The Games That Changed the Game Page 10
Branch caught another pass on the next play to move the ball inside the 20, but Oakland couldn’t get any closer. Lambert made a terrific open-field tackle following one short pass, then whacked Stabler on the next play, thanks to a blitz from Greenwood and Greene. “We did get some big gains with Branch, but when you’re inside the red zone, the field shrinks,” conceded Flores. “And when that happens, I thought that was when the Steelers were at their best. Their two-deep zone, rolling up their corners, and linebackers who could run—put all those things together—when you squeeze the field down to twenty yards or so, there aren’t a lot of options to go to.” Blanda salvaged the drive with a short field goal to narrow Pittsburgh’s lead to 17–13, and there were still more than seven and a half minutes remaining.
The Steelers’ offense drained four of those minutes off the clock before punting away, but Oakland did nothing on its next series. “Because we held a late lead, we may have been playing a deeper set,” said Russell, “with four linebackers covering short zones and three guys still deep. We probably had three down linemen some of the time. Bud would try different techniques to throw them off stride.” The critical stop came on third-and-7, with Greene aligned as a tilted nose and Carson calling a Cover-Zero blitz. This created an alley that allowed Lambert to get in clean, forcing Stabler to chuck it into the seats. “Against a throwing team like Oakland, you’d better be able to defend the passing game with your middle linebacker,” observed Ham. “Without that, your Cover-Two’s not worth a damn. In that game, Lambert forced Stabler to throw the ball over a six-foot-four guy, adding a little bit of an arc that could force hurries and interceptions. Lambert’s height was really important.”
Still trailing only by 4, Oakland had one last chance after getting the ball with 1:48 remaining. Branch opened the drive with an 18-yard catch, but on the next snap, Greenwood caved in Oakland’s protection to sack Stabler for a 9-yard loss. It was wiped out because of a defensive holding call by Thomas, but J.T. more than made up for it on the next play. When Hubbard stayed in to block instead of running out into the pattern, it gave Russell the green light to abandon pass coverage responsibilities on Marv and blitz the pocket. Andy stormed in on Stabler, who threw it up for grabs. No Raider was nearby as Thomas picked it off, returning it to the Oakland 24. Two plays later, Harris ran up the middle virtually untouched for the game-clinching touchdown.
For a twelve-year vet like Russell, who’d played on many dreadful Steelers teams, the 24–13 win was “the most euphoric moment I think I’d ever felt on a football field. We almost had tears in our eyes. We were so happy and deliriously excited about going to the Super Bowl.” It was also meaningful for Greene, who’d also suffered through some lean years. “To think that when you haven’t won anything in your history, and then that precise moment when you know that the next ball game will be the Super Bowl, it just doesn’t get any better than that. I was floating.”
Franco Harris called it “the biggest game of the whole seventies teams, because it really showed what we were about—our character and what we overcame and what we achieved. To go there and to win that game made us realize that we’re a really good football team; probably the best. And that really set the tone for what was to come for the rest of the decade. We got home late that night, around two or three in the morning. We weren’t tired at all. We were just feeling great. Some of the guys came over to my place, and we had our steak and eggs and champagne, partying till the next morning.”
wo weeks later, the Steelers won the first world championship in franchise history by defeating the Minnesota Vikings, 16–6. In that game, Bud Carson’s defense set a Super Bowl record by allowing only 119 yards in total offense. If anyone still had doubts about Pittsburgh’s defenders—or the system they played in—this performance put them to rest. One of the converts may have been Mel Blount himself. Years later, he confessed, “I had one of my worst games ever when I went against Cliff Branch, and I made some statements about being pulled from that game—that a smart coach would not have done something like that. Going into the Super Bowl, there was a lot of controversy about whether or not I would even play.”
Carson ultimately decided to restore Blount to the lineup, and Mel responded with a shut-down performance. He made a key goalline interception just before the half and worked with the rest of the secondary to allow just one catch to a wide receiver the entire game. It marked a turning point for Blount’s career and his success in Carson’s defensive scheme. “Before then, Bud and Mel butted heads a lot,” recalled Wagner. “I’ve talked to Mel about this, and he’s admitted that he was wrong; that he needed to learn how to work within Bud’s system.”
