The '63 Steelers Read online

  Up in Oakland, James Meredith, the first black student to attend the University of Mississippi, received standing ovations at functions at the University of Pittsburgh, where he told students in a speech, “I think there is another civil war in the making.” Asked if he blamed Alabama governor George Wallace for the bombing in Birmingham the previous Sunday, Meredith replied, “The truth is all Americans are to blame, including the steel magnates in Pittsburgh who may own the mills of Birmingham … and the Congress … and the professor at the University of Pittsburgh who has failed to acquaint his students with the realities of the world.”36

  Sports carried on despite death, wars, and tragedies. The sports section of the newspaper still provided the “vicarious, if not welcome relief” that Al Abrams had acknowledged two years earlier, and coaches and players from the high schools to the pros had to carry on.37 So Parker fretted over his offense but expressed no doubts that Tittle would play on Sunday. “We definitely will have to quit messing up our scoring opportunities,” Parker said. “Then we must exert more pressure on the passer.”38

  What Parker should have remembered was Layne’s insight when the Steelers traveled to Yankee Stadium to face the Giants the year before. “They’re too smart to go for the fake and too fast to go around,” Layne said. “Your only chance is to overpower them.” Pittsburgh went on to rush for 259 yards in a 20–17 victory.39

  Coming to Pittsburgh, it was John Mara who felt nervous. “We’ve had some terrible experiences out here,” the Giants president said the day before the game. “It’s never been easy.”40 The Giants had won the previous four meetings in Pittsburgh, but by margins of four, three, two, and five points. Tittle’s uncertain status didn’t ease Mara’s apprehension.

  Before dawn Saturday, the day before the game, Allie Sherman decided not to play Tittle. “I told him Sunday morning in my hotel room,” Sherman said later, “and it took me an hour to convince him. Naturally, he wanted to play. He’s a real competitor.”41

  Even if he had been healthy enough to play, Tittle would have had a hard time getting on the field that afternoon. “The Steelers won the toss and promptly began knocking the tar out of the Giant defense,” wrote one New York tabloid reporter.42

  So overwhelming was the Steelers’ ground game that the Giants ran only three plays from scrimmage in the first quarter, compared to twenty-six for Pittsburgh. The Steelers banged away at the Giant defense on eight straight running plays on the opening series, with John Henry Johnson ripping up the middle for 6 yards, then off right tackle for 7, and Dick Hoak hitting the left side for 3- and 6-yard gains. The Steelers were in field goal range when Hoak ran for 4 yards to the Giants’ 39, but linebacker Tom Scott dropped Ed Brown for an 11-yard loss, and the Steeler quarterback punted on fourth-and-17.

  The Steelers stopped the Giants cold and started from their 43 after Brady Keys’s 7-yard punt return. Parker’s offense began methodically grinding out yardage, poking holes in a defensive front—Jim Katcavage, Dick Modzelewski, John LoVetere, and Andy Robustelli—that was showing the wear from a combined thirty-three seasons of NFL play. The Steelers ran the ball for eleven straight plays, and so confident were they in their offensive line that they went for it on fourth-and-1 at the Giant 37, rather than settle for a field goal, and gained 6 yards from Hoak.

  On third-and-11 at the 20, Johnson gained 8 yards on a reception, and a penalty against New York gave the Steelers first-and-goal at the 6. Johnson ran the ball to the 2 as the first period ended. On third down, the second play of the second quarter, Hoak burrowed in for a 1-yard touchdown, capping a fifteen-play drive that had covered only 57 yards.

  The teams exchanged punts, and Pittsburgh started to put relentless pressure on Tittle’s fill-in, Ralph Guglielmi, a seven-year veteran out of Notre Dame. Cordileone had already shown in preseason that he could be a terror on defense. One writer dubbed him Lou “the Lion Hearted,” commenting that he “has filled in admirably” for Lipscomb.43 On second-and-4 from the Giant 39, Michaels batted away Guglielmi’s pass. On third down, the former No. 1 draft pick known as “Goog” fumbled when hit by Cordileone, and defensive end John Baker recovered. Baker was nearly as big as Lipscomb but had been faulted for not being aggressive enough. He had the potential to become a force on the defensive line, the Pittsburgh Courier suggested, “if he can be supercharged with desire.”44 Baker had excelled in the fourth preseason game after being elbowed by one of the Detroit Lions, leading Rooney to quip afterward, “Maybe we ought to have someone in the runway belt that guy in the nose before every game.”45 The second game of the regular season would prove to be a long, tiresome day for six-foot-three, 260-pound offensive tackle Roosevelt Brown, in his eleventh year, against the six-foot-six, 270-pound Baker. “Big John just ate him up,” Michaels said later.46

