The Ones Who Hit the Hardest: The Steelers, the Cowboys, the '70s, and the Fight for America's Soul
Page 25
If it was a 1:00 kickoff, Coyne's wife would make chipped-ham sandwiches for halftime and the guys would be out by 5:00. But late games were a problem. The 4:00 kickoffs tended to push into the dinner hour. Coyne insisted that his family eat together every evening, so he'd pull an old black-and-white set into the dining room and everyone would watch the game from there.
With its struggles and a 9-5 record, the 1977 Pittsburgh Steeler season did not lighten Coyne's load. But somehow the team scratched and clawed its way to an AFC Central title. The Steelers flew to Denver to play the Broncos in the divisional playoffs. But the game would be played at 4:00 on Christmas Eve. In a rare moment of reason when it came to the Steelers, Coyne suggested that they have dinner afterward, a few hours before midnight mass.
Coyne slapped his hands together and led a round of "Here we go, Steelers, here we go!" right before kickoff. His face flushed red throughout the back and forth battle, his blood pressure rising and falling with every series of downs. Franco ran for a touchdown and even Bradshaw got over the one-yard line. To the guys in the basement, the Broncos were a soft team built on "Orange Crush" marketing hype. They weren't as supercilious as the Miami Dolphins or as purely evil as the Dallas Cowboys, they were simply vacuous.
The score was tied deep into the game. The steelworkers had faith that the Steelers would pull through. But then Bradshaw threw an interception. And then another. Broncos 34, Steelers 21. Like the blast furnaces along the Monongahela, the men in Coyne's house, the out-of-work fans wasting away in the Iron City, wondered if the Steelers had lost their fire.
It made Pat Coyne tremble with rage. His town was desperate for winners.
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WITH DORSETT, THE COWBOYS OFFENSE WAS UNSTOPPABLE. Opposing defenses that committed to stopping him put a man in every rushing hole. They might slow him down, but it would leave opponents susceptible to Roger Staubach and his fleet cadre of receivers--Drew Pearson, Golden Richards, Tony Hill, Butch Johnson, and tight end Billy Joe Dupree. With play-action-fake handoffs to Dorsett, the defense would attack the line of scrimmage, freeing up receivers downfield and sideline to sideline. When the defense adjusted to shut down the passing game, Dorsett would run wild.
The Cowboys barreled through the 1977 playoffs. Dorsett ran for 156 yards and three touchdowns on the way to Super Bowl XII. It would be played in the same stadium that Pitt won its national championship just a year before--the Superdome in New Orleans. Like Super Bowl VI, the Cowboys defense dominated the AFC champions (the Denver Broncos), and after a jittery start, the offense performed with Landry precision. Dorsett ran for the first touchdown of the game and then settled into a steady rhythm, finishing with sixty-six yards on fifteen carries. The Cowboys won their second championship with ease, 27-10.
A jubilant Gil Brandt, the one who had predicted a Super Bowl win after the draft, spoke for the franchise. "We realized we were never going to win the big games without a great tailback. Tony Dorsett is the ingredient that made us champions again." Dorsett knew it, too. Even with Dallas's hate-and-now-love relationship with him, he held the cards. "The Cowboys needed me as much as I needed them. But I knew and they knew that I could not be controlled. That gave me a lot of leverage as an athlete and a person. And I liked having that leverage."
OVERTIME
1978-1979
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STEELERS PRACTICES WERE WIDE-OPEN AFFAIRS. REPORTERS strolled the sidelines, casually making notes of a botched play, or a player who looked tired, or a new wrinkle in the game plan. Access to the locker room was just as liberal. Before practice, after practice, whenever reporters wanted to, really, they could stroll in for a chat with the players. Noll gave his one press conference on Monday and preferred not talking to reporters again until after the game on Sunday. "He was glad to give us access so we wouldn't bother him," says former Post-Gazette writer Vito Stellino. "Joe Gordon would hand out the home phone numbers of the players on a mimeographed sheet at the start of the year."
