The '63 Steelers (40 page)

But on this day, Burroughs's lobbying for the call didn't hurt his team. The officials ruled that Dial had been out of bounds and discounted the touchdown. Instead of cutting their halftime deficit to 14–10, the Steelers remained in a 14–3 hole.

For “a soft-hearted, easy-going Steeler who never lets adversity ruffle his feathers,” Dial was pretty upset about the call.
⁵⁷
“I wasn't out,” he said. “Don Burroughs went over and told the man I was, and he listened to Burroughs.”
⁵⁸
And all along, the Steelers thought that George Halas was the one who had the power to persuade the officials.

The halftime statistics were closely matched in yards rushing and receiving and first downs. One big disparity favored the Steelers: Philadelphia had been penalized five times for 65 yards, but Pittsburgh had not been flagged. The Steelers held after Philadelphia took the second-half kickoff, but they committed another mistake on their second play from scrimmage. Ed Brown threw right to Lloyd, who returned his second interception 12 yards to the Steeler 20. Defensive end John Baker stuffed Tim Brown for a yard loss, and a pass gained nothing, so rookie Mike Clark kicked a 23-yard
field goal to put Philadelphia ahead 17–3. Mistakes were proving to be the difference in the game.

The Steelers fell into a hole against both St. Louis and Dallas and came back, but they had shown little indication they could rally against Philly. Their stunting on defense forced Hill into delay-of-game penalties when he couldn't call an audible in time, Skorich said, but Parker maintained that at halftime he made “no radical adjustments. The only thing we did was to play a little better.”
⁵⁹

Pittsburgh wasted a prime opportunity late in the quarter when Ed Brown, on first down at the Eagle 40, threw deep for Dial. Cross broke up the pass but Mike McClellan, filling in for the suspended Scotti, was called for pass interference at the 2. Theron Sapp lost two yards against his old team, and then McClellan atoned for his mistake by intercepting a pass intended for Dial in the end zone. If Buddy Parker had any fantasies about bringing Bobby Layne down from the press box and suiting him up, time was running out on that daydream—and Pittsburgh's season.

The Steelers forced a punt, and took over on their 37. Ed Brown missed Dial, then hit Ballman for 16 yards to Philly's 47 as the third quarter ticked down. On the second play of the fourth quarter, a 13-yard pass to Ballman was nullified when guard Ray Lemek was called for illegal use of hands— Pittsburgh's only penalty of the game—pushing the Steelers back to their 43. New heroes on the team had popped up all season—Dick Haley, Red Mack, Bob Schmitz, Jim Bradshaw—and in recent weeks Steeler fans had come to appreciate that Ballman's “impossibilities … [were] quickly becoming routine.”
⁶⁰
On first-and-33 from the Steeler 43, the split end got behind Cross down the left sideline and caught a 57-yard touchdown pass with fifty-seven seconds elapsed in the fourth quarter to bring the Steelers within 17–10. “By now, the Eagles were coming apart,” wrote Hugh Brown of the
Evening Bulletin
.
⁶¹

Pottios and Joe Krupa were sparking a defense that prevented the Eagles from gaining a first down in the second half until the final thirty seconds, but the Steelers continued to hurt themselves on offense. Johnson, open in the flat, dropped a pass, and ex-teammate Tarasovic dumped Ed Brown for a 9-yard loss on the Eagle 36. Michaels seemed to be back on track, but he missed a 43-yard field goal attempt, wide left. When Brown threw his fourth interception, to Jimmy Carr, setting up a 40-yard field goal by Clark and a 20–10 Eagle lead with only 4:38 left, it looked as if the Steeler season was doomed. But then “the killer” ensued for Skorich's team.
⁶²

Clark kicked off, and Ballman, 3 yards deep in the end zone, raced 63
yards to the Eagle 40 before Cross, the last defender, brought him down. Brown, out of the shotgun, hit Carpenter for 14 yards and then picked up 18 more with a throw to Ballman, a catch on which the former taxi squad member broke away from three defenders, giving the Steelers first-and-goal at the 8. Brown hit Carpenter at the goal line, but the tight end couldn't hang onto the ball. Then Brown overthrew Carpenter, but he hit Ballman on third down for the touchdown that brought Pittsburgh within 20–17 with 3:22 to go.

