The '63 Steelers (29 page)

The play was ruled a safety, and though
Press
reporter Pat Livingston called it “a rather chicken-hearted safety at that,” it counted, and Collier did not object to the call.
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“I have no complaint,” he said. “I didn't hear the whistle,” Brown said, “but I guess it was all right.”
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Cleveland led, 7–2, but the way the defenses were stiffening, two points could mean the margin of victory.

With the free kick, Collins punted from his 20 to Thomas, who returned the ball from his 32 to the 48. On second down, Costello intercepted a pass intended for Gary Ballman and returned it 15 yards to the Steeler 44. Collins's 14-yard reception gave Cleveland a first down at the 27, but on second-and-14 Green fumbled after breaking loose off left tackle, and Keys recovered at the 18. Ed Brown hit Dial with a 41-yard pass to the Cleveland 39 as the third quarter ended. After that, “there was no stopping Johnson.”
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Johnson was moving behind guards Mike Sandusky and Ray Lemek, tackles Dan James and Charlie Bradshaw, and center Buzz Nutter. Not every offensive line in the NFL plugged away in anonymity. Jim Brown's success—and his praise for his teammates—brought the Browns' line recognition. Vince Lombardi's power sweeps drew attention to the line that made heroes of Paul Hornung and Jim Taylor. But the guys blocking for Johnson, Hoak, and Sapp had about as much fame as the referees. “They don't even know my name,” said James, the left tackle.
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Bradshaw was a visible presence because he stood six foot six and weighed 255 pounds—good size for the time. He had grown up as an only child on a small farm in east Texas. His mother, Evilla, was five foot eleven, “and she could plow better than anyone I've ever seen,” Bradshaw said. Bradshaw played on the same high school team as future Giant receiver Del Shofner, and they both went on to attend Baylor. Bradshaw was drafted
by the Rams but was traded to Pittsburgh in 1961. He blocked efficiently enough to make the Pro Bowl in '63 and '64, and because he did so without leaving his feet and smudging his uniform, fans mockingly called him “Mr. Clean” and took out their frustration in upcoming seasons by singling him out for boos. Opposing linemen knew better. “He and Bob Brown of the Eagles are about the two best I've played against in the Eastern Division,” said Giant defensive end Jim Katcavage.
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Bradshaw and his linemates were making it easier for John Henry Johnson to move on the field than in pregame traffic. He ran off left tackle for 6 yards, then hit right tackle, Bradshaw's spot, spun around, and picked up 10. He hit the left side again for 5, and after Hoak ran for 5, Johnson gained 3 for a first down at the 10. Johnson “ran into a stone wall” for a yard, then was held to no gain by Ross Fichtner while going around left end, leaving Pittsburgh with third-and-goal from the 9. The way Michaels was kicking, not even a 16-yard field goal looked like a sure thing.
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Brown dropped back to pass, with Ballman the intended receiver, as defensive tackle Frank Parker bore down on the quarterback. Dial often drew double coverage, but this time Ballman was the one surrounded.

“The hook area on the left side was open all day, so I sent him into it on that play,” Ed Brown said. Linebacker Galen Fiss had Ballman covered in front, “so I looked for Buddy Dial on the right side. He was covered, too.”
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“There were three Browns with me,” Ballman said. “I didn't think I was going to get away from them. But then I saw this opening and broke. I didn't think Brown would be able to get the ball to me because somebody was on top of him.”
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“Gary kept moving around, something a receiver has to do,” Brown said, “and the next time I spotted him down the middle the goal post was in the way. Then he moved back outside a bit and I threw to him just as I was being hit.”
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Brown spotted him “in a beam of daylight” and “put the pigskin right in his arms.”
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It was only the second catch of Ballman's pro career, and his first TD. Michael's conversion made it 9–7, Steelers, with 3:36 gone in the fourth quarter.

Down by only two, armed with the best runner in the game, and with plenty of time to put Groza within field goal range, Ryan abandoned the ground game. He hit Collins for 7 yards, but a flare to Jim Brown lost 3 as Schmitz and Michaels pounced on the fullback. An incompletion forced Collins to punt, and Keys made a fair catch on his 30 with 9:35 left in the game.

