by Rudy Dicks
Now they needed help. Either Detroit or Washington had to upset Cleveland, but the Steelers could find some hope in the resurgence by the Lions. Winners of only four games, the Lions had turned from the biggest flops of the NFL to “the bogeyman of both conference races” after tying the Packers on Thanksgiving Day.32
There was even a chance, as unlikely as it was, that the Steelers could vault into first place in the Eastern Conference on Sunday if both the Giants and Browns lost. The Steelers would be 7–3–3 (.700), and New York and Cleveland would be 9–4–0 (.692)—and so would St. Louis, with a victory, thus creating a three-way tie for second. “It’s all very confusing,” Jack Sell wrote.33 Not entirely. The Steelers knew one thing for sure: They had to beat the Cowboys. Parker’s team could not afford another tie.
On Saturday morning, Pearl Harbor Day, as the Steelers took a flight to Dallas, the Post-Gazette ran a story headlined “Gloom Shrouds Night Life in Dallas.” The “kicker” on the head read: “Horror of Assassination Still Hangs Heavily.” An editorial in the paper commented, “It is a monstrous injustice to blame the millions of patriotic and law abiding citizens of Dallas, of Texas, of the whole United States for complicity in the death of the President.”
But no one could escape the fact that Dallas was the site where John F. Kennedy was slain. “The bus driver took us on a tour past Dealey Plaza and the whole deal, coming back from the Cotton Bowl after a brief workout,” Atkinson recalled. “Eerie.”34
Art Rooney Jr., along with his father and Fran Fogarty, the business manager, were given a tour around the city by an acquaintance. “People were milling about; it was just quiet,” Art Rooney Jr. said. “I was a young adult, and I found it really spooky.” The elder Rooney had met Kennedy and was “terribly hurt” by the assassination, his son said. From then on, Art Jr. said, his father would make any excuse not to travel to Dallas unless a trip was unavoidable.35
The surreal atmosphere continued. Atkinson remembered the night before the game when the Steelers had their team dinner at the hotel. “In comes Bobby Layne with Mickey Mantle. Mickey Mantle was so drunk he couldn’t get his chin off his chest. Talk about seeing an icon crumble before your eyes—boy, that was sad. That was his downfall.”36
In three weeks, 75,504 fans would jam the Cotton Bowl to watch the No. 1 Texas Longhorns take on Roger Staubach and Navy on New Year’s Day in the postseason game that the University of Pittsburgh felt worthy of an invitation. But for the Cowboys’ home finale, only 24,136 fans showed up on a sunny but blustery afternoon, with 25 mph winds. The gusts quickly became a factor and would influence strategy, especially a critical decision in the final minutes.
Landry had abandoned the QB shuttle and committed himself to Meredith, but in deference to LeBaron’s final home game, the eleven-year veteran was given the start. He hit Pettis Norman with a 32-yard pass to move into Steeler territory on the Cowboys’ first possession, but a holding penalty negated a 24-yard screen pass to Marsh and pushed Dallas back into its own territory. Marsh gained 12 yards on a delay, but an incompletion left Dallas with fourth-and-11 at the Steeler 46. Sam Baker, with the wind at his back, drilled a 53-yard field goal, the third-longest in NFL history at the time.
The Steelers started from their 20, with Johnson and Sapp picking up big chunks of yardage, but Ed Brown fumbled and defensive end George Andrie recovered on the Dallas 37. Meredith took over for LeBaron and, after an incompletion, threw a swing pass to Marsh for 35 yards before Bob Schmitz caught him at the Steeler 24. Bullocks carried four straight times, hammering the middle of the defense, to move Dallas to the 1. Meredith recovered his own fumble on first-and-goal, losing a yard, and after Bullocks was stopped at the line, the quarterback muscled his way over right tackle for the touchdown. LeBaron mishandled the snap on the point after, making it 9–0, Dallas, with 1:01 left in the quarter.
With the aid of the wind, Baker’s kickoff sailed out of the end zone for the second straight time, denying Ballman a shot at a long return. The Steelers were starting to bring a trace of validation to Livingston’s assessment of them as “a ribald band of head-hunting youngsters who can’t play a lick under pressure.”37 If that wasn’t entirely true, it was fair to suggest that the Steelers often resembled a boxer who hasn’t warmed up properly before entering the ring and quickly finds himself in trouble.
