The '63 Steelers Page 16
John Reger returned to action for the first time since his collision with Sapp in the opener. Willie Daniel, who underwent knee surgery after being injured on the second day of training camp, had made his first start Sunday, and Clendon Thomas was back at safety. Ernie Stautner, who started at right end against the Redskins, had X-rays of his shoulder and ankle taken after being blasted on a block—a clean one—by Vince Promuto.34
“I haven’t been hit like that since 1951,” Stautner said.35 The X-rays were negative, and the veteran vowed to be ready for Dallas. “I heal quickly,” he said.36 Indeed. Trainer Roger McGill, after examining the black-and-blue ankle, was amazed at Stautner’s recuperative powers. “He has to have the highest threshold of pain of anybody I’ve ever seen,” McGill said.37 If Parker used Stautner as a standard to measure John Henry Johnson’s recovery—or any player’s, for that matter—it was an unrealistic comparison.
But questions loomed concerning Lou Michaels. The left defensive end suffered what the club believed to be an allergic reaction to a penicillin shot—“skin eruptions” on his hands and feet—and missed two days of practice. Reserve fullback Tom Tracy resurrected his placekicking skills in practice as Michaels went to Divine Providence Hospital for tests. By Saturday, it appeared that Michaels would be limited to placekicking duties against Dallas.
Only 20,000 were expected to turn out at Forbes Field for the Cowboys, and fans had to wonder whether the Steelers’ era at the fifty-four-year-old landmark was rapidly drawing to a close. NFL teams were beginning to pressure Art Rooney to schedule all Steelers games at Pitt Stadium until the proposed North Side stadium could be built. Over two seasons, games scheduled at Pitt Stadium drew an average of 41,000 fans, while Forbes Field games averaged 21,500 (although two of the games at the university site had promotions for discounts for youths).38 Pitt Stadium was clean and had good sight lines all around the stadium, but Forbes Field had only about 10,000 good seats for viewing a game, Art Rooney Jr. figured. Al Abrams of the Post-Gazette put the number at 8,000. Once the new stadium was constructed, the sports editor predicted, “The Steelers’ advance sale will boom.”39 But for ’63, the team still had three dates left at Forbes Field. “That’s a shitty stadium to watch a game at,” Lou Cordileone said. “The stands were so far away from everything. Pitt was a nice stadium.”40
Only 19,047 turned out for the Cowboys, the smallest crowd of the season, but what they saw was “a bronco-ride all the way.”41 After fifty-six minutes of football, and with only six weeks of the season completed, the Steelers would be left “with defeat, despair and humiliation, not to say anything of practical elimination from the race staring them in the face.”42
What put the Steelers on the brink of erasure from the Eastern Conference race was a masterful performance by the fourth-year QB Meredith. The Cowboys were backed up early in the first quarter when Ed Brown’s 45-yard punt rolled to the Dallas 8-yard line, where Mack downed it. Billy Howton, who had entered his eleventh season on the verge of breaking Don Hutson’s NFL records for total receptions and yards gained, caught passes of 19, 18, and 21 yards to put Dallas on the Steeler 17. Four carries by Don Perkins advanced the ball to the 5, and from there Meredith capped the fifteen-play drive with a touchdown pass to Frank Clarke with 2:27 left in the quarter.
The Steelers couldn’t move the ball, and James Stiger, a rookie halfback from Washington, returned Brown’s punt 45 yards down the sideline to the Steeler 33. On first down the Cowboys were penalized for holding, but Meredith found Clarke for 13 yards to open the second quarter, and on the next play he hit six-foot-five, 220-pound end Lee Folkins with a 35-yard TD pass to make it 14–0.
Brown was no match for Meredith. The Steeler quarterback had thrown only four interceptions in the first six games, but he threw three in the second quarter alone. Brown hooked up with Mack for a 36-yard gain to the Dallas 19, but a sideline throw to Dial was picked off by Cornell Green, a second-year defensive back who had played basketball at Utah State, but not football. Green caught the ball at the 10 and returned it 55 yards to the Steeler 35. Rookie tackle Frank Atkinson dropped Meredith on a rollout for a loss of 5, which Perkins regained. Meredith threw incomplete, giving Sam Baker a shot at a 42-yard field goal, but it went wide left.
