The '63 Steelers (21 page)

Mack played special teams in his rookie year and caught only eight passes, two for touchdowns, but he showed enough promise that the 1962 Steeler press guide said he could turn into “the perfect replacement for former Steeler end Jim Orr,” who had been traded away in the Big Daddy Lipscomb deal.
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Mack only matched his totals for receptions and touchdowns in '62, but he showcased his big-play potential by averaging 25.4 yards a catch, nearly 6 yards better than Dial's average that season.

In the fifth week of the '63 season, the loss to St. Louis, Mack had shown both his game-breaking skills and the reckless play for which Layne faulted him. Mack had caught an 83-yard touchdown pass, eluding Jimmy Hill, but he had also hampered Pittsburgh's chances of running out the clock in the final minutes when he was called for a 15-yard personal foul, sticking the Steelers in a second-and-20 hole.

It was a case of Mack trying to live up to a standard set back in high school—measuring himself against the best, whether it was Southern Cal, the Cleveland Browns, or whomever he was playing that week. Years later, Mack explained, “I always wanted to be better than that guy or that team. And the only way to achieve that, you had to demonstrate that. Sometimes you were better than they were, and sometimes you got in trouble because they were better than you. You still had to defend yourself.”
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That day in St. Louis, he was tussling with Pat Fischer, a cornerback whom Mack would later rank as one of the toughest defensive backs he'd played against. “I gave him the shoulder real good, and he got me probably with a knee,” Mack explained at the Curbstone Coaches luncheon the day after the loss. “Then when I blocked him near the finish of the game the official ruled a foul.”
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The following week, Mack caught five passes for 69 yards in the win over the Redskins. After taking Monday off, the Steelers began preparing for the Cowboys, who had been featured on the cover of
Sports Illustrated
's pro football preview issue, with the heady forecast that a revamped defense made Dallas the favorite to unseat the Giants in the Eastern Conference. Before the season began, coach Tom Landry had boldly predicted in a bylined piece for a football magazine, “I think this is going to be the next great team in pro football.”
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Landry wasn't far off in his estimation, but he was a bit premature. The 1963 Cowboys had gotten off to a 1–5 start that dropped them into last place, and they were coming off a 37–21 loss to the Giants.

The year before, the Cowboys had used a curious combination of quarterbacks that took Paul Brown's shuttling guard system one step further— rotating quarterbacks Eddie LeBaron, the recipient of Lipscomb's threat after the Pro Bowl game, and Don Meredith on alternating plays. It was a system devised by someone Meredith called “a living IBM machine”—the former Giants assistant Landry.
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Had the five-foot-seven LeBaron stood six two, he “might have been the greatest quarterback in history.”
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And had he been paired with six-foot-seven rookie quarterback Sonny Gibbs, he might have gone down in NFL history as a costar in the Mutt-and-Jeff offense. Instead, he shared command with Meredith, a two-time All-America at Southern Methodist University who set an NCAA record with a three-year completion record of 60.6 percent.

In 1963, Landry was still juggling quarterbacks, sometimes quarter by quarter, but by the end of the week leading up to the Steelers game, he'd committed himself to Meredith.

