Sam Donnellon: Holmes, Steelers give Cardinals a taste of their own medicine

TAMPA - This is how it feels, Arizona. This is what happens when your improbable, exhausting comeback is completed with too much time left on the clock, when you allow those you have done unto to do unto you.

This is how it feels, Arizona, when the other guys have an out-of-this-world receiver as talented as your out-of-this-world receiver. This is how it feels when a team you had put a sleeper hold on for most of the second half suddenly remembers how it played to get to this point.

Pittsburgh 27, Arizona 23. Tell me Super Bowl XLIII didn't look familiar, people, didn't feel familiar, didn't give you a little unwanted deja vu from that NFC Championship Game the Eagles had won, then lost in Glendale 2 weeks ago.

Tell me, as much as you might not have wanted to see your AFC Pennsylvania neighbors hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy, you didn't get a certain amount of satisfaction watching Larry Fitzgerald utter, "Oh, no," as Super Bowl MVP Santonio Holmes reached high and wide for Ben Roethlisberger's 6-yard end-zone prayer with 35 seconds left, stretched like an action figure - like Larry Fitzgerald,

really - and pulled down his ninth catch of the game, and his most important one.

"My feet never left the ground," Holmes said. "All I did was extend my arms and use my toes as an extra extension to catch up to the ball."

So much has been written about Fitzgerald over the last month, and deservedly so. But Holmes had been almost as good, almost as important in getting the Steelers to this point as Fitzgerald has been to his team.

"Santonio is a guy who just loves to deliver in big games," Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin was saying in the glow of the winning celebration. "What he's done for us tonight is what he's done for us in the postseason, what he did for us against Baltimore.

"In big moments, we know what we can get from him."

Yeah, OK. Then how come an easier pass, thrown on the previous play, sailed right through his hands? The truth is, Holmes got the second chance that players so often do not get, especially in this game, the biggest game. This game is usually about haunting mistakes and unrecoverable errors, and to be sure, the 43rd Super Bowl was a sloppy, penalty-filled affair full of the former.