The Eagle offense had fizzled. Hill was en route to a nine-of-twenty-four afternoon with three interceptions. McDonald had caught a pass on the Eagles' first possession but then was shut out. The Eagles were trying to run out the clock, but Lou Cordileone and Krupa stuffed two carries. Hill was forced to punt, and his 56-yard kick rolled dead on the Steeler 22.

The Eagles were on the way to amassing 145 yards on eight penalties, and 37 of the yards came on first down after the punt, another pass interference penalty on McClellan, guarding Dial, a disputed call made right in front of the visitors' bench. Even Dial allowed that “it was a close call.” From the 41, Carpenter made a leaping catch on third down for 12 yards to the 29, and then Brown found Dial for 13 more to the 16. There were fifty-eight seconds left. Brown overthrew Carpenter in the end zone on first down. Cross broke up another throw to Dial. On third-and-10, Brown threw incomplete to John Henry Johnson. “I've been throwing the ball too quickly,” Brown said later.
⁶³

That left it up to Michaels, who had suffered the indignity of having one conversion blocked and another striking the upright in the opener in Philly, to attempt a field goal from the 24. Asked later what he was thinking about when he lined up for the kick, Michaels shot back, “I was thinking of two things: Keep my eye on the ball and follow through.”
⁶⁴

The kick was good. There were forty seconds left. Hill heaved a desperation pass in the final seconds, but Thomas intercepted and returned the ball 25 yards to the Eagle 35 as the clock died.

The Steelers were still in the race. A third tie—the first time in twenty-five years an NFL had had that may—did not hurt them. They could still win the Eastern crown by beating Dallas and the Giants, provided the Browns, winners over St. Louis, lost to either Detroit or Washington. Parker was as content—or relieved—as Halas was the week before, to salvage a tie. “Sure, I settled for the tie,” Parker said. “We were lucky to come out of that one alive.”
⁶⁵

But the locker room was quiet.
⁶⁶
The Steelers had come precipitously close to letting a thirteen-point underdog end their season. Dial was upset not only with the officiating but with the way his team had played. “That was the worst game I've ever seen us play,” he said. “We made more mistakes than we've ever made. We were watching the scoreboard.”
⁶⁷

Cleveland beat St. Louis, 24–10, knocking the 8–4 Cards from a three-way tie for first place and into a tie for third with 6–3–3 Pittsburgh. Throwing out the Steelers' ties, each team had a .667 percentage. The Steelers needed Cleveland to lose once over the next two weeks, but with Jim Brown scoring two touchdowns and running for 179 yards to break his own single-season rushing record, it looked nearly impossible for the Browns to lose to either 4–7–1 Detroit or 3–9 Washington.

If there was a game to grab the Steelers' attention, it was in Dallas, where the Cowboys built a 27–14 halftime lead over the Giants by intercepting Y. A. Tittle three times in the first half. But Tittle rallied New York in the second half, hitting Del Shofner with a 17-yard TD pass to give the Giants a 34–27 victory and allow them to keep a share of first place. Parker's crew would face the Cowboys in a week.

The Steelers could be grateful just for surviving another Sunday. “It was our worst game of the year,” Parker said. “You're always lucky when you get a tie, playing a game like that.”
⁶⁸

All season long, except for the rout of the Giants in week 2, the Steelers had to claw their way back, rallying for a victory or just a tie. If it was true, as Ernie Stautner said, that the team had choked against Green Bay, it had not folded under the pressure since that afternoon. They caught a couple of breaks and maybe got shortchanged a few times. But they had played all out. That was Steeler football. That was their heritage. That was how they were either going to become champions or fall one step short.

“Nobody is going to give us anything in this league,” Lou Cordileone said. “You have to earn it yourself.”
⁶⁹

Straight from graduation, months after his selection by the Steelers in the NFL draft, Stanford tackle Frank Atkinson took a slow boat to China.

