The '63 Steelers Page 4

  Keys fumbled a punt and Lee Roy Caffey recovered for the Eagles on the Steeler 44, but Tim Brown fumbled the handoff on the next play and Tarasovic, the six-foot-four, 245-pound linebacker, grabbed it on the 48. Stalled at the Eagle 44, two yards shy of a first down, Michaels came in again. A year before, on the same field, not far from his hometown, Michaels had kicked four field goals to help Pittsburgh to a 26–17 victory. “Hitting ’em sweet and true under pressure is what counts,” he said after that game.44 With 6:04 left before halftime, Michaels kicked “an astounding 50-yarder” to make it 7–6.45

  Jurgensen hit McDonald slanting over the middle for a 22-yard gain to the Steeler 42, but on third-and-11 he lost 7 yards attempting to pass, leaving King Hill to punt down to the 8. In the final minute of the half, on third-and-10 from his 30, Brown fired a 27-yard pass to Dial that put the ball on the Eagle 43, giving Michaels a shot at another 50-yarder. This time the kick fell short. Whether it was the impact of the hometown crowd that Parker had feared or an Eagles team undergoing a rejuvenation, the favored Steelers had all they could handle in trailing 7–6 at the half.

  John Henry Johnson fumbled on the Steelers’ first drive of the second half, and Baughan recovered on Pittsburgh’s 41. After a holding penalty, Jurgensen hit Tim Brown with a 42-yard pass to make it first-and-goal at the 6, and on second down he found end Ralph “Catfish” Smith over the middle for a 6-yard TD pass to make it 14–6 with 7:09 left in the third quarter.

  Ed Brown stuck to his short game on the next drive, hitting Dial for 9 yards, Carpenter for 9, and Dial again for 10. On third-and-5 at the Eagle 23, Brown was dropped for a 7-yard loss, leaving Michaels a chance at a 37-yard field goal. The year before, he had made 62 percent of his kicks, the third-best figure in the league, but this time he missed.

  On the next play, Eagles fullback Theron Sapp fumbled, and defensive end Big John Baker recovered at the 17. The Eagles held, leaving Pittsburgh with fourth-and-3 at the 10, and Michaels came on to kick a 17-yard field goal on the first play of the fourth quarter to make it 14–9.

  On third-and-9 from his 25, Jurgensen dropped back to pass, and tackle Lou Cordileone dumped him for a loss of 9 yards. Hill got off a 62-yard punt on which Keys tried to make an over-the-shoulder catch but couldn’t hang on. He retrieved the ball and darted up the right sideline, past end Dick Lucas, but rookie linebacker Ralph Heck and Caffey had a good angle and appeared to have the Steelers’ return man hemmed in. Keys squirted past them as Steelers linebacker Bob Schmitz hustled in and bumped the two Eagles off track. Keys raced down the sideline and was in the clear as he crossed the Eagles’ 10-yard line, where he slipped and fell, untouched, like a skater losing balance and toppling forward. “Crawling, wriggling and squirming,” Keys reached the 2 before he was downed.46 Johnson gained a yard and then leaped over from the 1 to put the Steelers ahead for the first time, 15–14, and Michaels lined up for the point after.

  There is one other result that can occur during a placekick apart from the three that Michaels listed, a consequence that not even a perfectly executed kick can circumvent. A year later, Michaels would tell the story about how he was kicking for his high school freshman football team and made good on six of seven extra points in one game. Proud of his accomplishment, he recounted his performance to his brothers when he got home. But they wanted to know what had happened on the missed kick. It had been blocked. The older boys jumped all over their kid brother.

  “Know what they told me? They said it was my fault it was blocked because I should have gotten back an extra yard and kicked faster,” Michaels said.47

  It’s not the kind of advice Timothy Gay suggests. A kicker sticks to footwork as precise and regimented as that of the Rockettes. Cross, a third-year defensive back out of Northwestern, broke through and blocked the extra point attempt with his arm. The Steelers still had a one-point lead, but the Eagles had proved to be dangerous, and McDonald lurked as a lethal threat.

