The '63 Steelers (36 page)

The Steelers' morale had perked up since the letdown in Green Bay, and Brown had a hand in two straight victories. So if Parker had entertained any thoughts about making a similar invitation to Layne, it's unlikely the coach seriously considered them.

But aside from his two-minute drill before halftime, Brown was struggling against the Bear defense, and he would wind up completing only ten of twenty-five passes. He was judged guilty of “overthrowing Buddy Dial, Preston Carpenter and Gary Ballman on plays that were almost certain touchdowns,” Jack Sell would write days later.
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The Bears had been ruthless against every quarterback. Brown's TD pass was only the eighth the Bears had given up all season, and they had come into the game with a league-leading twenty-eight interceptions. But Pittsburgh's ground game was grinding it out. John Henry Johnson would finish with 86 yards on twenty-one attempts, and Hoak would have 72 on nineteen carries, constituting the second-best day against the Bear defense all year.

The Steeler defense was every bit as rugged as the Bears' unit. “The play of Joe Krupa, for example, was a vision,” the
Press
's Pat Livingston wrote.
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No player was a more representative image of Pittsburgh than the six-foottwo, 235-pound tackle from the South Side of Chicago: “a steady, reliable sort, the bespectacled son of Polish immigrants.” His high school coach had talked him out of going to Notre Dame and steered him to Purdue. The second-round pick of the Steelers in '56, Krupa felt “downhearted and homesick” in training camp and had his bags packed to sneak out of camp for good late one night with a teammate, but he fell asleep and had a change of heart in the morning.
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He was as tireless and anonymous as a worker in an open-hearth furnace, but to those who appreciated the grunts in the trenches of football, he was “Joe Krupa, the indestructible tackle.”
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Forced to pass because Chicago could only dent the Steeler defense for 87 yards on the ground, Wade would wind up with an advantage over Brown in passing yardage, 264 to 134, but he also threw three interceptions—and was lucky to avoid a fourth.

For all their pounding away at the Bears, “Pittsburgh had a right to curse the fates on this day”—and that was the sympathetic view of a Chicago writer. There were wasted scoring opportunities, a couple questionable calls, and a bad bounce.
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Chicago stopped Pittsburgh cold on the opening drive of the second half, forcing a punt, but a roughing-the-kicker penalty on rookie Bears tackle Steve Barnett gave the Steelers a first down. From his 38, Brown hit Dial for a 20-yard pickup to the Chicago 42, and after a 2-yard run by Johnson, Brown connected with Ballman over the middle for 14 yards and a first down at the 26. Two passes to Carpenter missed, and Johnson ran for 5 yards, leaving the Steelers with fourth-and-5 on the 21. Michaels seemed to have broken his kicking slump the week before, but his 29-yard attempt went wide right.

Pittsburgh held and took over on its 28 after Haley returned Green's 55-yard punt 9 yards. Ballman gained 8 yards on a reverse, and then Johnson broke loose over right end and down the sideline for 36 yards and a first down at the Chicago 28. After Hoak gained 2 yards, Brown's pass for Ballman was almost intercepted by Taylor, and his toss to Hoak was off the halfback's fingertips. Michaels lined up for a 34-yard field goal attempt. The kick fell short.

Starting from his 20, Wade hit Farrington for 24 yards, and then Morris for 11 to the Steeler 39. Russell almost intercepted a pass intended for Ditka, but Willie Daniel was flagged for holding Farrington, giving Chicago a first down on the 34, well within field goal distance.

John Reger was another player on the Steeler defense who was playing as if it were a championship game. He had made a remarkable comeback after his near-tragic accident in the opener but, like Daniel, he had taken a circuitous route just to make the team, back in 1955. Reger had grown up in Wheeling, West Virginia, along with one brother and five sisters, and attended a private military school before being recruited by Pitt. He played on the undefeated freshman team, but his college career ended when he sustained a knee injury after two games in his sophomore season. Several years later, he landed a tryout with the Steelers and won a starting job.
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With a first down at the Steeler 34 and time winding down in the third quarter, Wade came right back to Farrington, but Reger intercepted on the 21 and picked his way to the 38.

Pittsburgh started to move. Dial made a leaping catch for a 13-yard gain to the Bear 45, and after Hoak gained 6 yards, Brown overthrew Dial at the goal line as the third quarter ended.

