The '63 Steelers (14 page)

It was a working arrangement that was bound to produce friction over the season. “I can remember hearing that Brown was asked to talk to Bobby on the headphones,” Andy Russell said, “and he threw the phone down and said, ‘You're full of shit,' and walked away. There was a little animosity between the two—or irritation—one quarterback picking on another.”
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Layne had been acclaimed as a master of late-game heroics. A couple of other quarterbacks in the division drew reverence by earning their masters—degrees, that is—in off-the-field career development. As October broke, Brown had already led the Steelers over the Cards and Charley Johnson, who, not even twenty-five, was hailed as “the erudite St. Louis Cardinal physicist.”
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Next, Brown had to go up against Frank Ryan, who, at twenty-seven, had a master's degree in math and was studying at Rice for his PhD and was regarded as “another quarterback whose intelligence hovers around the genius range.” One story in a football magazine featuring the two quarterbacks was titled “Inside Football's Biggest Brains.”
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Brown, in his tenth year, was more likely to be given the tag “journeyman,” but, as phlegmatic as he was, was not likely to complain about it.

As the Steelers began gearing up for the Browns, Cordileone, for one, was not awed by Ryan's resume. “He can't play with a slide rule,” the defensive tackle sniffed. “Did you ever see a mathematician without a slide rule?”
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The Browns seemed to be energized. For the first time since the team's inaugural season of 1946, Paul Brown was not on the Cleveland sidelines calling plays. Art Modell had fired the fifty-four-year-old coach in the second week of January and replaced him with assistant Blanton Collier. On January 10, the same day that Buddy Parker settled on a one-year contract with Art Rooney, and civic leaders unveiled a model of the North Side stadium that was to be built at a cost of $45,170,000 and finished by 1966, Paul Brown made his first comments since being fired. “It did come as a shock and surprise to me,” he admitted.
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Jim Brown and his teammates were playing as if they had been liberated from the constraints of Paul Brown's coaching. Ryan's emergence had given the team another dimension to their powerful offense. No longer did Cleveland employ a strategy of simply handing off to Jimmy Brown and letting
him ramble for 135 or 150 yards. Ryan, after having taken the starting job from Jim Ninowski, ranked as the No. 2 quarterback in the league, behind Y. A. Tittle, with forty-one completions in sixty-four attempts for 674 yards, six touchdowns, and four interceptions in three games. Ed Brown ranked eighth.

Jim Brown, “running as he never ran before,” had scored six touchdowns and racked up 489 yards rushing on fifty-seven carries—an average of 8.6 yards a carry—and was 262 yards ahead of the Cards' Joe Childress, in second place. In fact, during the entire '62 season, only twelve backs in the league had done better over fourteen games than Brown had in three.
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The Steelers' running attack was clicking, too, and Pittsburgh's domination of the Giants impressed Gene Ward of the
New York Daily News
enough for him to rate John Henry Johnson and Dick Hoak as the top backfield combination in the league.
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But the ankle Johnson injured against the Cardinals proved to be problematic, and at Wednesday's practice he and linebacker George Tarasovic were limping. Trainer Roger McGill said he expected both to be ready for the Browns, but the next day it was clear that Johnson's swollen ankle would prevent him from playing. “I don't see how he can,” Buddy Parker said. “He can hardly walk.”
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That meant that Bob Ferguson, who had sparked the second-half surge against the Cards, would start. Johnson's absence also meant that if the running game faltered, the pressure would fall on Ed Brown to move the Steelers.

Whatever Ed Brown lacked in personality, the team was making up for it collectively. He may not have been the inspirational type, but neither was Parker. The other thirty-six players on the roster, aside from Brown, found motivation from within or from each other. No team in the NFL quite reflected its plucky population and grimy environment quite so much as the underdog Pittsburgh Steelers, and no one fit the role of overachiever better than Hoak. Hoak was a seventh-round draft pick in 1961 out of Penn State, where he'd played quarterback. He was a local kid, from nearby Jeanette, an overachiever without great athletic gifts, but a guy with a blue-collar worker's mentality. “He digs in there,” Parker said. “He's not afraid to hit.” Hoak was “an inconspicuous introvert” during the first two weeks of camp in his rookie season, but he had “a flair for doing his job well—if not spectacularly.”
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He stepped in for the injured Tom Tracy in the preseason opener and had fourteen carries for 61 yards—eight fewer than the Colts' team total—and earned a start in the next exhibition game.

