The '63 Steelers Read online

  The game, scheduled for County Stadium in Milwaukee, where the Packers played several times a year, had been sold out for months, but the crowd of 46,293 was tame. “You could tell it right from the beginning when they were introducing the players—there wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm,” Lombardi said.62

  The Steelers didn’t appear to be their customary selves, either. A sportswriter stopped in the locker room before the game and noted “the choked stillness, the eerie, monastic silence.” A normally relaxed group had become “as tense as hawsers in a hurricane.”63

  The Steelers should have gotten a big lift when Gary Ballman took the opening kickoff on the 5 and, with a block from Brady Keys on Willie Wood, raced 93 yards before being hauled down by Earl Gros at the Packer 2, from where Dick Hoak scored on the next play.

  “The Bays,” as both the hometown and out-of-town papers called them, resembled the Steelers in their loss in Cleveland: They scratched their way into Pittsburgh territory, thanks to the Steelers’ bungling, but they couldn’t cross the goal line. Dick Haley appeared to have an interception on one throw but couldn’t hang onto the ball. Taylor was picking up yardage on Green Bay’s first drive in John Henry Johnson fashion, 3 and 4 yards a carry. Roach, filling in for Starr, hit rookie end Marv Fleming for 15 yards and a first down at the Steeler 34. After Taylor lost a yard, Roach gained 11, and Moore another 11 before he lost 4, back to the 17. Two passes fell incomplete, leaving it up to Kramer to kick a 23-yard field goal halfway through the first quarter.

  The Steelers reached midfield after a 16-yard catch by Mack and a 5-yard reception by Johnson. On third-and-5 from the 50, Brown hit Hoak for an apparent first down at the Packer 36, but the ball popped out and defensive back Jesse Whittenton snagged it and returned the interception to the 50. “Hoak had a touchdown if he had held onto that ball,” Parker said later.64 The Packers failed to capitalize, though, as Boyd Dowler caught a pass for 26 yards at the Steeler 18 and fumbled after the tackle. Glenn Glass recovered for Pittsburgh.

  Green Bay held, and Brown’s 29-yard punt left the Packers in good position at the Steeler 49, but Myron Pottios stopped the threat as the second quarter began, intercepting Roach at the 11 and returning the ball to the 21. Three plays later, Hoak fumbled and defensive end Willie Davis recovered at the 41.

  Three carries by Taylor and one by Moore put Green Bay on the 14, but penalties for holding and offensive pass interference backed them up. Taylor ran 21 yards down to the 15, but another penalty pushed Green Bay back to the 30. The drive stalled, so Kramer came on to kick a 36-yard field goal that made it 7–6 halfway through the quarter.

  A 13-yard reception by Hoak moved the Steelers to their 47, but another fumble, this time by Theron Sapp on a 13-yard catch, was recovered by linebacker Bill Forester on the Packer 40. Moore broke loose for 31 yards to the Steeler 22, and a face mask penalty on Glass moved the ball to the 11. Taylor gained 6 yards on one run but was stopped dead on two others. Kramer was on track for his second straight Pro Bowl season as a guard, and he would finish ninth in field goal accuracy (47%), but he was deadly on target this day. He hit his third field goal, from 12 yards, to make it 9–7 with 2:05 to go before halftime.

  After the two-minute warning, with the ball on his 36, Brown seemed in no hurry. He called five runs on the first seven plays, but Pittsburgh got a first down at the Packer 41 with fifty seconds left. Hoak gained 9 yards, giving Michaels a chance at a 40-yard field goal, but it was wide left. Even after dropping the ball and muffing their chances, defense kept the Steelers within two points of the Western Conference coleaders, even though Green Bay had already racked up 147 yards rushing.

  Still, Lombardi felt his team’s lead against a team that had proved it could rally and strike quickly was precarious. “I’ve seen pictures [film] of this ball club,” he said later. “They’re behind 21–0 and, all of a sudden, they’re throwing the ball around and they win 24–21. That Dial and Mack are two of the greatest receivers in the league, particularly Dial.”65 The problem for Pittsburgh, however, was that Brown had hit only four of fifteen passes.

