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Want to get a cheat sheet for the Super Bowl, here are a couple of plays to watch for on Sunday.

Blocking Steelers outside linebackers James Harrison or LaMarr Woodley is a tough job for any offensive tackle, but thanks to a new blitz that Dick LeBeau has dreamed up, sometimes a tackle has to worry about both of them at the same time.

LeBeau is a defensive genius who is always drawing up new looks in an attempt to spread confusion among offensive linemen. And nothing is more confusing than trying to figure out the Steelers outside linebacker overload as the play clock runs down.

TAMPA, Fla. -- A doctor told Aaron Smith the words "acute lymphoblastic leukemia," and he didn't know what they meant.

Smith, a Pittsburgh Steelers defensive end, had taken his 4-year-old son Elijah to the emergency room one night in October because he was suffering from a fever. Parents often fear the worst when their children are sick, but the news Smith got was even worse than he could have imagined, because he had never heard of acute lymphoblastic leukemia until he was told that Elijah had it.

Every time you rewatch the Steelers-Ravens games from earlier this year, it's hard to not get even more excited about Act III.

You have the league's two best defenses facing off, and two offenses that will be trying to prove that they aren't over their head. You'll watch James Harrison try to terrorize Joe Flacco again, while Ed Reed will try to once again turn a game around with an interception.

And after charting every Ravens' offensive play from both games, it's clear that Baltimore is facing an uphill battle. For all the talk about Flacco's amazing success as a rookie, the Ravens finished 28th in the NFL in passing yardage this season, and while most teams have two or three significant receiving threats, Baltimore had only one receiver with more than 700 yards receiving.

But in rewatching the first two Steelers-Ravens games, there are some things Baltimore can take advantage of.

The week before the Steelers-Giants' game, it wasn't clear if Steelers defensive end Aaron Smith would play, although it wasn't clear why. Smith ended up showing up in the Pittsburgh locker room Sunday afternoon, then going out and playing a solid game in the team's 21-14 loss to the Giants. After the game, the rest of the Steelers' team was nearly inconsolable at letting Smith down.

But at the time, it wasn't clear what was going on that led to Smith's absence. Now we know. Smith's five-year-old son Elijah was diagnosed with leukemia that week. It's been something Smith has been dealing with ever since.

"I swear at that moment I wanted to vomit on the floor," Smith said when he was told the diagnosis. "I didn't know anything about leukemia. I just knew it was something bad. It was a death sentence as far as I knew."

If there can be good news attached to the word leukemia, it is that Elijah's form is a very treatable form. He's been undergoing chemotheraphy and steroid treatments that have been going well.

But it does make Smith's solid play even more amazing, as he's been dealing with one of the toughest things any parent could have to deal with, but he just keeps rolling along.

Every week we take at look at some aspect of line play in the NFL. Check back every Thursday for a new Between The Lines.

When the Steelers shut down Brandon Jacobs and the Giants' running game, it was a pretty clear sign that Pittsburgh had fixed the run defense problems that cropped up late last season. But when the Steelers followed that up by shutting down NFL leading rusher Clinton Portis, they showed that they can take the game's best running backs and shut them down.

Portis came into the game having rushed for at least 120 yards and averaging at least 5.0 yards per carry in each of his past five games. On Monday night, Portis rushed for 51 yards on 13 carries, averaging only 3.9 yards per carry. He had a 22-yard run on his third run of the game, then rushed for only 27 yards on his final 10 carries.

So how do the Steelers do it? In re-watching how the Steelers slowed down Portis, the first thing that jumps out is that the Steelers focus more on shutting down the run than most teams. The cornerbacks are coached to fly up in run support, strong safety Troy Polamalu is as much of a linebacker as a defensive back, and the four starting linebackers are all strong enough to shed blockers on plays run at them, but also fast enough to track down plays run away from them.

Despite going in to the week optimistic that he'd play, turns out that Steelers' running back Willie Parker will miss Sunday's showdown with the Giants.

Parker, who has missed the past three games with a sprained medial collateral ligament in his left knee, went through an entire practice Wednesday with the intention of returning against the Giants. But, when his knee began bothering him again, he was limited in practice Thursday and stood on the sideline yesterday in the final full workout of the week.

