The '63 Steelers Read online

  Cleveland couldn’t get a first down, so Collins punted to the Steeler 33. Pittsburgh’s running game was plugging away, but Ed Brown was finding his groove on the same field where he had performed so poorly in the exhibition game months after his trade. He hit Dial over the middle for 15 yards, to the Cleveland 38, and after two carries by Ferguson, Brown found his flanker again, for 20 yards to the 16. After an incompletion and an 8-yard loss by Ferguson on a swing pass, Brown fired a 24-yard touchdown pass to Dial. With 8:08 left before the half, the Steelers were up, 13–7, and looking as potent on offense as Cleveland.

  After a fast start, Ryan was struggling in a first half that would see him hit only four of eleven passes. He had no more of a reputation than Ed Brown as a runner, but the Cleveland quarterback kept a 70-yard drive alive with scrambles of 25 and 14 yards while missing on three passes, giving Cleveland a first-and-goal at the 6. “That Ryan should be a halfback,” Parker gushed later.58 Ryan had put on a similar show in midseason of ’62, when he gained 80 yards on nine carries—more than Jim Brown—to salvage a 14–14 tie with the Eagles. As Ryan looked for breakdowns in the Steeler secondary, Joe Krupa and John Baker dumped him for a 9-yard loss. But on second down, Ryan found Collins open for a 15-yard TD that put Cleveland ahead, 14–13, with 2:51 left in the half.

  Ed Brown, “threading the needle all night,” came right back.59 A roughing-the-passer penalty moved the Steelers to the Cleveland 41. After the two-minute warning, Brown hit Dial with a 41-yard touchdown pass to give the Steelers a 20–14 halftime lead. Jim Brown had 73 yards already, but Ed Brown was ten of sixteen for 181 yards, 100 of them by Dial.

  It took only three plays after halftime for Jim Brown to go over the 100-yard mark. On third-and-1 at his 32, Brown erupted on a 49-yard run, going off left tackle and cutting back, breaking a tackle by Keys to reach the Steeler 19. Andy Russell, starting at left linebacker, would remember hitting Brown one time that night and seeing “a bright flash of light” on impact. “In the films you saw him just run over me,” Russell said.

  That hadn’t happened to me too many times where somebody really just flat out ran over me. And I hit him where I was supposed to.

  People ask me, “Who was the best running back you ever played against?” Unquestionably, Jim Brown. One thing about Brown, he could run over you or he could make you miss. He could do both. Most guys can only do one or the other. That’s a rarity. Every time I thought he was going to run over me, he made me miss. And every time I thought he was going to make me miss, he ran over me. How’d he know?60

  On second-and-10 from the 19, Brown ran up the middle, and Russell tackled him after a 6-yard gain. On third-and-4, the brainy QB Ryan darted 13 yards up the middle for a touchdown to put Cleveland on top, 21–20.

  The Steelers took the kickoff and, starting from their 22, hammered away at Cleveland with the speed—and the stubbornness—of a plow horse. Hoak carried eight times on the drive—over left tackle for 7, over right guard for 3, off right tackle for 4. Then he caught a pass for 14 yards, Mack grabbed one over the middle for 13, and Dial nabbed one for 12, with Parrish making the tackle at the 1-yard line.

  Who among the 86,684 dared believe that the Browns could make another goal line stand? On first down, Hoak was stopped by linebacker Mike Lucci, Gain, and end Bill Glass. Then Tom Tracy was stopped by Lucci, Gain, and Kanicki. On third down, Hoak was held to no gain by Costello and Fiss. Parker sent in Michaels to kick his second 8-yard field goal, putting Pittsburgh back on top, 23–21, with 3:46 left in the quarter. It could have been a lead as wide as 31–21, if only the Steelers had a runner to hurtle the Browns’ goal line defense. “I never like to alibi about injuries because all teams have them,” Parker said later. “However, if John Henry Johnson had been available I’m sure we would have had two scores.”61

  Starting from their 25, the Browns were threatening as the third quarter was closing. Jim Brown went 27 yards on a second-down draw play, to Pittsburgh’s 48, and a 27-yard pass to Collins on the next play moved the ball to the 21. But Ryan was thrown for a 10-yard loss by Krupa, and when he rushed out of the pocket on third-and-19, he picked up 15 yards but fumbled. Keys recovered on the 8 as the third quarter ended.

