Dan Rooney (27 page)

Chuck called the players around him and told them what he thought would be a good story, but one he thought also contained a message about focus. Here's how he told the story:

“In a game like this you have to be ready. They're going to talk about how we're the champs. You can't get sucked into this hype. You have to concentrate and keep your mind on the game.

“This reminds me of the two Tibetan monks who are walking in the mountains. They come to a swift stream. On the bank they find a damsel in distress. She has her maid with her but doesn't know how to cross without immodestly pulling up her skirts. The monks see her dilemma and agree to help her. The first monk picks her up, wades across the stream, sets her down, and continues on the journey. The monks walk in silence for another mile or so when the second monk
says to the first, ‘You know, the rules of our order prohibit physical contact with members of the opposite sex.' They continue on until the first monk turns and says, ‘That's right, but I put the lady down on the other side of the creek. You're still carrying her.'”

Russell, Ham, and Bleier started to laugh. But Ernie Holmes turned around shaking his head, “What's he
talking
about!”

I spent a good deal of time with Ernie. Everyone called him “Fats,” but let me tell you, in his playing days, Holmes was six-foot-two, 265 pounds of muscle. He was a key part of the original Steel Curtain, along with Joe Greene, L.C. Greenwood, and Dwight White. Ernie played with fierce intensity and used his massive forearms to push opponents aside, then push and pull them off balance. When he played well, no one could stop him. Once he shaved his head leaving only an “arrowhead” on the top, facing forward—the only direction he intended to go. This hairdo made all the national sports publications, and the whole team got a kick out of it.

Holmes came to us in 1971 from Texas Southern University in Houston, another of Bill Nunn's finds. Ernie married young and had two sons, but he also developed some serious emotional problems. He would come to me from time to time just to talk. Sometimes he thought people were out to get him and his behavior began to border on paranoia. While driving back from Ohio, after separating from his wife, Ernie worried he'd never see his boys again. On the long drive, for some reason he believed three big trucks were trying to run him off the road. He snapped, pulled a pistol, and started shooting at the trailers. Soon a police helicopter appeared overhead, and he blazed away at that, too. Eventually, he ran off the road and the state police arrested him.

Ernie contacted me, and I assured him I would personally get him the help he needed. The authorities released him into my custody. Ernie pleaded guilty to assault with a deadly weapon and received five years probation. We sent him to Pittsburgh's Western Psychiatric
Hospital, where I visited him regularly. After two months of treatment, he returned to the team and helped us win two Super Bowls. Ernie was a special guy. Regrettably, he was no longer with the team when we made our Super Bowl runs in the late 1970s. But I'm happy to say today he's an ordained minister, and his sons have graduated from college (one is a college professor) and are both fine young men.

 

 

Injuries to key players plagued us from the very beginning of the 1976 season. We opened—if you can believe it—in Oakland. Passions ran high on both sides. Remember, Swann had been mugged by George Atkinson in the AFC championship game against the Raiders. That hit was very much on our minds.

From the opening kickoff, we knew it would be a no-holds-barred kind of game. But then, just before the half, George Atkinson struck again. He threw a vicious forearm at the back of Swann's head, knocking him unconscious. I know as well as anyone, hard hits are a part of the game of football, but there's no excuse for cheap shots like that. The play in question was a third-and-5 from the Oakland 44-yard line with 1:24 left in the first half. Terry Bradshaw dumped the ball to Franco Harris down the left sideline. Swann was coming across the field from the right side, completely out of the play, as Franco was running down the left sideline. Atkinson came up from behind and slugged Swann. It seemed like a replay of the shot he had taken from Atkinson the last time we played the Raiders in the AFC championship the year before. With Swann out of the game, we ended up losing by a field goal, 31-28.

Few of us actually saw the hit on Swann at the time it occurred. I was following Franco as he turned a broken play into a big gain. But the next day when I watched the game film with Chuck Noll, we both got angry. Chuck told reporters, “You have a criminal element in all
aspects of society. Apparently we have it in the NFL, too.” Those words would haunt us for over a year.