On second-and-7 from the 33, Dial made a kneeling catch for a 23-yard
gain to Cleveland's 44. Hoak went off right tackle for 5, Sapp over left tackle for 4, and Johnson over the left side for 6, for a first down on the 29. After Ed Brown lost 4 yards scrambling, Dial got wide open in the left corner of the end zone, but the throw led him too much and the ball went off his fingertips. Ballman gained 11 yards on a catch, leaving the Steelers with fourth-and-3 at the 22—and in need of a field goal, which would force the Browns to drive for a touchdown for the go-ahead points. Michaels lined up for a 29-yard field goal and, with 9:56 left, missed his fourth straight kick.

On third-and-11 from the 19, Ryan hit Jim Brown for a 16-yard reception, but Cleveland was called for holding. Russell and Pottios stopped Brown after a 6-yard reception, forcing Collins to punt 48 yards to the Steeler 38. Parker's squad had 2:29 to kill before claiming a victory over their archrival in front of the biggest crowd to witness a pro football game in Pittsburgh history, 54,497 fans.

John Henry Johnson raced around right end for 18 yards to the Cleveland 44. But Cleveland held, forcing Michaels to try a 45-yard field goal on fourth-and-3. The kick was short and to the left, and Michaels was oh for five. And there was still 1:39 left. “All I could think about was how important those three points were to the team,” Michaels said later. “If I made one, it took more than a field goal for the Browns to beat us. If I made two, it would have taken more than a touchdown for them to win.”
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The Browns hardly looked like the explosive team that overcame the Steelers five weeks earlier. “The big team from the shore of Lake Erie was as dull as the gray skies,” commented Tommy Holmes of the
New York Herald Tribune
.
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After a pass for Collins was almost intercepted by Glass and another missed Jim Brown, Ryan connected with Green for 13 yards and a first down. Cleveland took four last shots at cracking the Steeler defense, and Buster Ramsey's unit brought down the Eastern Conference leaders with a crescendo.

A toss to Brown lost 4 yards. Lou Cordileone batted down a pass. Keys broke up a throw to Ray Renfro at the last instant, with sixty-three seconds left. Thomas broke up a pass to Johnny Brewer, and all Ed Brown had to do to run out the final fifty-nine seconds was fall on the ball three times.

Collins, who had two TD catches in the first meeting, had only three catches this day, for 25 yards. Ryan hit only eleven of twenty-five passes for 93 yards. And Jim Brown had only 7 yards in the second half to finish with 99 total, in a season in which he averaged 133.1 a game. John Henry Johnson had outperformed the league's rushing leader, piling up 131 yards
on twenty-seven carries, enabling the Steelers to keep the ball away from Cleveland and giving the kid from Louisiana, the son of a Pullman porter, the satisfaction of knowing that he could run with the best of 'em in the National Football League.

He wasn't the only one who silenced the skeptics. Nine months earlier, on Valentine's Day, the same day it was announced that Bobby Layne had turned down Buddy Parker's offer to make him coach of the quarterbacks, Ernie Stautner had accepted the role of player-coach, a concession to reduced playing time as well as a promotion. The week before the first game with Cleveland, Stautner had cautioned, “Don't underestimate the old man. I haven't played much, but I'll be there when they need me. Everybody's given up on me for the last five or six years, but I keep coming back on them.” Ever the team player, Stautner stressed that he wasn't complaining. “I don't care if I don't play,” he said, “as long as we win.”
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On Friday, Stautner and Thomas were listed as uncertain for the game because of leg injuries. But anyone familiar with Stautner's recuperative powers knew that he would be on the field, ready to go, because his teammates needed him. Stautner came off the bench to give a performance against Cleveland that earned him a game ball. “Nobody on the field was any better than Stautner,” Pat Livingston wrote, “especially in the last five minutes when the Browns tried everything in the book to keep the 38-yearold patriarch out of their backfield.” Buddy Parker was impressed, but not surprised. “I don't know how he does it,” the coach said, “but he's always there when the chips are down.”
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When someone suggested to Lou Cordileone that Stautner was still great for a few minutes, the tackle snorted, “He's great for 60 minutes. He's the greatest in the business.”
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But it was Schmitz who earned honors as the league's player of the week. “Gee, that's probably the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said.
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Five days later, the
Green Bay Press-Gazette
ran an AP photo of Schmitz, a resident of Chilton, Milwaukee, and a graduate of New Holstein High School, plowing into a tackling dummy—and looking just a little sheepish—to demonstrate how he nabbed Jim Brown in the end zone. The kid who switched to Montana State had made good. Steeler fans might not always remember him, but it's a sure bet that Jimmy Brown never forgot him. “That kid Schmitz … was great,” veteran John Reger said the day after the game. “He's going to be here for a long time.”
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In New York, up in the Bronx, where the Giants were whipping the Eagles,
42–14, the crowd erupted when the scoreboard showed the Steelers had beaten the Browns. The Giants were now tied with Cleveland for first place in the Eastern Conference at 7–2. “We're back in the race!” Y. A. Tittle said, and Alex Webster clapped “like a kid with a new toy.”
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St. Louis beat Washington, 24–20, behind Charley Johnson's three touchdown passes, to stick close at 6–3, and the Steelers were right behind at 5–3–1.