As the second quarter began, the Steelers had the benefit of the wind at their backs. On second-and-9 from his 45, Brown heaved a pass that defensive back Cornell Green tipped, and Buddy Dial, “stumbling and weaving, somehow managed to pick it from the air. The incredible Steeler receiver then danced the remaining 15 yards … while Green and Mike Gaechter watched in helpless horror.”38 Lou Michaels kicked the point after to make it 9–7.
The teams went 3-and-out on four of the next five possessions, but Pittsburgh got good field position, at its own 40, after Baker’s punt into the wind went only 28 yards in the final minutes before the half. Brown connected with Ballman on first down for 32 yards, down to the Dallas 28.
Preston Carpenter finished the season with seventeen catches, a drop from his thirty-six receptions in his Pro Bowl season of ’62, but as a tight end he was vital in the Steeler scheme as a blocker. “I was a good blocker because I played blocking back in the single wing at Arkansas,” he explained. “All I did was block. I never ran the football at Arkansas. I never touched the ball.”39
The Browns drafted him in the first round, the thirteenth overall pick, in the infamous 1956 draft that saw the Steelers take Gary Glick with their lottery bonus pick and then select Mississippi State halfback Art Davis four spots later, allowing Lenny Moore to fall to the Colts in the ninth slot. Cleveland used Carpenter as a running back, and he rushed for 756 yards as a rookie, with a 4.0 average. He also was a return man, averaging 25.4 yards on kickoffs. Cleveland shifted him to split end the next year, but Pittsburgh moved him to tight end. “I was a good blocker for 198 pounds,” he said. “I blocked guys 245, 250. I took pride in my blocking.”40 Dial called Carpenter “just about the best blocking end I’ve seen.”41
But Carpenter loved to catch the ball. “I wish I had speed,” he said. “I could have been another Ray Renfro.” Forty-four years after that game in Dallas, Carpenter still sounded like a kid with a dream. “I always wanted an opportunity to catch a touchdown pass and win a ball game,” he said.42 On the play after Ballman’s catch, Carpenter, running step for step with defensive back Warren Livingston, caught a 28-yard touchdown in the right corner of the end zone—his lone touchdown of the season. Now Pittsburgh was up, 14–9, with 1:57 before the half.
Meredith sent in LeBaron during the next series, but after reaching the 45 with the aid of a roughing-the-passer penalty, Dallas had to punt. Baker’s kick went only 30 yards but left the Steelers with barely half a minute before halftime. On first down from the Steeler 35, Brown hit Dial with a 48-yard completion. Dial got out of bounds at the 17-yard line to stop the clock with two seconds left, and Michaels hit a 24-yard field goal to give Pittsburgh a 17–9 lead.
The Cowboys were proving to be stubborn, but the Steelers had shown good balance in the first half. Brown was six of eight for 171 yards and two touchdowns, and John Henry Johnson and Sapp had 138 yards rushing evenly split between them. But the powerful winds loomed as the pivotal influence on the field.
On the first series of the second half, the Steelers appeared to have forced a punt when Michaels stuffed Meredith for no gain at the Dallas 34 on third-and-4, but the defensive end was called for a face mask penalty, giving the Cowboys a first down on the 49. Dallas advanced to the Steeler 28, but Michaels dropped Bullocks for a 10-yard loss. LeBaron was inserted again, and he threw two incompletions, so Baker kicked a 46-yard field goal into the wind, cutting the Steeler lead to 17–12.
The Steelers picked their way to midfield, but even with the wind at his back Michaels couldn’t hit a 56-yard field goal attempt. Gaechter caught the ball on the 8 and returned it to the 24. Marsh gained 21 yards on a de
lay up the middle before Glenn Glass hauled him down at the Steeler 43. After Michaels dropped Meredith for a 4-yard loss, Norman made a diving 42-yard catch that gave Dallas a first-and-goal at the 5. After Bullocks picked up a yard, Meredith rolled around left end to put the Cowboys ahead, 19–17, with 3:38 left in the third quarter.
A short kickoff and Ballman’s 28-yard return put the Steelers on their 46. Brown was moving his team, but on first down at the Dallas 24, defensive back Don Bishop intercepted a pass at the 2 as the third quarter ticked away. Pittsburgh stopped Meredith on the first series of the fourth quarter, but for the next fifteen minutes the Cowboys could count on their best ally: the wind. Baker boomed a 56-yard punt that Dick Haley returned 1 yard to the 25. The Steelers gained one first down before they had to punt.