We lost four of our first five games, and we hit bottom with a loss to the Browns in Cleveland, a game made infamous by a frightening hit Joe “Turkey” Jones put on Terry Bradshaw. After the whistle, with Bradshaw in his grasp, Jones flipped Terry over his hip and spiked him into the turf headfirst. A lesser man might have suffered a broken neck, and a lesser team might have packed it in for the season. But in that cramped visitors' locker room in Cleveland Stadium, Joe Greene said, “If we have to be in this position all I can tell you is I'd rather be in it with this team, with these people, and particularly with the man running it.”

Of course, the man running it was Chuck Noll, and he was able to hold the team together and get it going on what would end up being a nine-game winning streak. This achievement has to be one of the greatest coaching jobs in the history of professional sports.

That streak got us into the playoffs, which opened for us that year in Baltimore against the Colts. That was a wild game. Some crazy pilot decided to pull a stunt and land on the field. He came in low, pulled up, stalled, and crashed in the stands that thankfully had emptied early because we had sent the Colts fans home by rolling up a big lead. No one was hurt, not even the pilot, but that game did produce injuries on the field. Our two running backs, Franco Harris and Rocky Bleier, as well as Gerela, our kicker, suffered injuries that knocked them out of the game. We still won the game, 40-14, but the injuries would take a heavy toll the next week.

During the regular season, our defense had really come together. Bradshaw was out six games, and with the only other quarterback on the roster being rookie Mike Kruczek, our defense had to crank it up a notch. In this instance, words really don't do justice to the way our defense played, so I'm going to rely on some statistics to tell the story. During the nine straight wins that took us from 1-4 to 10-4 by the
end of the regular season, our defense posted five shutouts and allowed a total of 28 points. We had five sacks in the 27-0 win over the Giants; the defense allowed only seven first downs and had five takeaways in a 23-0 win over San Diego; it was six more takeaways and 34 rushing yards allowed in a 43-0 win over Kansas City; in the 42-0 rout of Tampa Bay, the defense allowed only 11 net yards passing and eight first downs; and in a 21-0 victory in Houston, the Oilers finished with more punts than first downs, 11-9.

The only thing standing between us and an NFL record three straight Super Bowl championships in December 1976 was Al Davis's Oakland Raiders. But the injuries in the Colts game hit us hard. Neither Franco Harris (ribs) nor Rocky Bleier (toe), both of whom had posted 1,000-yard seasons, suited up for the game, and Frenchy Fuqua played at less than 100 percent because of a calf injury. Our only healthy back was Reggie Harrison, and running the ball was the bread and butter of our offense that season. Again some statistics: During the nine-game winning streak in the regular season, our offense rushed for more than 200 yards in every game but one—when we ran for 143 yards against the Houston Oilers at Three Rivers Stadium. That was avenged with 258 yards in the rematch in the Astrodome on the final week of the regular season. During the nine-game winning streak, the Steelers rushed for 2,101 yards and averaged 4.5 yards per carry, and we had thirty-three rushing touchdowns on the season, allowing only five.

Without our primary offensive weapons we were at a disadvantage, but this was another instance when Chuck Noll showed his greatness as a coach. With only one week to prepare, Noll completely redesigned our offense into a one-back set—revolutionary for that time in the NFL. Later Joe Gibbs would use many of these same offensive principles to win three Super Bowls with the Washington Redskins in the 1980s and 1990s. But with no real time to install the offense, and
against an opponent as tough as the Raiders, it never had a chance to succeed. We lost that game, 24-7, and the AFC championship.

Yet, even in the atmosphere of this bitter disappointment, our players revealed their heart and character. In the locker room after the game, Jack Lambert said, “I'd play 'em again tomorrow. Just give me a few beers, a couple of hours of sleep, and I'll be out there at 1 p.m. tomorrow.”

In my opinion, the defense we fielded in 1976 was the best in the history of the game. Our Steel Curtain defense smothered opponents. In the next two years, the league's Rules Committee recommended and the owners approved changes that would open up the passing game and cut down on injuries. Some of these changes came about as a result of the domination of the Steelers defense. Under the new rules, defenders could still make contact with eligible receivers, but only once. No contact was permissible five yards beyond the line of scrimmage. In addition, the league outlawed the head-slap, which Joe Greene used so effectively.