  Taylor, “the crunching Bayou Bronco,” had won the rushing title in 1962, racking up 1,474 yards on the ground—more than 300 more than runner-up John Henry Johnson—and averaging 105.3 yards a game, almost 24 yards more than Johnson, at No. 2.66 It was understandable that Taylor might have a drop-off in ’63, and that five-time rushing leader Jimmy Brown would regain his No. 1 status after being hampered by an injured wrist in ’62. But as the second half began, the Packer fullback proved he had a lot more left in him than his coach thought after the Cardinal win, and behind him “Coach Lombardi’s world champions settled down to tear their opponent apart piece by piece and yard by yard.”67

  The Packers took the kickoff and let Taylor and Moore bang their way to the Steeler 41. Moore had the unenviable task of filling in for Hornung, but the former Vanderbilt star had “supreme running ability.”68 Moore took a Roach pass and raced 40 yards to the 1. After being stopped once, Taylor plunged over to make it 16–7.

  Green Bay forced a punt, and Brown’s feeble 24-yard kick went out of bounds at the Packer 37. Roach was only three of ten at halftime—and he was only three of sixteen in the two previous seasons as a Packer backup— but he hit Marv Fleming for 33 yards—matching his total passing yardage for 1962—and pass interference on a throw to Max McGee gave the Pack a first down on the Steeler 17. Taylor and Moore alternated grinding out yardage down to the 2, and Elijah Pitts scored from there to make it 23–7 with 4:11 left in the third quarter.

  “There was nothing but holes in that line,” Taylor said with a broad smile afterward. “They were on both sides, too—big ones. They were stunting quite a bit, and we caught ’em a couple of times. Made it easier to run to the outside.”69 The next day, the day before the elections, in the Steeler offices, secretary Mary Regan, with a trace of a smile, passed on what she said was a message from an anonymous phone caller: “Tell that Tarasovic it’s too bad he wasn’t elected justice of the peace last week. Then he might have arrested Jimmy Taylor for speeding on Sunday.”70

  From his own 30, Brown threw for Preston Carpenter, whose brother Lew was a halfback-end with Green Bay, but the pass was picked off by defensive back Hank Gremminger, giving the Packers possession at the 37. Pittsburgh held, but Kramer had a shot at his fourth field goal, from 37 yards, on the second play of the fourth quarter. The kick was good, and the Steelers were down 26–7. Worse yet, they had shown little of the explosiveness Lombardi had raved about. Hoak and Sapp combined to march the Steelers to the Packer 31, but any hope of a miracle dissolved when Hoak fumbled again after being hit by linebacker Ray Nitschke and tackle Henry Jordan, and defensive back Willie Wood recovered at the 30.

  The Steelers got the ball right back at their 23 with ten minutes left. Dial, the league’s No. 2 receiver, had been held without a reception. “We worked like hell on him,” Lombardi said later. “[Jesse] Whittenton and [Herb] Adderley did an outstanding job.”71

  Brown hit Dial twice and found Mack two times, to the Packer 33. Mack, who would finish with five catches for 87 yards, got open behind Wood and Whittenton in the left corner of the end zone for a 33-yard TD that made it 26–14 with 5:25 to go, but it was too late. The Packers recovered Michaels’s onside kick and rode Taylor and Pitts down to the 1, from where Pitts went in to make the final 33–14. The game was over in two hours and twenty-six minutes.

  Taylor finished with 141 yards rushing on thirty carries, and Moore added 88 yards. Except for Ballman’s kickoff dash, there was nothing positive for Pittsburgh to take from the loss. Hoak had 77 hard-earned yards on nineteen carries. John Henry Johnson gained only 17 yards on seven attempts and carried the ball only once in the second half. Sapp rushed six times for 29 yards. The Steelers gave up the ball five times: twice on interceptions, three times on fumbles.

  “It was as convincing a thrashing as any one pro team could apply to another and left the Steelers all but dead for the 31st year
in their quest for an Eastern Conference title,” Post-Gazette columnist Al Abrams wrote. The “Steelers still have a chance, but one would have to be some kind of nut to bet Confederate money or a 1904 calendar on their chances of reaching the top now.”72

  Despite the win, Lombardi called his team “a little flat” but “fairly bubbled” about Taylor’s performance and praised Roach’s work.73 Hoak wasn’t too impressed with the defending champs. “I didn’t think they were that tough,” he said. “All we had to do was hold the ball and we would have beat ’em. We had too many fumbles and interceptions. All you’ve got to do is hold the ball.”74

  But the Steelers couldn’t do that, nor could they take advantage of Starr’s incapacitation. They were manhandled by Lombardi football.

  Meanwhile, Jimmy Brown, the man the Steelers had to face next, rushed for 223 yards, including a 62-yard touchdown on the fourth play of the game, to lead Cleveland to a 23–17 win over the Eagles, keeping the Browns in first place at 7–1. One could only imagine how eager he would be to get his hands on the ball in Pittsburgh once he saw films of the holes opened up for Taylor.

