work, completing two passes to Bernard Berrian for 29 yards before finishing the drive with a 1-yard touchdown pass to tight end Desmond Clark. But after an exchange of punts, Delhomme threw a 39-yard touchdown pass to Smith, and the Panthers retook their 9-point lead. Early in the fourth quarter, Chicago's Jason McKie scored a 3-yard touchdown run to cut their deficit to 23–21. But Delhomme led the Panthers right back, completing five passes for 45 yards and scoring with a 1-yard touchdown pass to tight end Kris Mangum. After an exchange of punts, the Bears drove into Carolina territory, but cornerback Ken Lucas put the game away by intercepting a pass from Grossman on the Panthers 22-yard line. This was the first postseason meeting between the Panthers and Bears. Conference Championships This was the first time since the 1989–90 NFL playoffs that neither conference championship game took place in the Eastern or Central time zone. During that season, the Conference Championship Games were changed from the then-traditional starting times of 12:30 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. EST respectively. This was to accommodate the fact that the Denver Broncos and San Francisco 49ers hosted the 1989–90 AFC and NFC Championship Games in the Mountain Time Zone and Pacific Time Zone, respectively — thus avoiding a locally played game at 9:30 a.m. PST/10:30 a.m. MST, but also forcing the networks to change or move their prime time lineups in a moment's notice. When the league changed the traditional starting times for the 2002–03 NFL playoffs to 3 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. EST, it eliminated the future possibility of having to reschedule. Sunday, January 22, 2006 AFC: Pittsburgh Steelers 34, Denver Broncos 17 For the first time since 1984, the Steelers played on the road in the AFC Championship Game, but it hardly mattered as they forced four turnovers and went into halftime with a 24–3 lead en route to advancing to their sixth Super Bowl appearance in team history. In doing so, Pittsburgh became the first #6 playoff seed (since the league expanded to a 12-team playoff format in 1990) to advance to the Super Bowl. Second-year quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, already in his fifth career playoff game, completed 21 of 29 passes for 275 yards and two touchdowns (one each to Cedrick Wilson and Hines Ward) and ran for a third. Steelers running back Jerome Bettis