After the Steelers chose Michigan cornerback Dave Brown as their first pick in the next draft, Blount realized he’d have to convince Carson that he was fully committed to his program. “I knew that I had to come into training camp in ‘75 and prove that I was a great player and could play in this league,” said Blount. “The results were that I got eleven interceptions and was the NFL defensive player of the year.” That interception total remains the franchise record more than thirty years later. Mel went on to make the Pro Bowl five times, won three more Super Bowl rings with the Steelers, and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1989.
A case can be made that once Blount mastered his Cover-Two responsibilities, the Steelers’ defense reached a level of accomplishment few other units have equaled. In a way, they became almost too good. In 1976 the Steelers ran off a string of nine straight regular-season wins. During that streak, they allowed the opposition only 28 points! Things weren’t a whole lot better around the rest of the NFL, either. With other teams incorporating the aggressive features of Carson’s Cover-Two, the majority of games were turning into low-scoring affairs—and fans were getting bored. When fans are unhappy, the owners are unhappy, so they decided to do something about it.
Beginning in 1978, the year that the season was expanded to sixteen games, the league implemented a pair of drastic rule changes to boost offenses. One new ruling assisted offensive linemen, who were now allowed to block with their hands open and arms extended. What was once whistled for a holding penalty now became legal pass protection, giving quarterbacks more time to read defenses before finding their receivers. The other new rule was instituted at curbing abuse by defensive backs, and those changes were aimed specifically with the Steelers in mind. The Illegal Chuck Rule (or “Mel Blount rule,” as some called it) prohibited defenders from making any contact with receivers once they ran 5 yards beyond the line of scrimmage. From now on, aggressive defenders like Blount would have to keep their hands to themselves, and once-bullied pass targets were free to run their routes without being mugged.
Blount was more flattered than annoyed by the decision. “I think anytime a player can have such an effect on the game that they name a rule after you, what more can you ask for? It’s something my kids can read about; a part of your legacy. And I’m honored that they thought enough of the way I played the game that they would change the rule and call it the Mel Blount rule. When something like that happens, you just have to do things differently. We might have had to disguise ourselves a little bit better to camouflage our defenses, or do whatever was necessary to force a mistake by the opponent. We were still talented enough that we could go on and win championships.”
Because the Steelers’ defense dominated the 1970s, other teams tried to replicate their success, but with mixed results. “Those clubs never had anything close to the quality of the Steelers players,” stated Bill Belichick, who was then a staff assistant with the Broncos. “That was a very sophisticated and difficult defense. There was no way you could run it unless you really knew what you were doing. Guys just weren’t leaving Pittsburgh until George Perles took it with him to Michigan State. When I hired Nick Saban at Cleveland in 1990, Nick had run Bud’s defense at MSU. When he got to the Browns, we ran that Pittsburgh defense from 1990 to ‘95, with some modifications. But by then thing
s had changed from when Bud ran it with the Steelers. We had to handle a lot of different problems against one-back, three-wide formations—things that didn’t show up that much back in the seventies.”
Because of those formations and the Blount rule, Carson’s original version of Cover-Two isn’t used today, but its core principles are still valid, and the man most successful in adapting those principles was Tony Dungy. Although Dungy spent only one season as a player under Carson, he was profoundly influenced by his philosophy. Many of the building blocks for Tony’s highly successful “Tampa-Two” defense can be found in Carson’s 1977 Steelers playbook, a tattered but treasured binder that Tony still keeps on his shelf. “This was how I grew up in pro football. That’s what I believed in. So when I went to the Vikings in 1992 as defensive coordinator for Denny Green, that’s why I said, ‘This is how I want to play.’ He gave me the go-ahead to put it together.