A few years later, Ballman would become a teammate of both Mike Ditka and Baker on the Eagles. Loris Hoskins “Sam” Baker liked to sneak out after curfew, Ballman recalled, and kept a makeup kit to disguise himself, often as an old man. One night Baker was leaving his room, in makeup and carrying a cane, and passed Eagle coach Joe Kuharich in the hall. Baker said good evening to the coach and kept right on walking, unrecognized, a six-foot-two, 220-pound man actually in his mid-thirties.43
But without question, the nine-year vet from Oregon State had a leg to kick a football. Defensive end John Baker (no relation) dropped Meredith for a 4-yard loss on third-and-1 from the Dallas 29, so Sam Baker came in and unloaded a 58-yard punt that Haley returned 9 yards to his 27. The Steelers got as far as the Dallas 46 before they were forced to punt on fourth-and-7. They needed a break, but even when they got one, it seemed to backfire. The Cowboys were caught with too many men on the field on the punt, so, with the benefit of an extra 5 yards that left Pittsburgh 2 short of a first down, Michaels attempted a 49-yard field goal, into the wind. Bishop blocked the kick, and instead of having possession on the 12, where Brown’s punt had landed, the Cowboys took over on their 47. Meredith lost 4 yards and threw two incompletions, but Baker got off a 57-yard punt, into the end zone. The Steelers looked capable of beating the Cowboys, but it didn’t look as if they could beat Mother Nature.
Parker’s crew was likely down to its last shot. Brown was sacked by Andrie and Larry Stephens for a 4-yard loss, and then his screen pass to Johnson was tipped away by Andrie. On third down, Brown’s pass over the middle to Carpenter went incomplete, leaving Pittsburgh with fourth-and-14 at the 16-yard line with four-and-a-half minutes to go, and “things looking black as a coal miner’s meeting clothes.”44
To Cowboy fans, what happened next was a microcosm of their ill-fated season. “Any other club would have been dressing for the victory dance, but the Cowboys have a genuine passion for these situations,” Gary Cartwright wrote in the Dallas Morning News. Cowboy fans had endured an infinitesimal amount of the heartbreak that Steeler fans had suffered, but the letdowns by the ’63 Cowboys had swiftly turned their fans into cynics, waiting for disaster, just as Pittsburgh fans had been resigned to failure for decades. “Any school girl could have told you that, having the odds stacked so impressively in their direction, nothing could help the Cowboys. Not the Turkish cavalry, not Scotland Yard, not Billy Graham, not Mary Worth.”45
But this season was turning out differently for Steeler fans. From a Pittsburgh fan’s perspective, thinking back to the heroics of Bob Schmitz, Red Mack, and Gary Ballman, the Steelers had the Cowboys right where they wanted ’em.
“There was nothing else we could do,” Parker said afterward. “We had to keep the ball. We had to score or we were out of it.”46
Brown lined up to punt. Atkinson, who had been playing special teams all year, was preparing to cover the kick. “There’s a funny story,” he explained forty-four years later. “I was 10 yards down the field covering the punt, and I had no idea it was a fake. I guess they called the play on the sidelines and not in the huddle on the field. I might have been the only guy on the Steelers that didn’t know. I’m 10 yards down the field, and I didn’t hear the foot hit the ball. Ed Brown’s pass goes flying by me.” No call was made by the officials; no flag was thrown. “Well, I sure got away with one in Dallas, I’ll tell you that. They just completely missed it.”47
Brown targeted Mack, but the Cowboys, evidently, weren’t suckered by the fake. “He ran a great pattern and made a good fake,” Parker said. “We didn’t fool them with that pass call, you know. Mack was covered and they had four men on [end] Johnny Burrell, but Red made a great play to get out in the open.”48
“Mack had only one man to beat,” Brown said, “and he did it.”49 Just like he did in the game at Forbes Field against the Cowboys.
Mack caught the pass—his only catch of the day, and his first since the Browns game—down the right sideline and ran 42 yards to the Cowboy 42. On first down, Andrie held Johnson to a yard over left tackle. Sapp gained 8 yards over right end, but on third-and-1, Stephens stopped him at the line. With fourth-and-1 at the 33, Parker sent in the field goal unit but then called time-out.