  Pittsburgh took over at the 25. Hoak caught a pass on third-and-12 and gained 18 yards, setting up first-and-goal at the 9. On third down from the 2, Johnson lost the ball while vaulting over the line, but Ed Brown recovered at the 4, setting up Michaels for an 11-yard field goal to make it 10–0 with 7:02 left in the half.

  After each team went 3-and-out, the Giants started from their 28, and Pittsburgh nearly ran Guglielmi out of the stadium. On first down, Michaels and Joe Krupa dumped him for a 9-yard loss. On second down, Baker batted away a pass, and Michaels nearly caught it. On third-and-19, running back Joe Morrison took a pass 28 yards for a first down at the 47, but after the two-minute warning, Schmitz sacked Guglielmi for a 17-yard loss. Guglielmi hit end Joe Walton for a gain of 8, but then he was smashed by Baker and Ernie Stautner for a loss of 8, leaving New York with fourth-and-28. If Allie Sherman had anything to be grateful for as the half ended with Clendon Thomas intercepting Guglielmi, it had to be that at least Y. A. Tittle wasn’t the quarterback on the field taking a beating.

  Rarely had a 10–0 halftime lead looked so secure. The Steelers hadn’t even let the visitors into Pittsburgh territory in the first half, and it took nearly thirteen minutes into the second quarter for the Giants to complete a pass and earn a first down.

  The second half brought only more misery for Guglielmi. Other than a 31-yard gain by John Henry Johnson that took the Steelers to the Giant 45, neither team was able to gain a first down on the first four series. Guglielmi started on his 39, but Michaels dropped him for no gain. King took a pass in the flat and ran 22 yards to the Steeler 29, New York’s first threat, but consecutive sacks by Russell and Michaels, plus a holding penalty, pushed the Giants back to their 40. End Aaron Thomas gained 16 yards on a reception, but Don Chandler’s 51-yard field goal attempt only reached the Steeler 7, and Thomas returned it 20 yards.

  Johnson and Hoak led the Steelers into Giant territory, but Jim Patton intercepted Brown at the Giant 21. Guglielmi gave the ball right back. Glenn Glass intercepted a pass and returned it 29 yards to the Giants’ 9 as the third quarter ended. Hoak scored his second TD on a flare pass from the 2-yard line on the third play of the fourth quarter to make it 17–0.

  Griffing came on for Guglielmi, and the Steeler defense kept dishing out punishment. Griffing was dropped by Baker for a loss of 9 yards, and then recovered his own fumble, forcing Chandler to punt on fourth-and-20 from the 37. Keys fielded the ball on his 17 and let a herd of blockers plow a path for him as he raced 82 yards before Chandler knocked him out at the 1. Johnson dived over right tackle for a touchdown to make it 24–0.

  On the third play after the kickoff, Myron Pottios knocked the ball loose from Griffing and grabbed it in midair, setting up Brown to hit Dial with a 46-yard TD pass to make it 31–0. The Giants got down to the Steeler 13 on Frank Gifford’s 64-yard reception, but three throws to wide receiver Del Shofner missed, securing the first regular-season shutout of the Giants in ten years and marking the first time the Steelers had ever blanked them. The Steelers piled up 223 yards rushing, including 123 by Johnson, while holding the Giants to 59 yards on the ground and only one first down rushing. Guglielmi and Griffing were a combined eight of
twenty-six passing, with four interceptions.

