the interception in his grasp and the end zone in his sights as Hines Ward began to fall and the fluttering football hung in the air along with the fortunes of two of the NFL’s most storied franchises.

Ward somehow came down with the deflected pass from Ben Roethlisberger, holding on despite a jaw-jarring hit from John Lynch. Bailey pounded the ground with his fist in disgust and the Pittsburgh Steelers commenced with their 34-17 dismantling of the Denver Broncos in the AFC title game following the 2005 season.

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That watershed afternoon of Jan. 22, 2006, sent the Steelers and Broncos on divergent paths, and they meet again Sunday in an AFC wild-card game at Sports Authority Field in snowy Denver.

"That game catapulted us to a Super Bowl victory," Pittsburgh defensive end Brett Keisel said.

It sent the Broncos on a nosedive that would take them through three coaches, four quarterbacks, six defensive coordinators and a whole lot of misery before returning to the playoffs this year.

The Steelers are 69-35 since that fateful contest, winning two titles and narrowly missing a third in a 31-25 loss to Green Bay in last year’s Super Bowl, rivaling their run in the 1970s.

The Broncos have gone 44-52 with just one winning season and no playoff appearances.

"You can look at the direction we both headed after that. They went up, we went down," Bailey said. "We haven’t been back, they’ve won two since then. It’s funny how it played out. But that was then, this is now. We have a chance to turn things around here and that’s what we expect to do this weekend."

The Broncos, who won the middling AFC West at 8-8, host the heavily favored Steelers (12-4), who lost the AFC North on a tiebreaker to Baltimore, on what’s expected to be a snowy Sunday afternoon in Denver.

Memories of the pivotal ‘05 conference championship are fresh in the minds of the 16 Steelers and two Broncos — Bailey and linebacker D.J. Williams — who are still on their respective rosters.

"We started getting hot in the playoffs, wasn’t nobody that was going to stop us," Steelers linebacker Larry Foote recounted. "When we beat Indy, it didn’t matter who we were going to play, we were going to get to the Super Bowl. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Bailey laments his lost shot at a Super Bowl that has eluded him throughout his stellar 13-year career that includes 11 Pro Bowls, a record for cornerbacks.

"I remember it, but at the same time, it’s a new day. That was a long time ago," Bailey said. "We’re just trying to move on from here and see what we can do with this team."

Lynch has long since retired, so he has no chance to assuage the anguish of that afternoon six years ago. Now an analyst for Fox Sports, he said he still looks back on that lost opportunity more than he does on the Super Bowl title he did win.

Early in the game the crowd was going crazy.

"I remember a big third down, it appeared right when Ben threw it that Champ was going to the house," Lynch recalled. "Hines Ward made a great play to get his hands on the ball. The ball was hanging up there in slow-motion, and I knew what a competitor and tough player Hines was, but I was sure I was going to knock the ball out. And I put a lick on him like all licks. He got up smiling at me, first down. He also stuck his knee right up my quad, so I was gimpy the rest of the game, I could barely run."

The Broncos would never lead and three hours later, they trudged off the field heads down while the Steelers celebrated their return to dominance.