As camp neared in 1978, the story reporters focused on was how the NFL's new rules would impact the sticky-fingered, beat-'em-up style of Pittsburgh's defensive backs and its run-heavy offense. The dictates had been the brainchild of Tex Schramm, designed from his perch as head of the competition committee. Before the 1977 season, rules outlawing the head slap and bumping a receiver more than once during his pattern had been enacted. Then, before the 1978 season, the rules committee stipulated that a defensive back's bump could only be within five yards of the line of scrimmage. It was referred to as "the Mel Blount" rule. Everyone assumed Schramm had created it to keep the Steelers from ever winning again.
But one player saw the changes as an opportunity. "I think a quarterback will now be able to adjust to his routes and maybe get rid of the ball a little quicker," Bradshaw told the Pittsburgh Press that summer. "I think you'll have the same basic coverages, but I think the bump-and-run will go out the window. This is gonna stop all the people laying all over the receivers' backs. And that could definitely help me, because a lot of times what has held us up is receivers getting jammed by a cornerback who is all over him."
When Pittsburgh won its first two titles, Bradshaw knew his defense was stout enough and his running game strong enough that he didn't need to win games with his right arm. But in 1978, two seasons removed from the Steelers' last title, he decided to take control of his team. He recognized that his defense was aging--Greene and Greenwood were in their tenth seasons, Blount was in his ninth, White, Ham, and Holmes were in their eighth--and that Franco Harris had been slowed by nagging injuries. Instead of managing games, he was going to win them. "The team morphed a little bit," says Ted Petersen, the former offensive linemen. "Bradshaw started taking the reins."
And Noll, for so long his quarterback's biggest critic, understood this. The chill between them didn't quite thaw, but Noll was always a pragmatist. In the first half of the decade, NFL rules gave an advantage to defensive linemen and the running game. Now they favored more wide-open offenses and a strong-armed quarterback. As a fully formed human being, a connoisseur of wine, a pilot, a scuba diver and, once, a guest conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony, Noll could adapt.
Which is why, on the first play in the first training-camp practice of 1978, Bradshaw threw a pass. Reporters made a note of it.
The entire vibe at camp that year was different than the year before, and not just because Bradshaw had Noll's permission to let loose. There were no holdouts, no lawsuits, no "distractions," as Dan Rooney called them. "This camp is about football, not gossip," said Joe Greene. "Everything that's happening in this camp is about football. We're going to be going about our business, what we're being paid for."
"I sensed the atmosphere being different than my rookie year," says Dungy. "After two weeks of training camp I could tell it was going to be a special year. I called my mom and told her I think we are going to the Super Bowl."
It wasn't just Bradshaw who felt emboldened by the new rules. His two receivers--Stallworth and Swann--had already shown what they could do with defensive backs draped all over them. Swann's gift of flight had been proven. And in 1977, Stallworth averaged nearly eighteen yards per catch. But in the seasons prior to that, Stallworth, the fourth-round pick out of Alabama A&M, had come along more slowly than his first-round, big-school counterpart. In their second years, Swann had forty-nine catches, eleven touchdowns, and a Super Bowl MVP award, while Stallworth had just twenty catches. In their third years, Swann had ten starts and Stallworth just three. "In the beginning they didn't get along and there was competition," says Joe Gordon. "And early on Stallworth resented that Swann got more attention and balls."
The two were opposites in nearly every way. Stallworth was 6'2", 191 pounds of lean muscle. He was faster than the compact Swann, who was barely 5'11" and weighed 180 pounds. And while Swann earned his fame by making acrobatic catches against one-on-one coverage, he earned his money by using his smaller body and pitter-patter feet to sneak through the middle of t
he defense. Stallworth had no qualms about stretching across the field, but with his big body and long strides, he excelled at sideline routes. "The difference [between them] was that when Stallworth caught the ball and got a step," Bradshaw wrote in Looking Deep, "you weren't going to catch him."
Their personalities seemed to match their games. Swann was tenacious, the guy who bounced back up and told you how great he was because he never doubted it. Off the field he dressed like a first-round pick, talked like a first-round pick, and carried himself like a first-round pick, long after he had actually been a first-round pick. He had been a public relations major at USC, and had chosen that school because the highly touted quarterback he teamed up with in high school had gone to Stanford; he wanted to be on his own, to prove to people that he was the great receiver, not just the guy catching this particular quarterback's passes. "Lynn looked at himself as a national figure," says Gordon. "He was more receptive to national media than to Pittsburgh's."
