The difference between the Steelers today and the Steelers of a month ago? Health. Specifically that of Willie Parker, who rushed 27 times for 146 yards, who outran the Chargers 146-15, and who will be the best running back on the field Sunday when the Steelers play in the AFC Championship game.

Last two Steelers games: Parker, 50 carries for 262 yards (5.3 per rush). And if you watched how offensive coordinator Bruce Arians called this game, you got a good view of how he'll try to call the championship game. The Steelers ran Parker on 11 of the first 18 offensive snaps of the second half. "I'm finally finding my niche and getting back healthy and back 100 percent and back doing stuff I've been used to doing,'' Parker said after the game. That's how they put up 35 points on a hot San Diego team Sunday at Heinz Field. Add the deep-strike capability Pittsburgh has now in Santonio Holmes and the downfield accuracy of Ben Roethlisberger, who just missed on a couple of long fingertippers, and the Steelers look like the best team in football right now.

• Two rules will get looked at by the Competition Committee beginning next month: whether to enhance what happens when the play clock gets to zero, and the overtime rule.

Talking to league people in the know over the past few days -- and this weekend, in the wake of the Saturday play-clock debacle the Ravens-Titans game -- it's clear these things will get an airing by the rules-making body. And not just because Tennessee coach Jeff Fisher got victimized by the play-clock going to zero, the officials not calling a delay-of-game penalty, and the Ravens completing a crucial 23-yard third-down pass that led to the winning field goal.

The consensus is it's unlikely anything will be done to add another electronics layer to the game, like a buzzer signifying the clock has expired. It's more likely the official in charge of making the call, the back judge, is going to be told he should anticipate the clock expiring and be ready to make the call as soon as it hits zero. It's absurd that Robert Lawing wasn't in position to blow his whistle sometime during the full second (at least) between the time of the expiration and the time Baltimore snapped the ball.

Now for overtime. One Competition Committee member told me that as soon as there is sufficient evidence that the current system might be outmoded, and giving too much of an advantage to the team that won the coin flip to start overtime, they may open up discussion about a new system that would be more equitable and not as influenced by the coin flip to start overtime.

Here's some evidence, which Jim Nantz of CBS -- a proponent to change the rules to give both teams at least one possession in overtime -- was kind enough to assist with:

• In 1974, when the overtime rule was put in place, teams kicked off from the 40-yard line, making touchbacks -- and thus starting drives from the 20-yard line -- easier to achieve. Today, the average drive start is the 27, in part because the kickoff has been pushed back to the 30-yard line.

• Kickers have become so much more accurate in recent years, and that's impacting the end of overtime games far more than in the early days of the system. From 1974-78, the first five years of the overtime system, field-goal kickers made a combined 62 percent of their kicks. Four teams in 1974 were under 50 percent in field-goal accuracy. In the last five years, kickers have made 82 percent of their field-goal attempts. Quite simply, the game has changed.

In the mid-70s, if a team got the ball to start an overtime drive at its 25, it would have to drive about 55 yards to be in comfortable field-goal range, just inside the 40. Today, if a team gets the ball at the average-drive starting point of the 27, driving 43 yards would give it about a 48-yard field goal attempt ... easily within range of every kicker in the league.

• In the first five years of the system, there were 34 overtime games. The team that won the coin flip to start overtime won 15 of those games -- just 44 percent of the games. In the last five years, there have been 72 overtime games, and the team that won the coin flip won 44 of the games, which is 61 percent. Moreover, 28 of the 72 games ended on the first possession.

So in the past five years, 39 percent of the games ended with only one team getting the ball. "I call those 'top-of-the-10th' victories,'' Nantz said. "If four out of 10 games in overtime end with one offense never getting a chance to touch the ball in overtime, it's a grossly unfair system.''

Add to that the fact that 61 percent of the games in the past five years ended with the coin-flip winner winning the game sometime in overtime, and you've got a good reason to at least entertain the thought of opening up overtime to this simple solution: On the second possession of overtime, once the opposing team fields a punt or kickoff, the game is now in sudden death.

I agree. The league has to do something about the inequity of overtime.

The Fine Fifteen

1. Pittsburgh (13-4). Most anticipated championship games of this decade: 1. Indy-New England, 2006; 2. Pittsburgh-New England, 2004; 3. Giants-Green Bay, 2007; 4. Pittsburgh-Baltimore, 2008; 5. New England-Indy, 2003. Next week's Steelers-Ravens matchup won't have the shiniest records, but it will have more intensity than any of the other four championship games on the list-- and that is saying something.