On the first play of the fourth quarter, Johnson gained 9 yards with a catch out of the backfield, 5 more over left guard, and, a play later, ran over right tackle for 7 to give his team a first down at the 15. After Dial dropped a bullet at the 7, Hoak caught a pass and got as far as the 8, where Taylor grabbed the halfback's right ankle and hung on for his life, a bit like a defender trying to tackle Jim Brown and clinging to the runner as if he were a horse rider caught in the stirrup and being dragged along. Hoak yanked himself loose, as if his galoshes had been stuck in the mud, and scampered into the end zone.

Seven years earlier, when Parker threatened to quit over the incident in which Bobby Layne was blindsided by Ed Meadows, the coach charged that the NFL was being “run” by Halas and George Preston Marshall.
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On this day, a few people would tend to agree with that sentiment. Halas biographer Jeff Davis described the Bears owner and coach as “a flesh-and-blood Ursus horribilis: surly, snarly, sinister, and smart.” Davis quoted the sportswriter Bill Furlong as having described Halas as a man possessing “all the warmth of breaking bones.”
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He badgered, berated, and cussed out referees in shamelessly profane fashion, often to great effectiveness. After the Steelers' 27–21 loss in Chicago in 1959—a game to which beat writer Pat Livingston devoted six paragraphs to inventory what he considered suspect calls that went in favor of the Bears—Parker remarked, “I'll sure be glad to see Halas retire, then maybe you'll be able to beat the Bears in this town.”
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Whether the specter of another Halas obscenity-laced tantrum influenced
the officials, subconsciously or consciously, is conjecture. After all, they weren't in Halas's hometown on this afternoon. But Hoak's run was called back, the touchdown disallowed. Back judge Tom Kelleher had ruled the ball dead, even though Hoak later said he had not heard a whistle. The call enraged not only the fans but the players. Because of the configuration of Forbes Field, both benches were on the same sideline, putting opponents within shouting distance of each other.

“I remember Ernie Stautner and Red Mack were chewing out George Halas, saying, ‘You've got the officials in your pocket, George,'” Hoak said.
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Russell recalled Stautner, Krupa, Pottios, and Johnson swearing at Halas, making the same accusation.
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“You had to blow the whistle on that play,” umpire Fritz Graf said after the game. “A guy could get his leg broken on a play like that.” Kelleher was not available to comment. He had “set a record for getting out of the dressing room.”
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Instead of a 21–14 lead, the Steelers had third-and-2 at the 8. Johnson went off left tackle for 2 yards and on fourth down leaped over right guard for a yard and first down at the 5. Johnson managed a yard, but Hoak was stuffed at the line by end Bob Kilcullen and linebacker Bill George. On third down, the Steelers made a peculiar call for that spot on the field: a double reverse to Ballman. That play had gained 8 yards early in the third quarter, but it came with the Steelers on their 28 on first down. This time, Ballman was nailed for no gain by Fortunato. Michaels connected on an 11-yard field goal, giving Pittsburgh a 17–14 lead with 8:35 left in the game. The way the Steeler defense was playing, the lead looked good enough to stand up.

The Bears' shot at tying the game or taking the lead “started inauspiciously, almost disgracefully,” on the ensuing kickoff.
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Five weeks later, in the NFL title game, a fumble recovery on a kickoff would be nullified because a member of the kicking team was offside, leading Red Smith to comment, “There isn't much excuse for a professional to be off-side on a kickoff.”
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As daylight faded at Forbes Field, Charlie Bivins, pressed into action because Casares had sustained a separation of his right ankle, fumbled on the return and the Steelers' John Burrell recovered on the Bear 18. But once again fortune seemed to be conspiring against Parker's squad. The Steelers were called for being offside and had to kick over, this time with Bivins on the bench. Bull returned the kick to the 23.