Two seasons later, Hoak was an unlikely candidate to rise among the NFL rushing leaders. “Off his physical appearance, he doesn't impress one as a
power runner but he runs with as much power as anybody on the team,” beat writer Pat Livingston wrote. “He also has a deceptive gait that throws a defender off stride, a quality that he substitutes effectively for speed.”
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All in all, a euphemistic description of an undersized (although listed by the Steelers as five foot eleven, 190 pounds) and slow runner, but one who had earned the respect of teammates and opponents alike for going all-out on every play. “If the Steelers had 37 guys like Hoak, we'd win the championship for sure,” center Madison Monroe “Buzz” Nutter said.
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Brady Keys, a fourteenth-round pick the year before Hoak arrived, was an unheralded player who turned into a relentless cover man and daring tackler. He wasn't the most gifted defensive back, but he was indispensable to the Steelers. He was a fighter, a toiler who didn't get a lot of praise or recognition, but he was someone who wouldn't quit, and those were qualities Pittsburgh fans could admire. “I'm not a spectacular type of ball player,” he admitted. “I never have a bad day and I never have a great day. Therefore, I get no credit at all.”
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He could have been speaking for all his teammates, but the sum of the scrapyard parts was making the '63 squad click. “There are no stars on this ball club,” one anonymous veteran observed, “unless it would be John Henry Johnson. It's a team made up of 37 good, solid athletes who play together. Every one of them has a weakness but, playing together, the team as a unit can cover up every one of those weaknesses.”
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On Friday the Steelers left by bus for Cleveland. On Saturday afternoon, Zsa Zsa Gabor and her husband, a business acquaintance of the University of Pittsburgh's vice-chancellor, showed up among some 22,000 fans to watch the Panthers beat California, 35–15, at Pitt Stadium. Zsa Zsa left at halftime to catch a flight to New York. That evening, 86,684 fans—the biggest crowd in Cleveland football history—turned out at the lakefront stadium for the 8 p.m. Steeler game. A year earlier, at the exhibition doubleheader, one writer compared the atmosphere to New Year's Eve in Times Square, and a regular-season Steelers-Browns game on a Saturday night had to match—or surpass—that frantic spirit. It was a game that would see the lead change hands seven times and have fans glancing at the clock as if, indeed, the New Year were approaching.
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The Steelers took the kickoff and came out throwing. Brown missed Mack deep down the right sideline but, a play later, connected with him on a deep curl for 20 yards at the Steeler 44. Brown was shaken up after running up the middle for 7 yards, so Terry Nofsinger came in and hit Mack down the left sideline for a 27-yard gain to the Cleveland 17. Hoak was
stopped at the line, and Ferguson could gain only 5 yards on two carries, so Lou Michaels came on and kicked an 18-yard field goal.

The Browns' mix of running and passing looked unstoppable on their first drive. Jim Brown took a pitch and gained 21 yards on a sweep to the left side. Ryan hit Collins for 12 yards on a slant to the Steeler 49 and, from the 38, connected again for a 21-yard pickup to the 17. Brown gained 9 yards on a sweep to the right side, then burst up the middle, with a block from tackle John Brown, for an 8-yard touchdown to put the Browns ahead, 7–3, with 5:51 left in the first quarter.

Ed Brown returned at quarterback, and the teams exchanged punts. Pittsburgh took over on its 31, and on first down, Brown hooked up with Mack for a 42-yard gain to the Browns' 27. One play later, Brown hit Carpenter, who was Cleveland's No. 1 draft pick in 1956, over the middle for 17 yards to the 9. A pass interference call on Jim Shofner gave the Steelers first-and-goal at the 2, a spot on the field where Pittsburgh sorely needed John Henry Johnson. “He's the only back we have who can jump over the defense on the goal line,” Parker said later.
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Hoak picked up a yard before getting stuffed by tackles Jim Kanicki and Frank Parker and linebacker Galen Fiss on the last play of the first quarter. On second down, Ferguson was thrown for a yard loss by defensive back Bernie Parrish. On third down at the 2, Ferguson picked up a yard but was stopped by linebacker Vince Costello and tackle Bob Gain. “You gotta get something when you get down there,” Parker said later. “You can't go away without anything.”
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Parker sent in Michaels for an 8-yard field goal that made it 7–6.