“Monte Kiffin was on the staff, as the linebackers coach,” Dungy continued. “They’d already been successful with a little different style of defense—not much Cover-Two, but a great pass rush. So I said, ‘Monte, if we can incorporate your stuff and throw Cover-Two in, I think we can have something special.’ It turned out great, because in 1993 we led the league in defense. We also led the league a couple of times in takeaways. But it didn’t spread in popularity until after we got to Tampa in ‘96. And that was where we committed to playing it as a base defense, something people hadn’t seen since the seventies.”
There were some noticeable differences. Bud essentially told his linebackers, “Read where the receiver goes and follow him.” Dungy and Kiffin asked their guys to hit landmarks, move to assigned spots, then come up to make the play. I remember when I was broadcasting Bucs preseason games, I’d watch their guys at training camp. It took them a while to learn this system, but once the light went on, it really fit that team well. Staff assistants Lovie Smith and Herm Edwards carried it with them after they became head coaches. When Lovie’s Chicago Bears met Dungy’s Colts in Super Bowl XLI, you had both conference champions running basically the same defense. In today’s NFL, virtually every team incorporates some element of Cover-Two–Tampa-Two in its defensive schemes.
Whenever Dungy taught it to newcomers, there was initial confusion. “At practices, guys we acquired from other teams would ask, ‘If the tight end does this, who’s got him?’ And we’d say, ‘Well, no one’s got him. The defense is going to take care of it. The offense is going to complete some passes. If they’re patient, and they just dump the ball off, we’ve got to come up and tackle well. But at some point, one of our defensive linemen will get a great rush, or we’ll stop a run and make it third-and-nine. Now they aren’t going to be able to throw that six-yard pass anymore. That’s what you’ve got to believe in.’ That was foreign territory to a lot of professional teams. They believed they needed an answer to every single route run against them, but we didn’t, and that’s probably the difference with the true Tampa-Two.”
t the end of the 1977 season, Carson left Pittsburgh to become defensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Rams. Ironically, two years later, those same Rams entered Super Bowl XIV as heavy underdogs against the Steelers, but by the end of the third quarter, L.A. was actually ahead. Because Carson knew his former team’s defenses so thoroughly, Pittsburgh rotated linebackers after every play so that Bud couldn’t steal its calls from the sidelines. The Rams eventually lost, but Bud continued to be successful as a coordinator for another decade until finally achieving his lifetime goal.
He ran defenses for the Colts, Chiefs, and Jets before being named Cleveland’s head coach in 1989. In his first season, he led the Browns all the way to the conference championship game but was impulsively fired by owner Art Modell after a slow start the following year—a move that Modell later admitted was a mistake. Carson landed on his feet in Philadelphia, coaching a defense in 1991 that scared the rest of the league to death. Reggie White, Seth Joyner, Eric Allen, and Wes Hopkins were among its biggest stars. Because pro football was becoming more pass oriented, Bud adapted his base schemes to the times, blitzing a lot more in Philly than he ever did in Pittsburgh. Those changes were clearly successful, because that Eagles unit became one of the few to ever lead the league in rushing, passing, and total defense in a single season. Most historians will agree that Carson was responsible for two of the greatest defenses of all time with the ‘76 Steelers and the ‘91 Eagles.
Peter Giunta, Bud’s secondary coach, remembered a bus ride the Eagles took to Washington for a game with the Redskins. “We were passing the Pentagon, when one of our linebackers, Bill Romanowski, said, ‘I think that may be the only building in America that has more defenses than Bud Carson.’ So, of course, at halftime of that game, Bud adds yet another defense he thinks up to try to take Washington’s better players out of the game. And Romanowski then said, ‘You know, I was wrong. Carson has more defenses than the Pentagon!’ When things weren’t going well, Bud would stay very calm, rein things in, and go back to the basic defenses we played best. He was so good at making adjustments; taking away opponents’ elements that were hurting you. He did a great job of adapting to the skills of the players he had. He’d add new wrinkles, new blitzes, always trying to be ahead of the offense.”