Parker is among four starters that won't play on Sunday. The Steelers benched wide receiver Santonio Holmes after police found some hippie lettuce on him earlier in the week. Left tackle Marvel Smith (back) and defensive end Aaron Smith (personal reasons) are also expected to miss the Giants game.

Parker's and Holmes' replacements have held their own over the past couple of weeks. Running back Mewelde Moore has rushed for 219 yards and three touchdowns over the past two weeks. Nate Washington caught a 50-yard TD pass just a week after netting a 48-yard touchdown.

Before the season there were two big concerns for most Steelers fans: could the offensive line keep Ben Roethlisberger alive and would the team's lack of depth on the defensive line come back to haunt it?

Well, we're three weeks into the season and Roethlisberger has had knee, shoulder and hand injuries thanks to 12 sacks and there's a pretty good chance the Steelers will take the field on Sunday with two of the three starting defensive linemen in street clothes.

There was no update on Monday, but when Casey Hampton limped off the field with a groin injury on Sunday, it led the coaching staff to speculate that he'll miss at least a few weeks. Brett Keisel is already out for a month or more with a calf injury which means Aaron Smith is all of a sudden the only healthy defensive line starter.

For a position with an awful lot of talent, Steelers fans sure are worried about the defensive line. There's a good reason to be worried, as we all saw how things fell apart the minute Aaron Smith went down with a bicep tear late in the season. Despite that, Pittsburgh has made no appreciable moves to fix the team's lack of depth. It re-signed Nick Eason as the team's No. 4 defensive end and didn't draft any defensive linemen.

But the Steelers players sure don't seem that worried, according to a story in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

"They have faith in the guys that we have -- the older guys," Smith said. "(We're) very capable."

While Smith may have been the guy who went down last year. I think that Casey Hampton is the player we all need to be worrying more about. Hampton, a four-time Pro Bowler, carries a lot of weight on his 6-foot-1 frame. While he's been very durable, Steelers fans have seen how the end can come quickly for a nose tackle. Joel Steed, Hampton's predecessor, was a Pro Bowler as a 28-year-old. Three years later he was out of the league, as his knees gave out.

The Tribune-Review reports today that Aaron Smith's recovery from his torn bicep is going well and he should be at full speed for training camp. As we saw late last year, Smith is one of the more important members of the Steelers defense. As soon as he got hurt, the usually stout run defense fell apart.

But even with Smith coming back to health, Pittsburgh needs to find another defensive end it can depend on (and hopefully one who will slide Travis Kirschke into a more limited role). With very little room left under the salary cap, that will probably have to come out of the draft. Unfortunately, this year doesn't look like a great one for 3-4 defensive ends. Potential first-rounder Kentwan Balmer would fit as a 3-4 end, but he's a scary profile as a guy who has taken plays off in the past. And with the needs on the offensive line, Pittsburgh is more likely to be searching for a later-round find.

At one point that worked out great for Pittsburgh. Smith was a 1999 fourth-rounder, and Brett Keisel, the other starter, was a 2002 seventh-rounder. Unfortunately since then Pittsburgh has been shut out at finding a late-round project who they can turn into a solid defensive end. It's not for lack of trying. Pittsburgh took Eric Taylor (seventh round) in 2004, Shaun Nua (seventh round) in 2005, Orien Harris (fourth round) in 2006 and Ryan McBean (fourth round) in 2007. Only McBean is still on the roster, and that's after being waived once and brought back off the practice squad.

After going 0 for its last 4, hopefully Pittsburgh will have better luck this year, but it's also a sign that it may be time to spend a first-day pick on a defensive end.

To try to get a feeling for what's going wrong with the Steelers run defense, I went back and looked at several of the plays where the Ravens second and third-string tailbacks gashed Pittsburgh for big gains. Here's what I saw.

It's first and 10 for the Ravens at the Steelers 32-yard line. The Ravens line up in a standard I-formation, with a tight end lined up on the left side of the line. The Steelers are in their usual 3-4, but safety Tyrone Carter walks up to give the team an eighth man in the box. If the Ravens run the ball, the Steelers should be ready.

At the snap, the Ravens don't worry about deception. It's a standard off-tackle run to the left side of the Ravens line. It's just a matter of who wins the individual battles that will determine whether it's stuffed or turns into a big gain.