  It was an unsung second-year defensive back who gave the Browns a lift in the fourth quarter. Bogged down at his 30, Ed Brown got off a 55-yard punt on which Jim Shorter made a “dazzling” 52-yard return to the Steeler 34.62 On second-and-10 from the 20, Ryan hit Collins in the end zone to give Cleveland a 28–23 lead. There were still twelve minutes left, however, and Ed Brown was hot.

  The Steeler quarterback kept firing away. On third-and-11 from his 24, he hit Hoak for 12 yards to the 36. Hoak lost 4 yards on a sweep but Brown found Dial on a hook on the right side for 15 yards to the 47. From the Cleveland 43, Brown hit Mack for 16 yards to the 27. After Ferguson gained 1 yard and Brown threw two incompletions, Michaels tried a 32-yard field goal. It went wide left.

  The ball was placed at the 20, which was then the procedure after a missed field goal, with 7:33 left in the game. The Browns were penalized for holding, and Krupa tackled Ryan for a 2-yard loss on third down, leaving Cleveland with fourth-and-13 at the 17. The Steelers were figuring on getting good field position, around midfield with even a modest return, but Collins, who came into the game averaging only 38 yards a punt, boomed a 73-yarder. With a clipping penalty added on, Pittsburgh was backed up to its 10, and about 80,000 people could predict what Ed Brown had to do. Fiss intercepted Brown on second down, setting up a Ryan 19-yard TD pass to Rich Kreitling to make the final 35–23, Browns, in “one of their greatest performances,” a Cleveland sportswriter wrote.63

  The 4–0 Browns remained alone in first place in the Eastern Conference, and the Steelers would slip behind the Giants and Cards, both of whom would win the next day and wind up tied for second place. Jim Brown chewed up the Steelers for 175 yards on twenty-one carries, but Ryan shared the credit for Cleveland scoring more points than Pittsburgh had allowed in three previous games combined.

  Parker took the loss with uncharacteristic calm. Not having Johnson was too big of a disadvantage, he reasoned, without making excuses. “Had we had him, it might have been a different ball game,” the coach said.64 What cheered Parker up was the emergence of Ed Brown as a quarterback who could rally the Steelers time after time. With a running game that totaled only 97 yards—and only 37 on twelve carries by Johnson’s fill-in, Ferguson—Ed Brown finished eighteen of thirty-five for 289 yards—nearly twice the yardage of “the mental marvel” on the other side of the field.65

  The Steeler quarterback, Jimmy Brown said, “turned up throwing like a Sammy Baugh. ‘Is this guy ever going to miss?’ we asked ourselves.”66 Parker was uncommonly effusive in his praise for his quarterback. “That was as fine an exhibition of passing as I’ve seen in pro ball,” the coach raved. “Anything less than a great game wouldn’t have overcome passing like that.”67

  In one night, Ed Brown appeared to have erased whatever doubts had troubled Parker about his quarterback situation and seemed to justify the coach’s decision to coax Layne into retirement. Brown’s effort not only reassured Parker but gave him the confidence to make a bold prediction. “We’ll win it all if we can get our injured boys well,” he said.68

  GAME 5

  VERSUS ST. LOUIS CARDINALS

  AT BUSCH STADIUM

  OCTOBER 13

  Lou Cordileone was the Steeler who had earned the distinction of being traded for a future Hall of Fame quarterback, Y. A. Tittle. But it was Clendon Thomas, a former All-America running back, who wound up in Pittsburgh in a trade for Tarzan.

  Thomas was a two-way star at Oklahoma who led the nation in scoring in 1956 and played in only one losing game in college—the loss to Notre Dame that snapped the Sooners’ forty-seven-game winning streak under Bud Wilkinson. Thomas, “the intense young man … who typifies the Oklahoma spirit,” was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated that week in 1957, under the headline “Why Oklah
oma Is Unbeatable,” days before the Irish ended the streak.

  Back in high school in Oklahoma City, growing up in a community of oil-field workers, Thomas seemed about as likely to grow up to be Tarzan as become an All-America football player. As a freshman, he was six foot two, 155 pounds—“just a beanpole,” he recalled—at Southeast High, which won only two games in Thomas’s three varsity years and once got beat 82–6.1 He was all-state in football, but lightly recruited, although Wilkinson himself paid a visit to the Thomas home. When he wound up a Sooner, Thomas started out on the fifth unit. “I guess they didn’t really want me here an awful lot,” he said with a smile during his senior year.2