Bull picked up 5 yards, and Wade hit Morris for another 5, then Ditka for 14. The Steelers' chances of holding their lead looked even better after
Morris was called for illegal use of hands against Glass, and Krupa sacked Wade, leaving the Bears with second-and-36 at their 22 with five-and-a-half minutes to go. Wade wanted to call a deep route to Ditka, who had earned All-America honors three years earlier while playing at Pitt Stadium and on this day had family and friends from his nearby hometown of Aliquippa in the stands. Like Stautner, John Henry Johnson, and Mack, Ditka was a man driven to succeed by forces that seemed supernatural. “There's a lot of Ty Cobb in Ditka,” the Pittsburgh sportswriter Roy McHugh observed.112 In their ferocity of play and desire to win, the only difference in the way they ran was that Ditka led with his head rather than with his cleats. “He was all business, both in practice or during a game,” one of his college coaches said. “He had that killer instinct.”
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But Ditka was tired. He had run pass routes on the three previous plays, and he had already caught six passes. So he told Wade, “Bill, I can't go deep. You throw me something short. I'll go down about 14 yards and hook. Then I'll try to run with it.” Years later, Ditka would call it “the luckiest run in the world.”
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Halas called it “one of the greatest individual efforts I have seen in 40 years of football.”
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It started out, simply enough, as a short pass to the left side. Wade faked to a back releasing on the left side and got rid of the ball as Krupa bore down on him from his right. Thomas came in and skidded past Ditka. Reger dove from behind and missed. A trio of Steeler defenders converged, “and with a twisting Herculean effort of explosive strength, Ditka threw off all three men” and broke free, the ball tucked into his left elbow, his helmet hunched below the level of his waist, with a clear field ahead of him “in the ancient home of the baseball Pirates.”
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Ditka lumbered ahead, half limping, like an amateur marathon runner straining for the finish line, until Thomas, in a desperate sprint, dragged down the tight end at the Steeler 15 on the infield portion of the field, with Daniel right behind. The play covered 63 yards. Ditka lay spread eagle and was helped off to the sidelines.

“Lord, I was exhausted,” Ditka said later. “I thought I was going to black out.” In the locker room afterward, Halas gazed at Ditka and said, “I can't remember the last time I saw such a helluva play.”
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“It was the greatest run I've ever seen,” said Bears defensive coordinator George Allen.
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Steeler players and Parker insisted that the play should have been whistled dead, just as Hoak's run had been with Taylor strapped to the Steeler's ankle. “They were identical plays,” Parker said. Halas disagreed. “Ditka was churning his legs. Hoak was definitely stopped.”
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The fates of both teams were at stake. A loss would knock the Steelers out of the Eastern race for good; a defeat would drop the Bears into a tie with Green Bay if the Packers beat the last-place 49ers. On first down, Bull slanted off tackle for 4 yards, and then Marconi juggled but lost a high throw from Wade. On third-and-6 from the 11, Farrington, open in the end zone, dropped a pass. Leclerc kicked an 18-yard field goal to make it 17–17 with 4:31 left in the game.

The Steelers were in good shape after Thomas returned the kickoff 38 yards to the 45, but on third-and-9 Brown threw to Curry, and this time Bennie McRae intercepted at the Bear 41. The Bears needed only 20, 25 yards for a shot at a field goal, but on second-and-7 Reger dropped Marconi for a 9-yard loss on a screen pass, setting up third-and-16 from the 35. There would be no heroics this time: Michaels, Stautner, and Krupa smothered Wade for a loss of 12 yards.

Following Green's 43-yard punt, the Steelers took over on their 32 with two minutes left—the last chance to pull the game out. Linebacker Larry Morris deflected a Brown pass, but Dial caught it for a 21-yard gain to the Bear 44. Hoak gained 2 yards, and with 1:04 left, the Steelers called time-out. Dial caught and then dropped a pass on the Bear 30, but from the 42, Michaels still had a shot at a field goal from 49 yards. On third down, however, Bill George dropped Brown for a 9-yard loss, back to the Steeler 49. The Steelers had no choice but to punt. Taylor dropped the punt but recovered on his 12. All Wade had to do was fall on the ball three or four times and the Bears could escape with a tie—and be grateful for it.

But the fates weren't finished teasing and tormenting the Steelers. The Bears' offense had stuck to conservative play-calling, but “for only some reason understandable only to himself,” Wade decided to throw a pass in the left flat to Marconi.
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Reger was surprised by the call, but he was ready. “I saw it coming,” he said. “I was merely trying to cover my man. I never expected a pass in that situation.”
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