If Dallas was going to improve on its ’62 mark, Landry needed his young, inexperienced defensive players to make an immediate impact. Dallas linebacker Jerry Tubbs was a consensus All-America at Oklahoma and winner of the Walter Camp Award as the outstanding college player of the year, but he was in his seventh pro season and aware that he was giving way to young studs like rookie Lee Roy Jordan, an All-America at Alabama. While introducing the sixth overall pick in the ’63 draft during a winter function, Tubbs quipped, “I feel like Eddie Fisher introducing Richard Burton.”43
It didn’t take long for Jordan to establish himself in the league, and he put his skills on display for Pittsburgh. Sapp took a flare pass and raced 22 yards and then picked up another 6 over left tackle to the Dallas 49, but Jordan intercepted a pass for Mack on the 40 and returned it 5 yards.
Defensive end John Baker, six foot six and 270 pounds, sacked Meredith for a loss of 10 yards and then tackled Meredith after a gain of 1 on third down. Sam Baker got off a 51-yard punt, which Dick Haley returned 7 yards to the Steeler 17. Then Brown, undeterred by interceptions on two straight possessions, went for broke: he cut loose and hit Dial at midfield as Green slipped on the coverage. The Steeler receiver cut sharply to the left, and Mack sprinted over to block rookie defensive back Jerry Overton, allowing Dial to scamper for an 83-yard TD. Despite the skin irritations on his hands and feet, Michaels attempted the point after, but it sailed wide left to make the score 14–6 with 5:02 left in the half.
Amos Marsh took Michaels’s kickoff at the 12 and returned it to the 32. Marsh ran off right tackle and came up a foot shy of a first down, and on third down, Meredith slipped around left end for a 25-yard gain to the Steeler 32. On second-and-5, Marsh fumbled a pitchout and John Baker recovered at the 38. With less than two minutes before the half, Hoak took a pass in the flat on third-and-8 from the 40, broke tackles, and went 23 yards to the Dallas 37. On first down, Mack leaped for a pass and brought it down, only to be hit from behind by Mike Gaechter in midair, forcing the ball to pop up and into the arms of Jordan, who returned it 14 yards to the 39.
On second down, Stiger took a screen pass, slipped away from two tacklers, and ran 41 yards before Keys made a diving tackle at the Steeler 20. Landry, in a peculiar move, inserted LeBaron for Meredith, and the thirty-three-year-old QB threw a pass into the end zone for Folkins that Haley picked off. The Steelers were fortunate to be down only 14–6 at the half but once again a missed conversion loomed ominously.
Between turnovers, stalled drives, and punts, Dallas and Pittsburgh combined for ten series in the second quarter. In the third quarter, there were only three, and it looked as if things were only going to get worse for Pittsburgh.
Starting from his 20 after the second-half kickoff, Meredith got the Cowboys moving with a balanced attack. Marsh went over right guard for 10 yards, and Howton added 10 with a catch. Marsh went over left tackle for 13 yards, and on the next play, as Meredith eluded the rush, he hit Marsh for 19 yards, down to the Steeler 21.
Amos Bullocks gained 8 yards, and on second-and-2, Meredith hit Howton crossing over the middle for a 13-yard touchdown to make it 21–6 with 4:42 gone in the quarter. Howton’s catch tied Hutson’s record of 488 career receptions, and two more that day would set a new standard. Meredith was moving on the Steelers at will, while Ed Brown’s offense had shown only one flash of firepower.
But then the first rain in nearly seven weeks began to fall, and umbrellas appeared. “It seemed that signaled the end of the Steelers’ drought, too,” wrote Sam Blair of the Dallas Morning News. Or, as Post-Gazette columnist Al Abrams wrote, “This was where the Steelers finally awoke to the facts of football life.”44
Johnson was back in the starting lineup but
got only four carries in the game, for 10 yards, before Parker pulled him early in the second quarter. Behind Hoak, who would finish with 58 yards on the ground, and Sapp, who would gain 45, the Steelers began a drive from their 34. Hoak cut over right end for 8 yards then left for 7. Dial made a diving catch at the Dallas 31, inches shy of a first down. Sapp picked up the first down and then broke off right tackle for 12 yards to the 18. Brown was dumped for a 7-yard loss, but on third-and-17 from the 25, he hit Dial in the left corner of the end zone to cut the Cowboys’ lead to 21–13, with Tracy, in place of Michaels, making the conversion.
Bullocks returned Michaels’s short kickoff to the 23 and then carried for 12 yards and 11 more, as Dallas reached the Steeler 47. Meredith’s completion to Clarke netted 16 yards to the 28, and Marsh’s run around right end gained 14 yards as the quarter ended. Bullocks lost 3 yards, but a holding call on the Steelers gave Dallas a first down at the 11. Bullocks was tackled for a 2-yard loss, Folkins couldn’t handle a pass in the end zone, and Daniel nearly intercepted a third-down throw. Sam Baker, a capable kicker, came on to attempt a 20-yard field goal but the kick veered wide left with two minutes gone in the fourth quarter. Michaels wasn’t the only kicker having troubles.