Carson returned to the Rams to finish his coaching career before finally retiring at the end of the ‘97 season. He passed away in 2005, but his core concepts remain deeply woven into the fabric of today’s NFL. “Bud Carson was a guy who had the courage to try things that had never been tried before,” said Andy Russell. “Changing the defense anytime the offense moved before the snap of the ball was totally innovative. The Stunt 4-3, route progression awareness, the hug-'em-up, and, of course, everything with Cover-Two. He had an ability to balance an athlete’s physical talent with his mental strengths. He always reminded us to use our heads—not to be impatient.”
There may have been more dominant performances by the Steel Curtain defense, but I believe that the ‘74 AFC championship will always be Bud Carson’s signature game. And although Tony Dungy wasn’t there that day when the Steelers beat Oakland, he learned enough in one year with Carson to become his most enthusiastic disciple. During his thirteen seasons as head coach of Tampa Bay and then Indianapolis—where he won the Super Bowl in 2006—Tony spread the gospel of Cover-Two more than anyone else. But Dungy also recognized Bud’s flaws, even while admiring his genius. “As a head coach, he didn’t have the right personality for the job. He wasn’t going to give you confidence if you didn’t already have it. But as far as getting you in position to understand what you had to do and getting you ready to play, he was great. And he knew football. Bud had strong beliefs, knew what he was doing, and wasn’t afraid to go against the grain. Bud Carson never felt he had to follow the crowd.”
Sunday No. 3
OAKLAND RAIDERS VS. SAN DIEGO CHARGERS
San Diego Stadium, San Diego, California —September 14, 1980
y the end of my fourth NFL season, I was ready for a change. I’d spent each of those years with the Los Angeles Rams and had played well when given the chance. But the quarterback position had been something of a revolving door since I’d arrived: First John Hadl, then James Harris, and, finally, Pat Haden had all seen more action than I had. I had reached the point in my career where I simply wanted to play every day. It was so important to me that I’d taken a 10 percent pay cut in ‘76 to be eligible for that era’s version of “free agency"; that season I made the grand sum of $27,000.
My agent was a fellow named Steve Deutsch, whose family was in the film business in L.A. He was friendly with Michael Klein, the son of San Diego Chargers owner Gene Klein. Steve asked if the Chargers might be interested in acquiring my services, and the answer was yes. They already had a solid young passer in Dan Fouts, but Dan was about to take on both the players union and San Diego management in separate but equally complicated disputes, so the Chargers thought it might be wise to look for additional quarterback help.
The other team interested in signing me was the Philadelphia Eagles. I knew their coach, Dick Vermeil, from when he had served as the Rams’ running-back coach a few years earlier. Throughout the ‘76 season, Dick was unofficially “recruiting” me through a friend of his in California: a car dealer named Ben Wells, who stayed in constant touch. After the Rams were eliminated from the playoffs, Dick was permitted to talk directly to me, and he pitched me hard.
Ultimately, Coach Vermeil won me over because of the kind of person he is. And to be honest, I also fell in love with Philadelphia. It was an ethnic city like my hometown of Buffalo, with different neighborhoods and cultures. I liked that. I had been offered basically the same money and contract length by both the Chargers and the Eagles. After talking it over with my wife, Liz, we decided we’d head back east to make our new home. To make things official, the Eagles traded the rights for tight end Charle Young to L.A., and the Rams sent my rights to Philly—so it looked like a trade. Since nobody around the league complained about it, it went through. In every meaningful way, the move turned out to be the best thing for me, and I have no regrets.
Well, maybe I do have one tiny regret. Had I signed with San Diego, I would have become the triggerman for what is still regarded by many experts as the greatest passing offense in NFL history. Fouts eventually ironed out his contract differences with Gene Klein and was there when Don Coryell was hired to coach San Diego in 1978. Beginning at that moment, Coryell transformed the Chargers into an offensive juggernaut. Any quarterback would have loved to play on those teams. I still lie in bed sometimes and think about what might have been had I gone with San Diego. I look at the numbers Fouts put up, the records he shattered, and think, That could have been me.