Pittsburgh was entering its thirty-ninth day without any appreciable precipitation. On Tuesday, “two fair maidens made obeisance to the God of the Heavens” in a ceremony in a downtown Chinese temple, lighting incense and offering prayers for relief from the drought.
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The weather was unsettling, but the economy was thriving. Unemployment was at 6.6 percent, the lowest since November of 1957. The steel industry was enjoying “glowing profit reports,” with the highest earnings over the first nine months of the year since 1957, but the federal government was making an inquiry into steel pricing practices.
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Pittsburgh was a sports town—besides football and baseball, it had the Hornets, a minor league hockey team; the short-lived Pittsburgh Rens of the American Basketball League; and big-time college basketball—but the city was also drawing a variety of top-shelf entertainers, and audiences were showing their appreciation. Comedians were cracking all sorts of jokes, but Pittsburgh was no longer the butt of them. Milton Berle opened his run at the Holiday House on the eve of the Cowboys game to a rave review. “I have never heard such response to any entertainer in any club anywhere,” Lee McInerney wrote in the
Post-Gazette
.
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The Pittsburgh Opera was celebrating its twenty-fifth season. A young actress named Joey Heatherton appeared in town to promote her first film and enthused about the city's beauty.
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The Steelers opened as an eight-point favorite over the Cowboys, and their outlook improved when John Henry Johnson, after sitting out three games, looked fit at practice. Buddy Parker said there had been no urgency to use him against Washington because Theron Sapp was running so well, and the coach said he might not know until game day who would start against Dallas. Dick Hoak remained the ironman, trailing only Jim Brown and Jim Taylor among the rushing leaders.
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John Reger returned to action for the first time since his collision with Sapp in the opener. Willie Daniel, who underwent knee surgery after being injured on the second day of training camp, had made his first start Sunday, and Clendon Thomas was back at safety. Ernie Stautner, who started at right end against the Redskins, had X-rays of his shoulder and ankle taken after being blasted on a block—a clean one—by Vince Promuto.
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“I haven't been hit like that since 1951,” Stautner said.
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The X-rays were negative, and the veteran vowed to be ready for Dallas. “I heal quickly,” he said.
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Indeed. Trainer Roger McGill, after examining the black-and-blue ankle, was amazed at Stautner's recuperative powers. “He has to have the highest threshold of pain of anybody I've ever seen,” McGill said.
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If Parker
used Stautner as a standard to measure John Henry Johnson's recovery—or any player's, for that matter—it was an unrealistic comparison.

But questions loomed concerning Lou Michaels. The left defensive end suffered what the club believed to be an allergic reaction to a penicillin shot—“skin eruptions” on his hands and feet—and missed two days of practice. Reserve fullback Tom Tracy resurrected his placekicking skills in practice as Michaels went to Divine Providence Hospital for tests. By Saturday, it appeared that Michaels would be limited to placekicking duties against Dallas.

Only 20,000 were expected to turn out at Forbes Field for the Cowboys, and fans had to wonder whether the Steelers' era at the fifty-four-year-old landmark was rapidly drawing to a close. NFL teams were beginning to pressure Art Rooney to schedule all Steelers games at Pitt Stadium until the proposed North Side stadium could be built. Over two seasons, games scheduled at Pitt Stadium drew an average of 41,000 fans, while Forbes Field games averaged 21,500 (although two of the games at the university site had promotions for discounts for youths).
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Pitt Stadium was clean and had good sight lines all around the stadium, but Forbes Field had only about 10,000 good seats for viewing a game, Art Rooney Jr. figured. Al Abrams of the
Post-Gazette
put the number at 8,000. Once the new stadium was constructed, the sports editor predicted, “The Steelers' advance sale will boom.”
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But for '63, the team still had three dates left at Forbes Field. “That's a shitty stadium to watch a game at,” Lou Cordileone said. “The stands were so far away from everything. Pitt was a nice stadium.”
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Only 19,047 turned out for the Cowboys, the smallest crowd of the season, but what they saw was “a bronco-ride all the way.”
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After fifty-six minutes of football, and with only six weeks of the season completed, the Steelers would be left “with defeat, despair and humiliation, not to say anything of practical elimination from the race staring them in the face.”
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What put the Steelers on the brink of erasure from the Eastern Conference race was a masterful performance by the fourth-year QB Meredith. The Cowboys were backed up early in the first quarter when Ed Brown's 45-yard punt rolled to the Dallas 8-yard line, where Mack downed it. Billy Howton, who had entered his eleventh season on the verge of breaking Don Hutson's NFL records for total receptions and yards gained, caught passes of 19, 18, and 21 yards to put Dallas on the Steeler 17. Four carries by Don Perkins advanced the ball to the 5, and from there Meredith capped the fifteen-play drive with a touchdown pass to Frank Clarke with 2:27 left in the quarter.

The Steelers couldn't move the ball, and James Stiger, a rookie halfback from Washington, returned Brown's punt 45 yards down the sideline to the Steeler 33. On first down the Cowboys were penalized for holding, but Meredith found Clarke for 13 yards to open the second quarter, and on the next play he hit six-foot-five, 220-pound end Lee Folkins with a 35-yard TD pass to make it 14–0.