  The industrial city of Pittsburgh, with its steel mills and factories, seemed a world apart, but the plains of Oklahoma molded the same work ethic and outlook in Thomas and other kids. “For the hardy, lean and tough people who inhabit this country … football is a perfect expression of their way of life—hit harder than you are hit, don’t cry when you are hurt, win,” Tex Maule wrote.3 Said Thomas: “There were some rough ol’ boys in those days, but there always are.”4

  Thomas, the son of an oil-field worker who also starred as a pitcher in an industrial league, could more than hold his own. After those losing seasons in high school, “the gridiron gods … smiled at Thomas.”5 A Pittsburgh sportswriter referred to him as the “one-time All-America glamour-boy halfback … who brought the state of Oklahoma to its feet with his electrifying runs as a Sooner.”6

  Thomas and Tommy McDonald, the “Touchdown Twins,” went on a scoring tear in 1956, a closer race than the home-run chase that Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris would have in 1961. The beanpole had filled out to 188 pounds, and he had speed, power, and good lateral movement. On September 29, 1956, Thomas had a 12-yard touchdown run and an interception as Oklahoma ran its winning streak to thirty-one games with a 36–0 victory over North Carolina. The next week he “couldn’t be stopped” as he ran for three touchdowns and 82 yards in a 66–0 rout of Kansas State.7 The following week, at the Cotton Bowl, the pair “ran almost at will” in a 45–0 decision over Texas, with both players scoring three touchdowns.8 In a 40–0 romp over “poor old Notre Dame” on October 27, Thomas had two touchdowns, one on a 30-yard interception return of a Paul Hornung pass, and McDonald had two interceptions, one of which he ran back 55 yards for a TD.9

  Going into the final game of the schedule, against Oklahoma A&M, the two players were tied with sixteen touchdowns apiece. McDonald, a senior, scored once, and Thomas, a junior, scored twice to win the scoring title with 108 points as Oklahoma won its fortieth straight game, 53–0.

  On November 30, 1957, two weeks after Notre Dame ended its winning streak in a 7–0 game, the Sooners whipped Oklahoma State, 53–6, as Thomas scored two touchdowns and passed for a third. The two TDs gave him nine for the season and thirty-six for his career, a school record. Thomas finished the day with OU records for most yards rushing in three years (2,120) and most points scored (216).10

  Thomas made all-conference in his junior and senior years and was a consensus All-America in his final season. For all his running ability, he was also “a ferocious but clean defender” and “deadly at bringing down rival runners.”11

  The Rams picked Thomas in the second round of the draft, the nineteenth overall selection. He played four years in Los Angeles, starting out on offense before shifting to defensive back. The Steelers had gained notoriety for giving away rich young talent, but the Rams were developing an embarrassing tradition of their own with personnel moves. They sent away not only Cordileone, Lou Michaels, and Charlie Bradshaw but also Browns quarterback Frank Ryan and Giants receiver Del Shofner. Yet another of their peculiar moves was trying to convert a 195-pound All-America halfback into a tight end. “I’m no tight end,” Thomas said.12 Disappointed with the loss of veteran leadership on the Rams and some unrest in the franchise, Thomas was eager for a trade, preferably to Dallas, because he knew the coach, Tom Landry.

  Nearly a continent away, handsome, muscular Mike Henry, a native of Los Angeles and a linebacker with the Steelers, was trying to map out a movie career in 1961. He had a plan to work in California Monday through Friday and then fly to Pittsburgh in time for the Steeler games. “What about practice?” Buddy Parker asked. “What about it?” Henry replied.13

  At the end of the first week of August 1962, Henry announced he was quitting football for a movie career. “Oglin’ Gals Beats Beltin’ Behemoths,” read the headline on the Post-Gazette story. Nearly a month later, after Henry reported late to Steeler camp, Parker swung one more of his deals, swapping a future Tarzan for a future Pro Bowler. Thomas played seven years for the Steelers, picked off fifteen passes in his first two seasons, and made a Pro Bowl appearance. Mike Henry lasted three seasons with the Rams, made three Tarzan movies and appeared in a variety of other films and TV shows, and got a bite from a chimpanzee that required twenty stitches and prompted two lawsuits.14

  Thomas had gotten a fleeting introduction to Pittsburgh in 1957, when he rushed for 86 yards and “bowled over” Panther defensive back and future Steeler Dick Haley on a 13-yard touchdown run that helped Oklahoma gain a season-opening 26–0 win at Pitt Stadium. But, apprehensive about joining what sounded like a bunch of carousers even wilder than the West Coast set, Thomas balked at the trade and went home to Oklahoma. When Steeler assistant Buster Ramsey called Thomas, the ex-Sooner said he wasn’t going to report to Pittsburgh. But Thomas finally relented, and once he got to know his teammates, he found that accounts of the players’ behavior were vastly exaggerated, and he embraced the team, the city, and the Rooney family.15