The Raiders beat the Minnesota Vikings to win Super Bowl XI, Al Davis's first Super Bowl victory. But Davis wasn't one to rest on his laurels. He always looked for the main chance. He believed in keeping his opponents off balance, whether in a tough negotiation at a league meeting or on the playing field. That was his style—just Al being Al.

Remember the words “criminal element”? After Chuck Noll publicly criticized George Atkinson for his cheap shot on Lynn Swann, the press had a field day with Chuck's “criminal element” statement. Pete Rozelle and I both worried about the public perception of violence in the NFL. I told Pete—and I even wrote a letter—his fine of only $1,500 on Atkinson did not send a clear enough message that such flagrant acts of unnecessary violence would not be tolerated. And I thought it was unfair that Pete slapped Noll with a $1,000 fine for speaking his mind on the matter.

With all this going on, I believe Davis saw an opening. He would distract and disrupt the Steelers even before the 1977 season began. I don't think George Atkinson came up with the idea of suing Chuck Noll for $3 million for “slander and defamation of character” all by himself. NFL rules prohibited one team from suing another, but an individual player can take legal action against a team. Of course, I don't know the details of the arrangement, but at the time everyone seemed to suspect Davis supported Atkinson and brought in the best lawyers available. I believe Al bankrolled the whole thing.

Some writers have referred to Al Davis as the “Dark Genius,” implying malevolence. I don't know about that. I don't think he's evil. But he's no genius. He's a good football man. I got some insights into the way he thinks from my good friend Richie McCabe. After his playing days with the Steelers, Richie went into coaching, including a brief stint with the Raiders. He wasn't there very long, and when he came back to Pittsburgh I asked him how it went working for Al Davis.

“I can't take him,” Richie told me. “I just can't stand it. He'd send a play down and say, ‘Run this defense on the third or second down.' I didn't think he knew what he was doing. It wasn't a question of being dumb or not knowing football. Maybe he wasn't paying any attention.” Al set the tone for his team. He wanted them to be feared and cultivated in his players a swaggering, almost outlaw image. They were called Raiders and he wanted them to act like Raiders.

The Atkinson lawsuit against Chuck could not have come at a worse time for the Steelers. The trial was scheduled to start in San Francisco in the summer of 1977, just as we opened our training camp in Latrobe. As a defendant in the case, Chuck Noll would be expected to testify, as would a number of our star players, including Andy Russell, Jack Ham, Rocky Bleier, and Terry Bradshaw. The whole thing seemed calculated to foul up our preparations for the 1977 season.

I personally spent four weeks in the MacArthur Suite at the St. Francis Hotel, a long time considering I should have been working on contracts—both Blount and Lambert were holding out—game schedules, and team logistics.

Fortunately, the judge in the case, U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Conti, was a reasonable man. He agreed that Chuck could testify immediately after the opening arguments and then be allowed to return to camp, as long as I was on hand for the entire trial to represent the team's interest. However, the judge also stipulated that Chuck would have to come back near the end of the trial. This schedule would enable him to set up camp and spend at least some time with the team.

We believed we were in the right—that if we honestly presented our case, even a San Francisco jury would do the right thing. But our insurance company advised us to settle out of court with Atkinson for $50,000 to avoid the expense of a lengthy trial. I said, “We're not settling—we're going to win this thing.” I felt strongly that Noll had to win in order to be exonerated. We had to think of the league, too. Settling out of court would look like a cover-up.

The insurance company then sent us a lawyer we didn't agree with. So I brought in our own attorney, a very capable Irishman named James Martin MacInnis. MacInnis understood exactly what we needed to do to win the case. He used common sense and sound argument to show the jury why nothing Noll said or did constituted libel.

MacInnis advised us not to challenge any juror during the jury-selection process. We didn't—but the judge did. He asked a prospective juror, a woman, “Do you live in Oakland?”