Brown was no match for Meredith. The Steeler quarterback had thrown only four interceptions in the first six games, but he threw three in the second quarter alone. Brown hooked up with Mack for a 36-yard gain to the Dallas 19, but a sideline throw to Dial was picked off by Cornell Green, a second-year defensive back who had played basketball at Utah State, but not football. Green caught the ball at the 10 and returned it 55 yards to the Steeler 35. Rookie tackle Frank Atkinson dropped Meredith on a rollout for a loss of 5, which Perkins regained. Meredith threw incomplete, giving Sam Baker a shot at a 42-yard field goal, but it went wide left.

If Dallas was going to improve on its '62 mark, Landry needed his young, inexperienced defensive players to make an immediate impact. Dallas linebacker Jerry Tubbs was a consensus All-America at Oklahoma and winner of the Walter Camp Award as the outstanding college player of the year, but he was in his seventh pro season and aware that he was giving way to young studs like rookie Lee Roy Jordan, an All-America at Alabama. While introducing the sixth overall pick in the '63 draft during a winter function, Tubbs quipped, “I feel like Eddie Fisher introducing Richard Burton.”
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It didn't take long for Jordan to establish himself in the league, and he put his skills on display for Pittsburgh. Sapp took a flare pass and raced 22 yards and then picked up another 6 over left tackle to the Dallas 49, but Jordan intercepted a pass for Mack on the 40 and returned it 5 yards.

Defensive end John Baker, six foot six and 270 pounds, sacked Meredith for a loss of 10 yards and then tackled Meredith after a gain of 1 on third down. Sam Baker got off a 51-yard punt, which Dick Haley returned 7 yards to the Steeler 17. Then Brown, undeterred by interceptions on two straight possessions, went for broke: he cut loose and hit Dial at midfield as Green slipped on the coverage. The Steeler receiver cut sharply to the left, and Mack sprinted over to block rookie defensive back Jerry Overton, allowing Dial to scamper for an 83-yard TD. Despite the skin irritations on his hands and feet, Michaels attempted the point after, but it sailed wide left to make the score 14–6 with 5:02 left in the half.

Amos Marsh took Michaels's kickoff at the 12 and returned it to the 32. Marsh ran off right tackle and came up a foot shy of a first down, and on
third down, Meredith slipped around left end for a 25-yard gain to the Steeler 32. On second-and-5, Marsh fumbled a pitchout and John Baker recovered at the 38. With less than two minutes before the half, Hoak took a pass in the flat on third-and-8 from the 40, broke tackles, and went 23 yards to the Dallas 37. On first down, Mack leaped for a pass and brought it down, only to be hit from behind by Mike Gaechter in midair, forcing the ball to pop up and into the arms of Jordan, who returned it 14 yards to the 39.

On second down, Stiger took a screen pass, slipped away from two tacklers, and ran 41 yards before Keys made a diving tackle at the Steeler 20. Landry, in a peculiar move, inserted LeBaron for Meredith, and the thirty-three-year-old QB threw a pass into the end zone for Folkins that Haley picked off. The Steelers were fortunate to be down only 14–6 at the half but once again a missed conversion loomed ominously.

Between turnovers, stalled drives, and punts, Dallas and Pittsburgh combined for ten series in the second quarter. In the third quarter, there were only three, and it looked as if things were only going to get worse for Pittsburgh.

Starting from his 20 after the second-half kickoff, Meredith got the Cowboys moving with a balanced attack. Marsh went over right guard for 10 yards, and Howton added 10 with a catch. Marsh went over left tackle for 13 yards, and on the next play, as Meredith eluded the rush, he hit Marsh for 19 yards, down to the Steeler 21.

Amos Bullocks gained 8 yards, and on second-and-2, Meredith hit Howton crossing over the middle for a 13-yard touchdown to make it 21–6 with 4:42 gone in the quarter. Howton's catch tied Hutson's record of 488 career receptions, and two more that day would set a new standard. Meredith was moving on the Steelers at will, while Ed Brown's offense had shown only one flash of firepower.

But then the first rain in nearly seven weeks began to fall, and umbrellas appeared. “It seemed that signaled the end of the Steelers' drought, too,” wrote Sam Blair of the
Dallas Morning News
. Or, as
Post-Gazette
columnist Al Abrams wrote, “This was where the Steelers finally awoke to the facts of football life.”
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