PITTSBURGH — Tough and mean, like the original Steel Curtain.

These Pittsburgh Steelers delivered too many hard hits and their quarterback was steady enough to outplay the kid and the rest of the Baltimore Ravens.

With Troy Polamalu ending any chance Baltimore had for a comeback with a 40-yard interception return, the Steelers bullied their rivals, 23-14, yesterday to reach their seventh Super Bowl.

"It was a typical, hard-hitting, physical game. It's the way every Baltimore-Pittsburgh game is," said Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward, who missed most of the game with a knee injury. "Sometimes guys get hit so hard, you don't know if they're going to get up. They say defense wins championships, well, we have the No. 1 defense. And they're the reason why we're really going to the Super Bowl."

Next, Ben Roethlisberger and Pittsburgh will play the Arizona Cardinals, Feb. 1, in Tampa.

After beating Baltimore for the third time, the Steelers set up an intriguing matchup — Mike Tomlin vs. the Cardinals' Ken Whisenhunt, the offensive coordinator when the Steelers won the Super Bowl three seasons ago who went to Arizona after being passed over for the Pittsburgh job.

Whisenhunt and his top assistant, Russ Grimm, left after the Steelers unexpectedly hired Tomlin, who has done something even Chuck Noll and Bill Cowher couldn't do by taking Pittsburgh to the Super Bowl in his second season.

The Steelers harassed Joe Flacco all game long as he tried to become the first rookie quarterback to take a team to the Super Bowl. Normally unflappable, he looked lost at times and finished 13-for-30 for 141 yards and three interceptions.

Instead, Pittsburgh ended its home-field jinx in AFC championship games.

"It's always that way," said Roethlisberger, who took a vicious shot to his shoulder in the first half. "This is always a 12-round slugfest. We always go at it. It's always violent from start to finish. I was ready when I took a knee at the end, you never know when somebody is going to fire off the ball."

Roethlisberger, picked off four times by New England in his rookie-year AFC title game, was a workmanlike 16-of-33 for 255 yards and, most important, no interceptions. If nothing else, it showed how much experience mattered in a game so significant.

"Here's my advice to the Arizona Cardinals: Don't rush Ben Roethlisberger," the Ravens' Trevor Pryce said. "After that, he's a playground football player. That's what he is, and he's a damn good one."

Roethlisberger would laugh at that analogy — he said the Steelers' big play of the game, a 65-yard touchdown pass to Santonio Holmes that made it 13-0, was an improvised play "just like on the playground."

After Polamalu's twisting, turning run sealed it with 4:39 to play, the game was held up when Willis McGahee, who scored both Baltimore touchdowns, was carted off the field following a frightening hit to the helmet by Pittsburgh safety Ryan Clark.

The Ravens said McGahee had "significant neck pain," but movement in his arms and legs.

Only the Steelers, 49ers and Cowboys have won five Super Bowls, and Pittsburgh can be the first to win six. If the Steelers beat Arizona, the 36-year-old Tomlin would be the youngest coach to win an NFL championship.

"They did it tonight the way we've done it all year," Tomlin said. "We've got a very humble group, a very selfless group."

Earlier in the day, before Whisenhunt knew the outcome of the Steelers-Ravens game, he said he wanted to play Pittsburgh in the Super Bowl.

"I mean, I'm glad we're playing in it, but the reason I'm here is because of my time with Pittsburgh," Whisenhunt said, "and I am very grateful for that."

The Steelers proved it is possible to beat a good team three times in a season, and will now face a team with which they share a history. They were merged as Card-Pitt during World War II in 1944 when the Cardinals were in Chicago and went 0-10, the only winless team in Steelers history.

Steelers owner Dan Rooney recalls them being nicknamed the Car-Pitts "because everybody walked all over us."

Nobody walks over these Steelers, a hard-hitting, tough-guy team with the NFL's best defense, at least statistically, in nearly 20 years. The unit is a worthy descendant of the Steel Curtain teams of the 1970s that virtually defined the way defense is supposed to be played.

They spent the game pressuring Flacco, who was outplayed as badly as Roethlisberger was by the Patriots' Tom Brady in his first AFC title game four years ago, and the mismatch at QB may have made the difference.

Down 16-14, Flacco tried to rally the Ravens in the closing minutes. That's when Polamalu stepped in.

"I think Troy was probably just able to read my eyes," Flacco said. "I think he was just able to jump over there, read a little bit and he made a nice play."

Said Roethlisberger: "He went against the No. 1 defense in the world."

Ravens teammate Terrell Suggs said, "I don't think he struggled. They just made plays. When you got a defense that can make plays like that, I don't think he was placing the ball where he wanted to but this was just their night."

Still, Roethlisberger cautioned, "You can't make mistakes and win a big game."

Maybe it helped that the two athletes largely responsible for Pittsburgh's last two major sports championships — former Steelers running back Jerome Bettis and Penguins co-owner and Hall of Famer Mario Lemieux — were among the record crowd of 65,350 in Heinz Field.

The franchise, for all of the success it has enjoyed while playing in a record-tying 14 AFC title games, had lost an unprecedented four of its five most recent conference championship games in Pittsburgh. The run of losses almost made the Steelers glad to go on the road for the entire Super Bowl run-up to their last title.

The Ravens and Steelers own the NFL's nastiest ongoing rivalry. This game was expected to be low-scoring, physical and tense and it was, especially after Baltimore came back from an early 13-0 deficit to get to within 16-14 on McGahee's second short touchdown run of the game, a 1-yarder with 9:32 remaining.

"We were up 13-0 and then we're up 13-7 then we're up 13-whatever, it was like, 'Man, this game is going slow,' " the Steelers' Deshea Townsend said. "But then Troy steps up and makes a huge play and kind of seals the game for us."

Another such play — Roethlisberger's 45-yard completion to Hines Ward on third-and-12 — led to the first of Jeff Reed's three field goals, a 34-yarder, in the first quarter.

On the Ravens' second possession, Flacco made the kind of mistake he didn't make in playoff wins over the Dolphins and top-seeded Titans, throwing the ball into the hands of nickel back Townsend for the rookie's first interception in 98 passes. Ward kept the ensuing Steelers drive going with an 11-yard catch on third-and-10, leading to Reed's 42-yard field goal.

Now, the Steelers can't wait to see some old friends.

"We got our old coaches. We all won a Super Bowl here with the Steelers together," linebacker James Farrior said. "I'm sure they're going to be coming after us to get this one."