Stallworth didn't want the attention; he wanted the ball. Making catches was the only way to prove, as a kid from a small black college, that he belonged as he knew he did. He quietly seethed when Bradshaw, a right-handed quarterback, naturally looked left, the direction Swann usually lined up. One afternoon after a Steelers win, he mentioned to Noll how few passes he caught and Noll told him, "John, it's not about you catching a lot of passes, it's about the fact that we won." Stallworth replied, "I'd like to think we could achieve both."
The job of receivers is inherently lonely. They line up at the edge of the field, endure hand-to-hand combat with the man covering them, run at full capacity for ten or twenty or thirty yards or more, and can only hope the quarterback sees them in the three seconds he has to unload the ball. They lack any control over their destiny, unless they scream, jump up and down, and demand they get the ball, like a six-year-old. Which is why, in nearly every huddle, Bradshaw heard from both of his receivers that they were open and he should be looking their way. "They competed against one another," says Petersen. "They liked each other, but they both wanted to be the go-to guy. Bradshaw used to say how much he loved throwing to Jim Smith, who was the third guy in passing situations. He was just getting their goat and keeping the rivalry going. 'I just love throwing to Smitty,' he'd say, to keep that fire burning."
Their early rivalry, at least the one Stallworth had with Swann, grew into grudging respect and then outright friendship as both receivers developed distinctive roles. It helped that, in 1978, it became clear early on there would be plenty of balls to pass around. Bradshaw threw a pair of touchdowns in each of the Steelers' first three games, all wins. The Steelers went six games before they had more rushing yards than passing yards. And in that seventh game, the difference in yardage was only fifteen. It wasn't until the eighth week of the season, after a franchise-best 7-0 start, that the retooled, pass-happy, Bradshaw-led Steelers finally lost. "I think Bradshaw's more confident that he's ever been before," Noll said about Bradshaw that September. "That makes a difference."
Everyone got a turn in this system. When starting tight end Bennie Cunningham was lost for the season because of a knee injury, another class of 1974 stalwart, Randy Grossman, stepped in. He'd finish the year setting a team record for catches by a tight end with thirty-seven, in just ten starts. Stallworth caught forty-one balls, nine touchdown passes, and averaged 19.5 yards per catch. Swann had sixty-one catches and eleven touchdowns. And Bradshaw threw for a career-high 2,915 yards and twenty-eight touchdowns, and completed more than 56 percent of his passes. All of this earned him the league's MVP award.
Because of Bradshaw, because of his offensive fireworks, the Steelers beat regular-season opponents by an average of more than ten points per game that season.
But, despite winning fourteen games, they weren't perfect. They led the league with thirty-nine turnovers, twenty of them coming off of Bradshaw interceptions. And when the quarterback slumped, it didn't take much for him to find those dark places. "I doubt I'll ever be able to look in the mirror and say I'm the best quarterback in football," Bradshaw said one afternoon. "Maybe it's because of my personality. I think I have charisma, but I don't think I'll get the recognition. First mistake I make, I'll be battered for it. I lose my greatness when I have a bad game. I go back to being a dummy."
The Steel Curtain, meanwhile, was starting to show some wear late in games. The front four no longer had the power to penetrate the offensive line on its own, so coaches called more blitzes. That made the Steelers vulnerable on the edges and in the middle of the field. As they never had before, teams found soft spots in the defense and exploited them. The Oilers scored fourteen second-half points to hand them their first loss. Kansas City scored twenty-one second-half points in a mid-season game, nearly pulling off an upset. The week after that, the Saints took a fourth-quarter lead against a sputtering Steeler D, which had to be bailed out by a late Bradshaw touchdown pass. "Our defense just wasn't as good," says Ham. "We were a little bit older. One game, after Bradshaw had won it for us and there were about three seconds left, he came off the field and said to me, 'Do you think you can hold them?' He was laughing."