  The Giants dropped the Cards, 38–21, leaving New York alone in second place at 6–2 and St. Louis in third at 5–3. The Steelers trailed in fourth place at 4–3–1, their obituary written by Abrams, and seconded by Green Bay sportswriter Lee Remmel, who couldn’t track down Buddy Parker afterward. The coach had reportedly left the dressing room immediately for the team bus outside the stadium, “presumably to brood over the defeat which all but obliterated Pittsburgh’s Eastern Division title hopes,” Remmel speculated.75

  Reporter Pat Livingston of the Press did catch up with Parker, who “gloomily” assessed the damage: “We were moving better against them than anybody moved on them all season. But we blew everything with those fumbles and interceptions.”76

  Hoak, the last player to leave the Steeler locker room, was asked whether Parker said anything before he left. “He hasn’t said anything yet,” Hoak replied, “but I expect him to say something.”77

  GAME 9

  VERSUS CLEVELAND BROWNS

  AT PITT STADIUM

  NOVEMBER 10

  The day after a fullback supposedly past his prime ran for 141 yards against the Steelers, Buddy Parker and his staff began preparing to face a player who was being hailed as the greatest runner in NFL history. After only eight games, Cleveland’s Jimmy Brown was “on his way to establishing a mark which in NFL circles may be regarded with as much awe in future years as Babe Ruth’s career home run record.”1

  With 223 yards against Philly, Brown had upped his league-leading rushing total to 1,194 yards, on 163 carries—an average of 7.3 yards per carry—and had scored nine of his twelve touchdowns on the ground. Brown was a sure bet to top his career season rushing total of 1,527 yards, set in his second year in the league, 1958 (in a twelve-game schedule), and he had a good shot at reaching the unheard-of total of 2,000 yards. Brown—“230 pounds of rippling muscle”—was averaging 149 yards a game, and he could hit 2,000 by averaging 135 in the last six games.2

  “If the homelings have finally fallen apart, up front,” the Pittsburgh Courier said of Buddy Parker’s team, “then the worst thing that could happen to them would be Jim Brown running like a madman.”3

  Brown’s yardage total was nearly twice that of the No. 2 rusher, Jim Taylor, who had 639 yards on only seven fewer carries than Brown. Dick Hoak was third with 498 yards on 158 carries, a workload that Parker feared was wearing down his smaller, lighter halfback. John Henry Johnson, who had finished second in the league to Taylor the year before with a career-best 1,141 yards, had gained only 226 on fifty-nine attempts because of the playing time he had missed. Like a heavyweight boxing champion who went unchallenged, Jimmy Brown ruled the NFL as its premier ball carrier.4 “In an era of passers, line-smashing Jimmy is the idol of the hour,” wrote Steve Snider of UPI.5

  And if Taylor could blister the Steeler defense the way he did, who or what was about to stop Jimmy Brown? “Let’s face it,” said Giant linebacker Sam Huff, a nemesis of both Brown and Taylor, “there’s no linebacker in the league who can stop Jimmy Brown man to man.”6 In their futile efforts to stop Taylor on Sunday, “The Steelers could have used five Huffs,” the Press’s Pat Livingston wrote.7 How many would it take to stop Brown?

  Huff, as a linebacker at West Virginia, had played against Brown in college before their grudge matches in the NFL. “I hit him so hard I knocked myself out—or he knocked me out. Broke my nose, shattered my teeth,” Huff said. “I woke up in the locker room on the trainer’s table.”8

  Over the years, practically every position saw the evolution of better players—faster, stronger, bigger, quicker—but for one exception. Defensive back Dick Haley began his role of evaluating talent, joining Art Rooney Jr. in the personnel department, while Brown was still playing, and Haley’s observations spanned five decades. “I’ve been watching football players now for quite a few years,” he said, forty-five years after Brown’s stellar season. “They never made one like Jim Brown. Never. I have seen every back that’s come out since 1965. We haven’t had anybody like that—that big and that fast and that quick and strong. I’ve seen no one that had all those tools.”9

  The Steelers had no counterattack on offense. Parker thought that his team’s best bet against the Packers was to control the ball, but if Johnson could pick up only 17 yards against Green Bay, and Theron Sapp could manage only 29, who was going to give Hoak a break and rescue the Steelers’ running game?