It wasn't actually a boat; it was a freighter. And China wasn't the actual destination, but he did make it to Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Indonesia during his travels, half by freighter and half by plane. “I visited Seoul after there had been riots. It proved a very interesting three months,” Atkinson said during his first training camp. “I like to travel, meet people and have different experiences.”
¹

One of those experiences was life as a pro football player. Atkinson didn't even know he had been drafted until he heard the news while listening to a sports report on the radio in his fraternity house. He had assumed that the Cowboys were the only team interested in him because they had phoned several times. The AFL, craving talent to compete with the NFL, didn't bother with Atkinson. “This draft business really has me puzzled,” he said.
²
The six-foot-three, 250-pound tackle had the distinction of being the Steelers' top pick in the 1963 draft—because Parker had traded away every one of his first seven picks. Atkinson was picked in the eighth round, the 108th overall pick, eight rounds before fellow rookie Andy Russell.

Russell and Atkinson, both with more interest in an MBA than the NFL, began a friendship that would live on long after their playing careers. For players like Gary Ballman, playing pro football was a dream come true. For Lou Michaels and Dick Haley, it was an exit from a life in the mines or mills. But for Atkinson, it was an adventure like, say, taking a freighter to foreign lands.

“His attitude of playing professional football was a little bit like a guy might say, ‘Between my undergrad and my grad school I'm going to spend one year fooling around in Aspen, waiting tables and skiing,'” Russell said. “‘I'm going to take a year off.' That's how he viewed playing professional football. It was a frivolous, personal, fun thing to do. He was going to spend one year doing it and then he was going to go to graduate school. He starts his rookie year, he does very well, and he quits, gets his MBA.”
³

What kind of expectations did Atkinson have about playing professionally? “Zero. I was flattered and I was mainly curious,” he said. “I didn't really have career aspirations.”
⁴
In fact, at that time Atkinson didn't have many aspirations about anything. “In my senior year I couldn't even have told you what I planned to be doing the next day,” he said.
⁵

Atkinson had options. He could have chosen a career that paid better, provided more job security, and was less physically demanding—say, with his father's business, the Atkinson Construction Co., which built freeways, bridges, and dams and handled other major projects. The San Francisco 49ers, whose practice field was minutes away from the Atkinson home, were so sure the Stanford senior had no interest in a pro career that they didn't bother to send him a preliminary questionnaire before the draft. Atkinson insisted his father was not a millionaire, but an executive on the 49ers, Lou Spadia, scoffed at the notion the Steelers could sign Atkinson. “Why, Atkinson's old man could buy your ball club,” he said.
⁶

Atkinson made a career choice, as if making a decision on whether or not to visit a given country: He bypassed the family business. “It just doesn't appeal to me,” he said.
⁷

It didn't take long for anyone to realize that the Stanford history major was different from most draft picks. “Atkinson is one of the most unusual young grid candidates at Rooney U. in years,” beat writer Jack Sell wrote.
⁸

The Steelers' defensive line loomed as questionable on the right side, away from Lou Michaels and Joe Krupa. Big Daddy Lipscomb had died, and his likely successor, Lou Cordileone, was a guy who had done almost as much traveling around the NFL as Atkinson had done in the Far East. Ernie Stautner had spent thirteen years in the league, and his role was going to be reduced to that of player and coach. John Baker had been inconsistent. Buddy Parker needed someone to step in immediately and help at right end and tackle, but using a first-year player went against everything Parker preached. “He'd rather get a 10-year veteran off the dust bin than a rookie who was a superstar,” Atkinson said.
⁹

Atkinson sustained a pinched nerve in his left shoulder in the first contact
drill in camp, but trainer Roger McGill fixed him up with a harness for protection, and the rookie returned to drills in a few days. He made an impression in the team's intrasquad scrimmage, and it lasted. The Steelers lost their exhibition opener to the Packers, 27–7, but Atkinson “did the best job of the new players,” it was noted.
¹⁰

“I started like our second exhibition game,” he said. “Like a minute before kickoff, Buddy Parker said, ‘Hey, Frank, you're starting; it's going to be on the left side. First time I'd ever played that. And that was a good game, so I started getting my reps in there.”
¹¹

Atkinson was tempted to cut his career even shorter when he saw John Reger in critical condition in the season opener, knocked out and struggling to breathe after a collision. “I'm standing on the sideline saying, ‘If this is going the way I think it's going to go, I'm just going back in the locker room right now and take a shower and get out of here,'” Atkinson recalled. “That was the scariest thing I'd ever seen on a football field. There's Reger, he's on the verge of death. He's back in a couple weeks playing. Tough guy.”
¹²