Brown’s powerful arm made the Steelers a threat to go deep at any time. More typical of the Steeler offense, though, was a painstaking drive in which they chewed up yardage and time while mixing in short passes and the occasional bomb. On second-and-8 from his 22, Brown heaved a throw that went into and out of Mack’s arms at the Dallas 40. Dial made a leaping catch for a 14-yard gain, and Sapp and Hoak each picked up 6 yards. Preston Carpenter, reliable and sure-handed, picked up 9 on a crossing pattern, short of a first down at the Cowboys’ 43. Brown threw incomplete and Sapp was stopped cold, leaving it up to Sapp to get the first down on fourth-and-1 with a 4-yard run off left tackle.
Brown went back to Mack with a bomb to the end zone, but again it slipped out of the flanker’s hands. The crowd reaction was “almost hostile.”45 A screen to Sapp gained 7 yards, but a sideline throw to Dial for 3 left the Steelers about six inches shy of a first down. Faced with another fourth-down decision, Parker went for it, and Sapp picked up the first down with a 2-yard plunge to the 27. Dial caught a 13-yard pass but slipped and fell, leaving the Steelers at the 14. Brown rifled a pass incomplete to Ballman, and then Hoak juggled a throw in the end zone before it fell to the ground.
On third down at the 14, Brown called on Dial to run a post pattern from the right side. The Dallas Morning News called him “the magical Dial.” The Press referred to him as “that animated gluepot.” He was as clutch a receiver as any in the league.46
“When he came to the pros, he had all the moves, and he had sneaky speed,” Mack said of his teammate years later. “But he ran terrific patterns. That’s why he got open all the time. Plus, terrific hands. He was always prepared. He was a student of the game. He knew the game like Bobby Layne knew the game.”47
Brown drilled a pass over a lunging defender, and Dial caught it inside the 1-yard line and stepped into the end zone to make it 21–20 after Tracy’s conversion, with 8:17 left in the game. It took seventeen plays for the Steelers to march 80 yards.
Bullocks returned Michaels’s kickoff to the 32, but this time Meredith couldn’t move his team. Michaels had rejoined the defense after asking permission from John Best, the team physician, at halftime. Sam Baker punted, and the ball rolled dead at the Pittsburgh 15. There was only 4:16 left, and Pittsburgh “was racing the clock to either victory or oblivion in the gathering gloom,” when “the spindly-shanked” Mack pleaded his case to Brown. “Throw the bomb to me,” he said. “I think I can outrace that guy.”48 That was the guy Mack had blocked on Dial’s first touchdown, Overton, the six-foot-two, 190-pound back from Utah.
Brown’s confidence in Mack wasn’t shaken by the receiver’s trouble holding onto the ball in the previous series. But he wanted Mack to run an outside route, then cut across. “I think I can get there faster on the inside,” Mack replied. He took the inside route and “shot out of the pack like a human bullet.”49
Brown dropped back to the 6-yard line, “wound up and threw and hoped Mack could go out there and get it,” he explained later. This time, the ball sailed to the Dallas 45, with Mack streaking for it. “I thought I had overthrown him,” Brown said. “I didn’t think he would come within 5 yards of the ball.” Mack had his defender beaten by three or four steps on the soggy turf when he caught the pass over his shoulder, tucked it in, and sprinted into the end zone. “I had it all the way,” he said with a smile.50
Afterward, Landry shrugged off the touchdown pass. “Even when everything goes right,” he said, “a team’s only going to hit on a pass like that one time in 10.”51 Michaels kicked the extra point this time, making it 27–21, Steelers.
Meredith still had 3:51 left to work some magic of his own. For all his gifts as a quarterback, Meredith would be burdened with lofty expectations and undermined by some circumstances beyond his control. Two years later, Dallas would trail the Browns, 24–17, in a late-fall game and have first-and-goal at the Cleveland 1, where Meredith threw for Frank Clarke in the end zone. Linebacker Vince Costello intercepted, before 76,251 fans, and the Browns held on for the victory. Gary Cartwright’s story in the next day’s Dallas Morning News read: “Outlined against a gray November sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. You know them: Pestilence, Death, Famine, and Meredith.”52 Meredith was a target of the media as much as of defensive linemen, but his teammates never questioned his guts, willingness to absorb pain, or desire to win. The same fates that had bedeviled the Steelers for years appeared to have descended on Meredith.