  A crowd of 46,068, the largest ever to see a pro football game in Pittsburgh, “sat in on the execution.”47 Said one Giant player: “They beat the hell out of us.”48

  As sweet as the victory was for the Steelers and their fans, it was especially satisfying to the kid from Jersey. Cordileone, wrote the New York Times, “ran around in the Giant backfield as if he were back on the New York team, but with no intention of helping it along.”49

  The Pittsburgh Press called it “a hollow victory” without Tittle, but Ernie Stautner responded, “It wouldn’t have made any difference, do you think? The way this team played today, nothing would have helped the Giants.”50

  Giants coach Allie Sherman didn’t disagree. “They whipped us,” he said. “It wasn’t a question of Tittle not playing. There were 22 men who didn’t play.”51

  Maybe so. Maybe no single player could have made a dent in the Steelers that day. But one week shy of the forty-fifth anniversary of the loss, Yelberton Abraham Tittle, sitting in his office in California, thought back on that afternoon and said, with a nod toward an athlete’s code of respect for his opponent and an involuntary flare-up of pride, “If I’d played—don’t write this down—it wouldn’t have been 31–0.”52

  In place of Tittle, Guglielmi hit only five of fifteen passes for 89 yards, was intercepted twice and thrown for 67 yards in losses, and felt pressure from Cordileone all afternoon. “What a game he played,” Guglielmi said. “We tried to go over him, we tried to trap him. We passed, and he knocked the ball down. We tried to fool him with a play pass. Even that didn’t work. Nothing worked.”53

  Griffing completed three of eleven passes for 102 yards. It was to be the only NFL season for the college star who had entered the pros to such glowing praise.

  From a Giants perspective, wrote Gene Ward of the New York Daily News, “It was a dreadful thing to see, the disintegration of what, only a Sunday ago, had been rated one of the NFL’s strongest teams and top favorite in the Eastern Division.”54

  The day after the loss, Sherman didn’t quite see the game as a disaster. He wasn’t so much generous in his praise of the victors as he was critical of his own team. “It was bad, real bad,” he said in the Giants’ midtown Manhattan offices. “We made everyone on their side look good—Baker, Cordileone, Michaels, all of them.” Rather than concede that there was a shift in power in the division, Sherman dismissed the defeat as simply a bad day. “I’m going to take this game and throw it right out this 16th-floor window,” he said. “We’re going to forget it and get ready for the Eagles just like we do every other team.”55

  But not everybody was going to dismiss the drubbing. Just as the Steelers weren’t about to forget the whipping the Lions gave them in the ’62 opener, the Giants would hang on to the memory of the 31–0 shutout. The last game on their schedule was at home against Pittsburgh, but at least they could look forward to having Tittle back for the rematch … if the game meant anything by then.

  “You had to convince yourself pretty hard that 31–0 was just a fluke,” Tittle conceded. But with his characteristic modesty, he added, “On the other hand, it’s pretty hard to convince yourself that I’m that valuable— thirty-one points, gosh.”56

  There was a familiar show of power—old and new—elsewhere in the league. Jimmy Brown had TD runs of 71 and 62 yards and rolled up a total of 232 yards in Cleveland’s 41–24 win in Dallas, and twenty-four-year-old Charley Johnson—“undoubtedly the brightest young quarterback prospect in the NFL,” according to UPI—threw three touchdown passes in rallying St. Louis, Pittsburgh’s next opponent, to a 28–24 victory over Philly.57

  After just two weeks, the Eastern Conference race shaped up as a mad scramble, and the Steelers gave every indication that they were going to fight like crazy to win it.

  GAME 3

  VERSUS ST. LOUIS CARDINALS

  AT FORBES FIELD

  SEPTEMBER 29

  Andy Russell’s NFL career was a fluke, a misunderstanding, a mistake. He never should have wound up playing football for a living. Never should have been in position to make seven Pro Bowl appearances and make tackles and sack quarterbacks across a dozen seasons. And he never should have been around to collect two Super Bowl rings.

  Not that he didn’t have the talent to play in the pros, the proper coaching, the dedication, or the work ethic. He had good speed, size, and athletic gifts. He was an all-state high school player and went on to play at Missouri for Dan Devine, a strict disciplinarian, powerful motivator, and shrewd coach. “I’d never have been a pro if I’d gone somewhere else,” Russell later said.1

  Russell’s Missouri teams went 25–4–3 over three years and played in two bowl games at a time when there was no room for mediocre squads in postseason. It was also an era in which college players were still going both ways. Russell started at linebacker and was a backup at fullback his sophomore year, when Missouri earned a berth in the Orange Bowl and beat Navy, 21–14, before 71,218 fans, including President-elect John F. Kennedy. Twice when Navy reached the Missouri 30, Russell intercepted a pass. As a junior, he went both ways and led the team in rushing. He was primarily a linebacker in his senior year and led the team with six interceptions as the Tigers earned a berth against Georgia Tech in the Bluebonnet Bowl, where he picked off two passes. Russell disparaged his blocking ability as a fullback, but he was credited with a key block on the 77-yard TD run by teammate Bill Tobin that gave Missouri a 14–10 victory over the Yellow Jackets.

