This was the night Jim Zorn found out his team is not yet ornery enough to even think about wresting the Giants from their throne, the night a national television audience and their NFL peers watching at home saw the truth:

In the most malicious-hitting affair of their season, a game that had all the violent properties of a Tennessee-Baltimore cage match, Zorn's players were forced to submit to a more physically menacing crew, one that grew angrier and more aggressive until Jason Campbell and his teammates were all but knocked out.

Steel-City Ruffians 23, Washington's Wannabe Tough Guys 6.

This was humbling for the very reason that their 6-2 sprint out of the blocks was so inspiring — no one saw this coming, this virtual beat-down at the hands of the second-best team in the AFC after the Titans.

If anyone thought Washington's surprising start was due solely to Zorn's brilliant play-calling, Clinton Portis' numbers or Campbell's touch, they missed snapshots of the roundhouse rights traded between the Steelers, who practically invented strap-it-up-and-hit-somebody culture in pro football, and the Redskins, who thought they knew what winning nasty was until they ran into Pittsburgh.

Campbell went down seven times, never more painfully than when Steelers linebacker LaMarr Woodley wrapped up the quarterback and body-slammed him to the ground — a defining play that had to remind some of the Steelers faithful of a similar moment. Woodley threw Campbell to the ground with the same kind of force a guy named Joe "Turkey" Jones once slammed Terry Bradshaw to the ground, a sack that ended Bradshaw's season in 1976.

Campbell got up, but he was never steady again. Intercepted for the first time this season, outshined by Byron Leftwich, a former phenom now reduced to the role of journeyman, it was about as humbling a night all around as Zorn's team could possibly imagine.

The hard part to digest for Washington was that this was the kind of scrap it believed it could win, the kind of game that it played better than Dallas and Philadelphia in impressive road wins that first month. After the Steelers went up 23-6 early in the fourth quarter, how long ago those impressive victories seemed.

See, underneath the phalanx of aching bodies strapped with ice packs at Redskins' Park Tuesday — with the healing needed after Monday night's whupping, never has a bye week come at a more opportune time — was the realization that this team isn't there yet.

A victory would have put the Redskins in elite company, among the handful of teams that have already shown the mettle more than halfway through the season to make it to Tampa in February. Today there are four — the Giants and Carolina in the NFC and the Titans and the Steelers in the AFC, none of whom has more than two losses. Tampa Bay and Philadelphia might have the chops to join that group, but after last night Washington has to be removed from the conversation until it proves it can withstand the kind of defensive assault the Steelers threw at them.

Points and big plays were at such a premium. Ben Roethlisberger felt pain, too. He was sacked three times before leaving the game with an injury.

The game was an eyesore offensively, the kind of television that probably makes Monday Night Football producers cringe. On the surface, with a nation watching and so many decisions made about the Pro Bowl on this very kind of telecast, this might have been the perfect time slot to showcase Santana Moss bolting on a fly pattern and Portis cutting back toward daylight.

But winning in the NFL when the weather begins to turn has nothing to do with ratings or eye-candy highlights. The Giants proved that last winter, showing they had more grit and tenacity than Dallas, Green Bay or New England, showing that popping another team in the mouth is more effective than all the days spent piling up 400 yards of Fantasy League offense.

Look at the Cowboys today. They lose their No. 1 skill player and have no identity, no chance of becoming a bona fide contender again. They wear silver like the Tin Man wore silver, walking around aimlessly, looking for heart.

The Steelers, meanwhile, get beat up by the Giants a week ago, weather all kind of physical ailments and manage to bump helmets with another good team on Monday night and win convincingly. Their offense is nothing to write Lynn Swann about.

Before kickoff even, Monday night had the ambience of a high school game, replete with vociferous boos when the visiting team took the field. As the Monday Night Football theme music pumped through the stadium's speakers, an energy and spirit consumed FedEx Field, the feeling that their team was a player now, a favorite against even a rough-and-tumble franchise like the Steelers.

And on election eve no less, where the night had a very political feel to it. From Steelers chairman Dan Rooney's Obama pin — he was recently featured at a rally for the Democratic presidential nominee — to Dan Snyder's guest in the Washington owner's box, conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh, it was a night with no gray area.

As Campbell threw his second interception of the game in the waning moments, and thousands of yellow terry-cloth towels waved from the stands, it was all about the black and blue Pittsburgh had served up to Jim Zorn's suddenly fragile team.