But the former SMU star was still looking sharp in the rain. He hit Howton with two consecutive passes for 11 yards each time, the second one a leaping grab that put Dallas on its 47. Working out of the shotgun, Meredith fumbled when he was hit by Michaels, but offensive tackle Ed Nutting recovered for a loss of 9 yards as the clock stopped for the two-minute warning.
On second-and-19, Meredith was hit as he threw, but he completed a 34-yard pass to Clarke, down to the Steeler 28. It was the same spot from which Charley Johnson had thrown the winning touchdown pass to Bobby Joe Conrad two weeks earlier. On first down, Meredith hit Clarke crossing over the middle for 9 yards, leaving the Cowboys about a foot shy of a first down at the 18. On second down, he aimed for Norman, but the second-year end dropped the ball at the 2 as he was hit by Haley and rookie Jim Bradshaw. On third down, Meredith didn’t settle for running for the first down; instead, he threw for Clarke, who had drawn two defenders, in the right corner of the end zone. After twisting his leg, Clendon Thomas was out, just as he had been missing on the Cardinals’ game-winning drive. Bradshaw, the ex-quarterback from Chattanooga, was in for him and made a game-saving interception. Bradshaw had a knack for being in the right place to make a key play.
Afterward, Buddy Parker was “spent, semi-collapsed” from the tension.53 A loss, columnist Al Abrams commented, “would have meant the point of no return.”54 Things were bound to get even harder in the next two weeks, against Green Bay and Cleveland, but they couldn’t get much more taxing than the comeback over Dallas. “They’re all alike—awfully tough,” Parker said.55
While the Steelers were rallying, New York was thumping the Browns on their home turf, 33–6, handing Cleveland its first loss and leaving both conference races “tighter than a pair of $5 shoes.”56 Jim Brown was held to 40 yards and was ejected near the end, along with the Giants’ Tom Scott, for fighting. The Packers, playing without Bart Starr, sidelined with a hairline fracture in his throwing hand, beat Baltimore, 34–20, keeping Green Bay in a first-place tie with the Bears in the Western Conference.
Aside from the rout of the Giants, the Steelers weren’t dominating games. They were more like a racehorse bunched in the pack, still in the race, but no one’s favorite. Landry rated the Giants as the team to beat in the Eastern Conference race, followed by the Browns. The Steel
ers, he said, “could do it, but they’ve got an awfully tough two weeks ahead of them.”57
GAME 8
VERSUS GREEN BAY PACKERS
AT MILWAUKEE COUNTY STADIUM
NOVEMBER 3
To Raymond Klein “Buddy” Parker, the essence of football lay in fundamentals. The game was X’s and O’s, good technique, and diligent practice, not a batch of complex equations out of advanced calculus. Parker scoffed at the tactic of Cleveland coach Paul Brown, “once regarded as the miracle man of football,” in shuttling guards into a game to give his quarterback the call for the next play. “That ‘play messenger’ stuff is the bunk,” Parker said. “What’s so mysterious about football?”1
When he made his remarks more than halfway through the 1954 season, Brown was coming off back-to-back NFL championships that his Detroit Lions had won by beating the miracle man’s teams in the title games. Parker showed due respect for Brown, despite their conflicting philosophies on calling plays. “He’s so far ahead of the rest of us, it’s pitiful,” Parker said.2
Parker won by keeping the game simple, minimizing the playbook, and resisting trick plays. The Lions had approximately twenty basic plays and, with variations, around fifty. “You’ll find that straight football with good blocking can do more damage to a defense than a lot of dipsy-doodle back of the line.”3 Overcoaching, he felt, proved to be the downfall of teams. Players were smart enough to improvise and learn more plays, he agreed, “but why bumfoozle them?”4
The author of one magazine feature felt that Parker’s coaching was a reflection of his personality: uncomplicated, straightforward, nothing fancy. During a game Parker was customarily stoic, chain-smoking (two packs a game, right on the sideline), kneeling beside players while he squinted at the action or diagnosed a play on paper. He moved “in the shambling, relaxed fashion of a bear that has just made a successful raid on a honeycomb.”5 In truth, there was nothing simple about Buddy Parker, and the outward show of composure and restraint belied a complex man whose temperament could plummet into inconsolable despair after a defeat. At times he could be charming, erudite, outgoing. In other instances he could turn sullen, crude, and boorish … and self-destructive. There might not have been anything esoteric about the game of football in the fifties—or before or since then, for that matter—but within Buddy Parker lay the mystery and riddle of a man with a superior coaching mind and a psyche with the volatility of a summer storm of lightning and thunder. Private demons roiled inside him, and at times they would burst out with the fury of a fullback breaking loose from the clutches of a desperate tackler.