  Russell didn’t make All-America; he didn’t even make all-conference. Even though he later faulted himself for making too many mistakes and not enough big plays as a collegian, he was a legitimate NFL prospect—except in his family’s eyes. His father was a senior executive for the Monsanto Company, and work took the family from New York and Detroit before they settled in St. Louis, Monsanto’s headquarters. Russell’s parents then moved to Brussels, where his father was to head up the overseas operation of the company.

  “You hear about Army brats,” Russell said. “I was a corporate brat. My dad had made me promise I’d never play pro football because it would humiliate the family to have a son playing a game for a living. It was an easy promise to make because I’d gone through ROTC. I figured, well, I can’t play pro football anyway. I’ve got [a commitment to] two years of active duty. And I picked Germany because my parents were overseas and I wanted to see them occasionally.”2

  In the early sixties, the NFL draft was still a primitive procedure, far from the refined science it would evolve into, with its obsessive testing and scouting. There were only twelve teams in the league until the NFL added Dallas in 1960 and Minnesota in 1961, and the number of rounds had been cut to twenty from the thirty-round marathons that existed through 1959. The process was raw and erratic, and Parker’s interest in the operation grudging and perfunctory.

  “In those days they didn’t have any camps where they tried you out like they do today,” Russell said. “If you were a halfway decent college football player you got a questionnaire from virtually every team. First question was, ‘Are you interested in playing pro football?’ I wrote, ‘No,’ and sent it back. … One team didn’t send me one: the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Pittsburgh Steelers didn’t know I wasn’t going to play pro football. So they drafted me in the sixteenth round. They called me and I said, ‘Well, you wasted a draft choice because I’ve got to go into the service.’”3

  The Steelers didn’t have many picks to waste in the 1963 draft; Parker had traded away his first seven choices. In those years the draft was often held in the first week of December, right after the conclusion of the season for many colleges, but while the NFL season was still going. Missouri still had a date with Georgia Tech in the Bluebonnet Bowl in Houston. “I go down there and figure this is the last game I’ll ever play,” Russell said. “I’m OK with that.”4

  The first two rounds of the draft on Monday, December 3, 1962, consumed six hours and eight minutes, with
fourteen teams selecting, so it was nearly midnight by the time the Steelers’ first pick came around, in round 8.5 By then, Parker and his staff were long gone from the NFL draft headquarters in Chicago. He and his staff had taken a flight home, leaving scout Will Walls in charge. (Art Rooney also remained.) The final pick wasn’t made until 3:30 a.m., but Walls had submitted the Steelers’ sixteenth-round pick, who was still practicing for a bowl game scheduled three days before Christmas.6

  A couple of weeks later, Russell received a phone call in his hotel room in Houston from Walls, a colorful character who had been an end for the New York Giants and an outfielder for the St. Louis Browns and had a bit part in a movie. Walls paid Russell a visit. “Nicest guy,” Russell said. “He’s really smooth. He’s buttering me up. He’s trying to sign me.” Russell explained that he planned to finish the school year and then report for his military commitment the following January. In between, he intended to get an internship in St. Louis. Instead, Walls suggested, “Why don’t you play pro football? It’s perfect.” The suggestion, Russell said, was “like a lightbulb” going on in his head. He was married but had no money. Walls started to talk contracts and mentioned a signing bonus. “What’s a signing bonus?” Russell asked. After Walls explained, Russell asked how much he would get. “A thousand dollars,” Walls replied, and the contract would be for ten grand. Russell, a half year away from receiving his degree in economics, negotiated a deal for $12,000 plus a $3,000 signing bonus. “I joke now,” Russell said, decades after establishing himself as a highly successful businessman, “but that’s the richest I’ve ever felt in my whole life.”7