  Thomas wasn’t as flashy as some runners, but he was as tough as an oil rigger and as disciplined as you would expect a Bud Wilkinson–coached player to be. Even in a 1963 preseason game, he set a high standard, playing flawlessly in the Steelers’ 22–7 win in Detroit on August 30. “Thomas was a tiger in Friday’s victory,” wrote beat writer Pat Livingston. “He had one of those nights when, though he didn’t intercept a pass, he could do nothing wrong. He made tackles behind the line of scrimmage, stripped interference, covered his receivers and generally played a great football game.”16

  Thomas wasn’t a drinker, but he fit right in with a team that played like a band of marauding Vikings and showed about as much mercy. “We had some really exceptionally talented players,” he said.

  We weren’t taking a back seat. That didn’t mean we matched up physically with every team, but with the rules the way they were written in those days, we had a black-and-blue defense. People hated to play us. We literally punished people. And heaven help you if you’d run into the middle of the field. They did not have guts enough to run deep posts into the middle. It wasn’t dirty.

  It wasn’t anything like that. We had a tough football team that hit people. So you intimidated people, and Pittsburgh had that reputation. They would come in and play us, and then they were going to lose next week because we’d beat ’em up so bad.17

  The day after the Browns game, Buddy Parker wasn’t brooding about the loss. Instead, the coach evidenced surprise over St. Louis’s victory that afternoon. “Did you see what the Cardinals did to the Vikings?” he said. The Cardinals romped, 56–14, scoring half their points in the fourth quarter to put them in a tie with the Giants for second place at 3–1. Charley Johnson hit sixteen of twenty-five passes for 301 yards and three touchdowns.18

  The Steelers would be meeting the Cards for the second time in fourteen days, this time at Busch Stadium. Wally Lemm’s squad ranked second in the NFL in team offense and defense, and it had the league leader in pass receptions, Bobby Joe Conrad; the No. 3 rusher, Joe Childress; and the third-ranked passer in Johnson. Even more significantly, the Cardinals were a team that could stand toe to toe and slug it out with the Steelers.

  The Cards had proved they could take a lot of punishment. Defensive tackle Don Owens “played his heart out,” photojournalist Robert Riger wrote, and took “a terrific beating” until t
he final gun of the Cards’ loss at Forbes Field. “The doctor and two trainers led him along the dirt floor of the dark dressing room tunnel, dazed and beaten.”19 The Cards embodied the same combative spirit as the Steelers. Eighth-year linebacker Bill Koman explained: “I take out my hostilities on the field.”20

  The Cards had vented frustration after the loss, criticizing the officiating and pointing out bad breaks. Lemm accused Lou Michaels of “doing some funny things”—throwing punches, grabbing face masks, and piling on.21 The complaining prompted Press writer Pat Livingston to label Lemm’s squad a “ruthless, cry-baby crew of undisciplined frontrunners … the Current Glamour Boys of football,” a title that was customarily accorded the New York Giants. Livingston wrote that the Cards took “a sadistic delight in pouring it on” the Vikings, even calling for an onside kick with a 49–14 lead.22

  Michaels shrugged off the grousing. “They just got hot because we were doing a job on them,” he said.23

  The Cardinals had also gained a confidence that bordered on cockiness. After the loss in Pittsburgh, Johnson was asked if it looked as though the two teams would battle down to the wire for the Eastern crown. “We’ll be in it,” he sniffed. “I don’t know about the Steelers.24 Said Lemm: “We are contenders.”25

  While the players were off Monday, Parker was busy. In what one writer envisioned as “another case of driftwood turning into teakwood,” the coach swung a deal with the Eagles for seldom-used Theron Sapp, the back whose collision with John Reger in the opener KO’d the linebacker. It was a typical Parker move. Sapp had a stellar career in college at Georgia, but he had little track record as a pro. Hampered by a shoulder injury in ’62, he carried the ball only twenty-three times. In ’61, he rushed only seven times. But Parker was confident in his potential and said that he had wanted to land the six-foot-one, 200-pound back since training camp. “I’ve got a hunch he’s going to be a real football player,” Parker said.26