The inability to close out games was a concern, but the panic was relative. The Steelers D gave up the fewest points in the league that year and didn't allow a first-quarter touchdown. Noll, however, wasn't amused by any slumps, perceived or otherwise. And after a 10-7 loss to the Rams--in which Bradshaw threw three picks and Franco Harris was limited to fifty yards--dropped his team to 9-2, he decided something had to be said.
Noll had a habit of laying into the team after wins and praising them after losses. It was his way of making sure that no one became complacent with success or too overcome by failure. It was also how he avoided having to divine inspiration from defeat. But after the Rams loss, he felt he had no choice. While meeting with the team, he began a story: "Gentlemen, I want to tell you a story about two monks who go for a walk by a stream. Sometime down the stream there is a fair maiden who wants to come across. The first monk goes across, brings her to the edge, and sets her down. The two monks continue down the stream in silence, and sometime further down they stop again. The second monk says to the first, 'You know, it's against our belief and our religion to come into contact with a person of opposite sex, and you disregarded that.' The first monk responded, 'I set her down back there, but you carried her all the way here.'
"Okay, I'll see you guys tomorrow at ten o'clock."
There was total silence in the room as the Steelers looked at one another in bewilderment.
But it worked. The Steelers finished the season on a five-game win streak. "I can remember, with a couple of weeks left in the season, Joe Greene said to one of the writers, 'I'll see you at the summit,'" says Petersen. "I asked one of my teammates what Greene meant by the summit. He just looked at me and said, 'The Super Bowl.' I thought, if Joe Greene thinks we're going to the Super Bowl, we must be going to the Super Bowl."
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"HOLLYWOOD" HENDERSON WAS DOING WHAT HE LOVED best. Talking, boasting, grabbing attention by the mouthful. Super Bowl XIII, once again in Miami and a rematch between the Cowboys and the Steelers, was just days away. And the brashest, biggest mouth on the Cowboys had an audience of reporters hanging on his every word. He had to deliver.
In the three seasons since Henderson had opened Super Bowl X with a record-setting kickoff return, he had become one of the most dynamic players in football. The speed he displayed as a rookie that sunny afternoon in Miami, sprinting up the field as fast as a man half his size, had been put to use as a pass-rushing linebacker. In 1977, his first year starting every game, Henderson destroyed quarterbacks and made three interceptions--one of which he returned seventy-nine yards for a touchdown--and was voted to the Pro Bowl. Oh yeah, the Cowboys won the Super Bowl, too.
It was the perfect storm of accolades and accomplishment for a player who believed he had become bigger than the star on his helmet. When Schramm told Henderson a business associate of the l
inebacker's was reportedly shady, Henderson screamed, telling Schramm he had no business deciding who he hung out with. When Giants fans cheered as he was carted off the field early in the 1978 season because of a sprained ankle, he flipped them the bird. One finger for seventy-five thousand fans. After the 1977 season, the Cowboys were one of the pro teams asked to compete in ABC's The Superstars competition. Landry and Schramm decided to send ten players--and Henderson, a Pro Bowler and the best athlete on the team, wasn't invited. So he bought himself a ticket and spent a few days taunting his teammates. One afternoon he challenged Staubach to a swim race. Another day he bought a bikini bottom on the beach and spent the afternoon sunbathing. "It seemed like every two hours I was on my way to my room with a different gal," he wrote in his autobiography, Out of Control. "I was watching the guys watch me as I go."
It was hard not to watch Henderson, no matter what he did. He played with complete abandon on kickoffs, punts, and every down on defense, laying waste to opponents with a well-placed helmet to the bottom of their chin. He darted around like a squirrel in traffic, at angles that seemed impossible to achieve for a man who was 6'2", 221 pounds. But he lived just as recklessly.
Being in big-money Dallas, a place every bit as glamorous as the TV show it inspired, encouraged Henderson to party as hard as he played. And he developed a cocaine habit. Not just a social one. He would do a line in the morning to kill the pain of all the sniffing he did the night before. He's wake up with clots of blood stuffing up his nose, injuries from the previous night's bash. He'd blow them out, feel the sting, and then snort more coke to make everything numb again. He did coke before practice, spent $1,000 a week on the drug, and carried around a roll of toilet paper to tend to his incessant runny noses. His pregame routine included packing his nose full of powder, popping amphetamines, Percodan, and some codeine pills.