  As a kid growing up in New Mexico, McDonald had a manic energy. In school, he would walk across the desks on his hands, and he was constantly working on catching any object—nails, pennies, rubber balls. “Instead of passing things at the table, we’d pitch them,” McDonald recalled. “Mom made us draw the line at mashed potatoes.”48 In any event, his practice paid off. “He’ll catch a ball he has no business catching,” said Redskins coach Bill McPeak.49

  After the kickoff, Jurgensen took the Eagles down to the Steeler 35, with 27 yards coming on a pass to Retzlaff, but Clendon Thomas intercepted the next throw and returned the ball to the Eagle 46. Michaels might have been able to try yet another long field goal, but Brown had to punt after he was dropped for a 4-yard loss on third-and-8 at the 44.

  Lined up in the shotgun on third-and-5 at his 25, Jurgensen faced heavy pressure from the Steelers’ left side. With his neck arched back and Michaels’s right arm bearing down on his face, Jurgensen fired away, 50 yards in the air. McDonald, with two steps on Glass, made an over-the-shoulder catch, avoided Glass’s diving attempt at a tackle inside the 10, and darted into the end zone for a 75-yard touchdown. Rookie Mike Clark’s conversion put the Eagles ahead, 21–15, with 4:05 left in the game.

  Clark’s ensuing kickoff sailed deep into the end zone for a touchback, which would have left the Steelers 80 yards away from the touchdown they needed to tie the game, and the extra point that would win it. But there was a flag on the play: offside, Philadelphia.

  Forced to kick again, from the 35, Clark drove the ball to the 9-yard line, where Thomas returned it 41 yards to midfield. Now the Steelers had only 50 yards to go for the winning TD, and plenty of time to do it. On third-and-7, Brown hit second-year end John Burrell on a down-and-out for a 14-yard gain to the 33, and then the Steeler quarterback hooked up with Dial for a 28-yard pickup and a first-and-goal at the 5. But Brown was sacked for a 6-yard loss, and his pass to Dial was broken up by defensive back Ben Scotti, leaving Pittsburgh with third-and-goal at the 11. Brown hit Johnson, sneaking over the middle, for a touchdown, and all that was left to put the Steelers ahead with two-and-a-half minutes to play was the point after.

  In The Physics of Football, Gay raises the question of what a kicker can do to improve his accuracy. “First, physics (and common sense) says: Hit the ball square,” he writes. “Assume that you’re kicking the ball straight ahead and that the force of your foot on the ball is perpendicular to the surface of the ball where contact is initially made. This means that the impulse delivered to the ball must be within three-eighths of an inch of the ball’s centerline, or equator.”50

  But there is no mention in Gay’s book about crooked uprights, no discussion about how perverse fate can be to a team struggling for success. In 1963 the two goalposts were still planted on the goal line; they would not be moved to the back of the end zone until the 1974 season. Making a point after was basically a 9-yard field goal attempt. The virtual “automatic machine on conversions” lined up for the kick and swung his left leg … and a thump! sounded as the ball struck the warped wooden upright and bounced back onto the field. The game was tied, 21–21, with 2:40 left, thanks to two failed Steelers conversions.

  Jurgensen had time, but he couldn’t work any magic with McDonald. His third-and-2 pass from his own 43 was incomplete. Hill punted, and Keys, perhaps thinking of duplicating his near touchdown, fielded the ball on his 2 and was stopped at the 5. Brown played it conservatively, calling for runs on four of the next five plays, but two passes to Carpenter moved the ball to the Steeler 45. The final gun sounded after Brown hit Dial with a 25-yard pass down to the Eagle 30-yard line, with Pittsburgh unable to get the field goal unit lined up for an attempt at a game-winning kick. Asked whether he would have hit the game-winner, Michaels replied, “Of course not. It would have only hit the goal post again. It wasn’t my day. I always knew there would be a day like this, a nightmare, but I didn’t know it would happen in front of my hometown friends.”51

  Michaels made no excuses and didn’t gripe about bad breaks. A
sked whether Cross’s block on the first missed conversion forced him to overcompensate on the next point after, Michaels said, “No, sir. I just missed it.”52

  The volatile Parker, so quick to ignite over mistakes, consoled Michaels. “The game’s over, Lou,” the coach said. “Forget about it. Look, we got a bad game out of our system, and we got away with it without losing. We should feel grateful.”53

  After just one game, it was premature to talk of omens or jinxes or destiny, or to suggest that once again, this wouldn’t be the Steelers’ year, that they had missed their best shot the previous season and were doomed to suffer through more bad luck, another string of losing seasons. After all, how often do goalposts have a crooked upright? And there was no time for the Steelers to feel sorry about their luck, because bearing down on them the following Sunday were the defending Eastern Conference champion New York Giants, who already looked capable of repeating. Not far south of Philly, Y. A. Tittle threw for three touchdowns and ran for another to rally the Giants from a 21–3 deficit to a 37–28 victory over the Colts in Baltimore.