“Buster Ramsey brought up the wind,” Parker explained later. “We were going to kick, but Buster suggested we go for the sticks [the first-down marker]. He figured even if we did kick a field goal against the wind, the Cowboys would come back with the wind behind him and Sam Baker would kick a 55-yarder to beat us. If it weren’t for that, I’d have gone for the field goal.”50
Michaels would have been kicking a 40-yarder—into the wind. “Well, it took me off the spot,” he said, “but if he said to kick it, I’d have made it.”51
In the aftermath of Michael’s oh-for-five day against Cleveland a month before, Post-Gazette columnist Al Abrams had commented, “Lou Michaels is a man who thinks and broods a lot.”52 But Michaels always took on questions with as straightforward an approach as his steps to a kick, and his confidence did not waver after the game when pressed about whether he had worried about a kick—one single play—that could determine the fate of his team’s season. “No, sir, not a bit,” he replied. “I knew I wouldn’t miss it. You got to think positive. If you think you’re not going to make it, you won’t.”53
Parker decided to go for it. John Henry Johnson took the handoff and dived over right guard for two yards to give the Steelers a first down at the 31.
Sapp was in the lineup at halfback because Dick Hoak had pulled a leg muscle in the first half against Philadelphia. On a team dotted with players who had been unlikely candidates to make a living as professional football players—from Russell to Daniel to Reger—perhaps the most improbable of all was Theron Coleman Sapp, who grew up in central Georgia, the youngest of ten children. Sapp’s college career at Georgia was in jeopardy after he cracked three vertebrae in his neck while practicing for a high school all-star football game. “If you were my son, you’d never play football again,” Sapp remembered the doctor telling him.54
Sapp sat out his freshman college year, wearing a cast that covered the upper half of his body. He played sparingly in his sophomore year, then finished third among Southeastern Conference rushers as a junior, and second to LSU’s Billy Cannon as a senior in 1958. But it was one game, on November 30, 1957, that immortalized Sapp in Georgia football history. The Bulldogs, in their third consecutive losing season, had lost eight straight to Georgia Tech—a stretch known as “the Drought”—and were mired in a scoreless tie with their rival when Sapp recovered a fumble at midfield. Sapp carried seven times on Georgia’s drive, capping the march with his 1-yard touchdown on fourth-and-goal, to give the Bulldogs a 7–0 victory. It was one of six touchdowns he scored as a collegian. Sapp earned the nickname “the Drought Breaker,” saw his No. 40 jersey retired, and even had a poem written about him by a fan.
On a blustery day in Dallas, Sapp was closing in on a 100-yard rushing day when he lined up behind Brown on first-and-10 at the 31. Sapp had not scored a touchdown all season. He went around left end for 7 yards before linebacker Dave Edwards stopped him. From the 24, Brown called on Sapp again.
It was Ditka�
��s run against the Steelers that would take on epic proportions that season, but there were other efforts, long forgotten, that could stand out among the highlights. The next play was remarkable in its simplicity, and devastating in its execution.
“Everybody blocked straight ahead,” Buzz Nutter explained. “It was a quick handoff to the halfback, who followed the fullback between [Ray] Lemek and [Charlie] Bradshaw.”55 A year earlier at Forbes Field, during one goal line stand by Dallas in a 42–27 victory, linebacker Jerry Tubbs had shrugged off a block by Bradshaw “with little more concern than if he were bumped by a fat lady in a bus” and tackled John Henry Johnson.56 But on this Sunday Johnson wasn’t carrying the ball, and he underscored his passion for blocking by knocking Tubbs “halfway to Lubbock.” Sapp zipped through the hole, off right tackle, in a flash, pivoted to his left and ran a few steps laterally, and then darted to the left sideline. “Cutting downfield, behind Dan James and Mike Sandusky now, Sapp hurtled, wriggling free of Defensive Back Mike Gaechter and streaked by Don Bishop into the clear.” Tubbs recovered, gave chase, and made a futile attempt at a tackle near the 5-yard line. “It was the greatest blocking I ever saw,” Sapp said.57
And it was matched by an extraordinary individual effort. It was “a sprint in which he ran over four or five Cowboys and lurched past Tubbs for the winning touchdown, the one that could put Pittsburgh in line for a crack at the franchise’s first championship in history.”58 Parker had made the perfect move weeks earlier when he picked up a running back whose nagging injuries had kept him from making the kind of run he did on this day. “I don’t think there’s a man in football who could have stopped him, once he got his momentum up,” the coach said.59