  Beneath his pencil mustache, John Henry Johnson had a gentle smile and the serene look of a man at peace with the world. He didn’t smoke and drank sparingly at a time when football players indulged in both. He was nicknamed “Mumbles” for his manner of speaking, and he was capable of the occasional malapropism, such as when a friend was dating a teenager and Johnson commented, “Man, they gonna put you in jail for stationary rape.” Johnson also had a sly sense of humor. Ten days after Lou Michaels kicked a 50-yard field goal but twice failed on the point-after in the opener, Johnson told his teammate, “Next game kick the conversions from the 45-yard line. You can make them from there.”10

  Brown was the runner defenses feared, but there was something downright scary about John Henry Johnson, with or without a football, anywhere on the field. His career began in an era when rules were minimal and unsophisticated. Players went after knockouts the way boxers did, and punishment was as natural to the game as changes in the weather. Brown stoically absorbed cheap shots and dirty play and resisted responding with either words or fists. “That way,” he said, “my opponent never knows if he is getting under my skin.” Taylor went charging right at defenders. “He’d swear at you on the field,” Huff said. “He’d kick you, gouge you, spit at you, whatever it took. It was a street fight.”11

  Anytime there was a showdown, Johnson was prepared for all-out war, whether he was outnumbered or going one on one. “He went three ways: offense, defense and to the death,” Bobby Layne said.12 “John Henry was the meanest man I ever saw,” said former Browns defensive end Paul Wiggin.13

  “The rougher they get with John Henry, the rougher he gets with them,” one Steeler said. And Johnson wasn’t the kind of guy to back down from any confrontation. He was a fearless gladiator any teammate wanted by his side. “If I had to go into a dark alley and I had my pick of one man to go with me,” a Steeler lineman said, “I’d want that man to be John Henry Johnson.”14

  Johnson played with a ferocity that stood out even in an era when violence was taken in stride. During a 1955 exhibition against the Chicago Cardinals while he was with the 49ers, Johnson struck Charley Trippi, a member of the Cardinals’ “Dream Backfield,” in the face, inflicting career-ending injuries. Walter Wolfner, managing director of the Cardinals, vowed later that his team would never again play an exhibition game against the Niners in San Francisco, partly because of the incident. In mid-October, Trippi was still undergoing treatment for a skull fracture
and smashed nose.15

  “It was dirty playing because Trippi was standing 30 yards from the play and Johnson punched at him with his fists and forearms while Trippi was completely away from the action,” Wolfner said. Niners coach Norman “Red” Strader reiterated his belief that Johnson executed a “fine, clean block” on Trippi.16

  During an October 1961 game at the Los Angeles Coliseum, as a Steeler, Johnson’s fury erupted again, and he lashed out at Ram linebacker and captain Les Richter because of what Buddy Parker called “dirty play.”17 Writer Myron Cope recalled that Johnson hit Richter in the face. “Pop, my jaw was broken,” Richter said. After Ram defensive back Ed Meador intercepted a pass, Johnson ran him out of bounds, where four of the Rams accosted the Steeler fullback. Outnumbered, Johnson grabbed the sideline marker and “began bashing it against the helmets of the Rams.”18

  “If you remember,” Parker said, “the marker used to be made of wood. Wouldn’t you know it? This year they changed to plastic markers. John Henry was whacking Richter with it, and all Les did was stand there and laugh. We couldn’t even win when we played dirty.”19

  It was a league with no mercy. Crack-back blocks and picks were common, and players like Dick “Night Train” Lane had a reputation for clothes-lining opponents and making “necktie” tackles. The Steelers played hard, but they had no monopoly on rough play.

  Bears defensive end Ed Meadows was involved in a nasty incident on the final regular-season Sunday of 1956, when Parker took his 9–2 Lions to Chicago to face the 8–2–1 Bears in a showdown for the Western Conference title. Tempers erupted from the opening kickoff, with abundant “punching, kneeing, kicking and elbowing.” A berth to the championship game was at stake, but “too often the players appeared intent on maiming one another.” Meadows drilled Bobby Layne, then the Lion quarterback, in the second quarter, knocking him out of the game with a concussion. Meadows insisted it wasn’t a dirty play, but Parker said the Bears end “used everything but a blackjack to get Layne.” With Layne out, Chicago won, 38–21, and only the intervention of officials, police, and ushers prevented “a king-sized riot” at game’s end.20 Lions owner Edwin J. Anderson urged the NFL to ban Meadows for life and to fine the Bears and their coaches. Parker threatened to quit, citing “a disastrous trend that is making pro football a slugging match.”21 The game wasn’t all about winning; it was about surviving, at all costs. As boxers were warned before a fight by the referee, players needed to protect themselves at all times and never turn their backs on an opponent.