  But there was something much bigger, much more important, for the Steelers to feel grateful for than salvaging a tie with the Eagles, although the scene went virtually unnoticed before a packed stadium. On a field that sanctimonious coaches used as a pulpit to elevate a game to an issue of life and death, a real mortality scenario arose.

  Four years earlier, in another game between the Steelers and Eagles at Franklin Field, a critical incident occurred that affected the future of the NFL. Bert Bell, for fourteen years the commissioner of the NFL and a close friend of Art Rooney, collapsed from a heart attack while attending the game and died. Alvin “Pete” Rozelle succeeded Bell, and the following season, the NFL would hold the Bert Bell Benefit Bowl, known informally as the Playoff Bowl. The Steelers would play in the third year.

  But on this cloudy and cool mid-September day, “Death was cheated … on Franklin Field before 58,205 onlookers, unaware of the drama developing before them,” Herb Good wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer. “Only quick, skilled work by team doctors and trainers saved John Reger, Pittsburgh Steelers’ linebacker, from choking to death.”54

  On the last play of the first quarter, Reger was knocked unconscious and went into convulsions after tackling the fullback Sapp. “Reger’s face was blue-black from his inability to breathe after swallowing his tongue, those who rushed to his aid said.”55

  James Nixon, the Eagles’ physician, looked at Reger writhing on the ground and ran off in search of a knife he could use to make an emergency tracheotomy if no other means of providing air to the player could be found. Steelers trainer Roger McGill performed artificial respiration, and then John Best, the team physician, forced a pair of scissors between Reger’s teeth. The scissors got caught in Reger’s mouth, and as the instrument was pulled out, several teeth were dislodged, leaving an opening. Best “forced his finger into the stricken player’s mouth and withdrew Reger’s tongue.”56 Reger was taken by ambulance to nearby University Hospital, where he spent several days recuperating.

  Around the league, Jimmy Brown scored three touchdowns to help the Browns beat the Redskins, 37–14. But “the most astonishing performance” on the opening weekend of the NFL season, according to United Press International, came from the Chicago Bears’ restructured defense, which intercepted four Bart Starr passes in a 10–3 victory over the defending champion Green Bay Packers.57 It was way too far off to look ahead, but the Steelers had to face both teams in November, and after one game they had offered scant proof that they would be able to handle either.

  PRESEASON

  AN INTRODUCTION

  In the mind of head coach Raymond “Buddy” Parker, 1962 was going to be the season the Pittsburgh Steelers put an end to a thirty-year stretch of futility, a hapless period of time during which the franchise had achieved only six winning seasons and never made it to a championship game. The forty-nine-year-old Parker was in his sixth season in Pittsburgh since coming over from Detroit, where he had won three conference titles and two world championships, and he had failed to fulfill his vow to bring owner Art Rooney a championship within five years. “I am coming to Pittsburgh with one objective, to give the Steelers a winner,” he said upon his appointment by Rooney in late August of 1957.1 The best he had done in five years was go 7–4–1 in ’58, but even after two straight losing seasons, Parker felt that 1962 was going to be different. “This is the year,” Parker told Bobby Layne as the team flew to Detroit for the season opener. “I think we can win it.”2

  Layne had spent his entire life defying the clock, whether he was ordering another round after closing time in a nightclub on the eve of a game or watching seconds tick off the stadium clock in the final minute of a game with his team down by a touchdown and 80 yards from the opponent’s end zone. But now time was running out on Layne, the master of the two-minute drill, the invincible quarterback who had led the Lions to two championships and helped them reach two other title games. Three decades later, Sports Illustrated would put Layne, wearing his helmet without the face mask he had scorned throughout his career, on its cover in the fall of 1995 with the headline “The Toughest Quarterback Ever.” Layne needed one more touchdown pass to break Sammy Baugh’s career record of 187, but he was thirty-six, and fourteen seasons of injuries, a disdain for football equipment, and a passion for hearty living in bars and nightclubs had taken a toll. The opener turned into a disastrous homecoming for Parker and Layne. The Steelers were routed 45–7 and then floundered through the first half of the fourteen-game season, going 3–4.