Cleveland couldn't get a first down, so Collins punted to the Steeler 33. Pittsburgh's running game was plugging away, but Ed Brown was finding his groove on the same field where he had performed so poorly in the exhibition game months after his trade. He hit Dial over the middle for 15 yards, to the Cleveland 38, and after two carries by Ferguson, Brown found his flanker again, for 20 yards to the 16. After an incompletion and an 8-yard loss by Ferguson on a swing pass, Brown fired a 24-yard touchdown pass to Dial. With 8:08 left before the half, the Steelers were up, 13–7, and looking as potent on offense as Cleveland.

After a fast start, Ryan was struggling in a first half that would see him hit only four of eleven passes. He had no more of a reputation than Ed Brown as a runner, but the Cleveland quarterback kept a 70-yard drive alive with scrambles of 25 and 14 yards while missing on three passes, giving Cleveland a first-and-goal at the 6. “That Ryan should be a halfback,”
Parker gushed later.
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Ryan had put on a similar show in midseason of '62, when he gained 80 yards on nine carries—more than Jim Brown—to salvage a 14–14 tie with the Eagles. As Ryan looked for breakdowns in the Steeler secondary, Joe Krupa and John Baker dumped him for a 9-yard loss. But on second down, Ryan found Collins open for a 15-yard TD that put Cleveland ahead, 14–13, with 2:51 left in the half.

Ed Brown, “threading the needle all night,” came right back.
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A roughing-the-passer penalty moved the Steelers to the Cleveland 41. After the two-minute warning, Brown hit Dial with a 41-yard touchdown pass to give the Steelers a 20–14 halftime lead. Jim Brown had 73 yards already, but Ed Brown was ten of sixteen for 181 yards, 100 of them by Dial.

It took only three plays after halftime for Jim Brown to go over the 100-yard mark. On third-and-1 at his 32, Brown erupted on a 49-yard run, going off left tackle and cutting back, breaking a tackle by Keys to reach the Steeler 19. Andy Russell, starting at left linebacker, would remember hitting Brown one time that night and seeing “a bright flash of light” on impact. “In the films you saw him just run over me,” Russell said.

That hadn't happened to me too many times where somebody really just flat out ran over me. And I hit him where I was supposed to.

People ask me, “Who was the best running back you ever played against?” Unquestionably, Jim Brown. One thing about Brown, he could run over you or he could make you miss. He could do both. Most guys can only do one or the other. That's a rarity. Every time I thought he was going to run over me, he made me miss. And every time I thought he was going to make me miss, he ran over me. How'd he know?
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On second-and-10 from the 19, Brown ran up the middle, and Russell tackled him after a 6-yard gain. On third-and-4, the brainy QB Ryan darted 13 yards up the middle for a touchdown to put Cleveland on top, 21–20.

The Steelers took the kickoff and, starting from their 22, hammered away at Cleveland with the speed—and the stubbornness—of a plow horse. Hoak carried eight times on the drive—over left tackle for 7, over right guard for 3, off right tackle for 4. Then he caught a pass for 14 yards, Mack grabbed one over the middle for 13, and Dial nabbed one for 12, with Parrish making the tackle at the 1-yard line.

Who among the 86,684 dared believe that the Browns could make another goal line stand? On first down, Hoak was stopped by linebacker Mike Lucci, Gain, and end Bill Glass. Then Tom Tracy was stopped by Lucci, Gain,
and Kanicki. On third down, Hoak was held to no gain by Costello and Fiss. Parker sent in Michaels to kick his second 8-yard field goal, putting Pittsburgh back on top, 23–21, with 3:46 left in the quarter. It could have been a lead as wide as 31–21, if only the Steelers had a runner to hurtle the Browns' goal line defense. “I never like to alibi about injuries because all teams have them,” Parker said later. “However, if John Henry Johnson had been available I'm sure we would have had two scores.”
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Starting from their 25, the Browns were threatening as the third quarter was closing. Jim Brown went 27 yards on a second-down draw play, to Pittsburgh's 48, and a 27-yard pass to Collins on the next play moved the ball to the 21. But Ryan was thrown for a 10-yard loss by Krupa, and when he rushed out of the pocket on third-and-19, he picked up 15 yards but fumbled. Keys recovered on the 8 as the third quarter ended.