Back in Cleveland, there was “No Joy in Mudville,” as a
Post-Gazette
headline stated. “At the Slovenian Club and at the Lithuanian Club … a feeling of depression has set in. … All across northern Ohio, rigor mortis has set in.”
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In one week, the Steelers had proved that the obituaries written about them were premature. Even with Lou Michaels slumping, they looked very much alive and kicking, and full of fight.

It was said that in times of difficulty, Buddy Parker “would commune with the spirits,” but there is no evidence that he ever consulted a fortune teller, worked a Ouija board, or took up astrology to assemble players for his football teams.
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Those options might have been no more outlandish than a few notions he did entertain. With all his quirks and idiosyncrasies, he could come off as a moonstruck seer using a divining rod to mine for precious talent from the football earth. The record shows, that for all his ill-conceived trades and hasty cuts, he was a shrewd judge of talent and a riverboat gambler when it came to taking risks on discarded or neglected talent.

In an era of unschooled, sometimes crude drafting, Parker was notoriously leery of untested players. Art Rooney Jr., who went to work in the scouting department under Parker, said that the coach decided to have his scouts start taking pictures of top prospects “because he didn't want any stupid-looking players.”
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Rooney recalled Parker saying, “If I knew how ugly that Bob Ferguson from Ohio State was, I never would have drafted him!”
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One myth of the time, Rooney said, was that Michigan State players were “slow to catch on,” a notion as illogical as the prevailing prejudice against black college quarterbacks. One scout from the BLESTO scouting combine said of Michigan State players, “You could toss them all into a bag and then throw [head coach] Duffy Daugherty in and their IQs wouldn't add up to a hundred and ten.” The perverse thinking did not account, however, for the successful careers of such Michigan State alumni as stalwart Packer defenders Bill Quinlan and Herb Adderley; quarterbacks Earl Morrall, Jim Ninowski, and Al Dorow; and the Steelers' gifted running back Lynn Chandnois.
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As Daugherty wrapped up spring drills in 1960 and tried to assess his young team, he was sure of one thing: He had “two superlative halfbacks” in Adderley and Gary Ballman, the latter an all-around athlete from East Detroit who was finishing up his sophomore year.
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Playing with Adderley and future pro George Saimes cut down on Ballman's opportunities to handle the ball, so his collegiate statistics were modest: 715 yards and nine touchdowns on 170 carries, including runs of 74 yards against Northwestern and 56 yards against Illinois. Daugherty called him “our bread and butter player.”
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Ballman was good enough to land a spot in the East-West Shrine Game and the Hula Bowl, though he played sparingly. He had good size— six foot one, 200 pounds—to go along with his speed, and an unflappable approach to playing the game that scouts probably did not detect.

With their No. 1 pick in the 1962 draft—the fifth overall selection—the Steelers took Bob Ferguson and then waited around until the seventh round because Parker had traded away picks 2 through 6. On the seventh round the Steelers took Jack Collins, a back from Texas, and on the eighth they picked Ballman. Playing in the NFL, said his wife, Judi, “was always one of his dreams.”
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