  Layne was playing in ’62 with a debilitating hematoma—blood clotted from hemorrhaging—on the right side of his body. Art Rooney Jr., son of the Steelers’ owner, remembered the clot being “like a watermelon.”3 Relying on tape and painkillers, Layne proved he still had not only the guts but also the magic in his arm as he led a game-winning drive against frisky second-year quarterback Fran Tarkenton and the Vikings in game 8.4 “What a desperate feeling to stand there and watch our defensive team try to hold Layne,” Tarkenton said afterward. “You hear Layne’s arm is going dead. It didn’t look like it today.”5

  The Steelers then beat St. Louis, but against the Redskins Layne was blindsided and helped off the field to a chorus of boos at Forbes Field. It would not be the last time a Steeler quarterback destined for the Hall of Fame would be jeered while lurching off the field in agony. Ed Brown, obtained from Chicago in the off-season, took over as quarterback, rallied the Steelers to a 23–21 victory, and led them to three wins in the last four games to finish in second place at 9–5 and qualify for the short-lived Playoff Bowl, a consolation game for runner-up teams. Parker’s estimation of the team hadn’t been so far off after all. The ’62 Steelers were a team that Bucko Kilroy, acknowledged as one of the toughest men ever to play in the NFL as well as one of its best scouts, dubbed “Destiny’s Derelicts.”6 They were a team of rejects, drinkers, and brawlers, low on skill but high on pain tolerance, and no one ever questioned their guts or desire to win.

  The ’63 Steelers had the same blue-collar cast, with a couple of critical omissions. Layne, at the coercion of Parker, retired in the spring. Eugene “Big Daddy” Lipscomb, a three-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle, was found dead in May.

  The ’63 squad also had talent—not nearly as much as the Steeler teams of the seventies would boast, but enough that the pack of vagabonds would find itself clawing for a berth in an NFL title game a decade before a dynasty would arise in Pittsburgh. The ’63 Steelers had a player who writer Myron Cope mused “may be the toughest guy ever to have come down the NFL pike.” Ernie Stautner was from a different era and mind-set, one in which “going to war” meant firing rifles, not passes, in a critical showdown. Stautner had served in the Marines in World War II before attending college. He was listed as six foot two, 230 pounds, but he played defensive end with a ferocity that distilled football to a Darwinian equation. “Toughest Steeler ever,” said Andy Russ
ell, a rookie linebacker in ’63. “One of the super-tough guys,” said Frank Atkinson, a rookie defensive tackle out of Stanford that year. “Ernie thought the game was all about beating the crap out of the guy across from you.”7

  Stautner didn’t have a reputation as a dirty player, but as a competitor he was out for blood. “You got to be a man who wants to hurt somebody,” Stautner told Cope. “You know where I’m going for? The quarterback’s face. It hurts in the face. I want him to know I’m coming the next time. I want him to be scared. Those quarterbacks can’t tell me they don’t scare, because I’ve seen it in the corners of their eyes.” Said teammate Lou Cordileone, “Ernie Stautner was one determined sunuvabitch.”8

  Pain and injury? If a roll of tape couldn’t fix it, a strong will could. Russell would become a link to the glory years, but he was only a rookie when Stautner indoctrinated him to the concept of playing with pain—or playing with wounds.

  “He comes into the huddle; his thumb’s broken back,” Russell said.

  He’s not showing off. I just happened to see it. I was right across from him. The bone’s sticking out. I wasn’t used to seeing bones in the huddle. He’s got a compound fracture. He takes his thumb and he jams it down. He says, “What’s the defense?” Holy shit! This guy isn’t going to leave the game for one friggin’ play, and he’s got a compound fracture? Finally we make ’em punt four or five plays later. We come off the field and I figure, now he’s got to go to the hospital. This could get infected. He’s got an open wound. He says, “More tape. Give me more.” That was Ernie Stautner. There’s nobody that would do that—stay out there with a compound fracture.9