Steelers Ryan Clark Echos Jack Lambert and He is Right To...

“Quarterbacks should wear dresses.” – Jack Lambert, early 1980’s
“They might as well just take us off the field and see how many points you can score on offense in 60 minutes.” – Ryan Clark, August 2013

Ryan Clark might lack Lambert’s brevity, but his criticism of the NFL as equally accurate as it is damming.

• When it comes to hypocrisy, the NFL knows no limits.

Fear not, this is no column decrying new NFL safety rules to reduce the threat of head trauma. Such rules, absent medical break throughs and/or a clearer understanding of what is causing so many former NFL players to lose it up stairs when they’re in their 60’s, 50’s or even 40’s, are needed.

But like a spoiled child, the NFL wants to have its cake and eat it too.

This is nothing new. In the early and mid 1970’s there was an opposing defender who was so physical with receivers downfield that the NFL had to modify its rules, preventing defenders from touching receivers beyond 5 yards.

That defender was of course Mel Blount, and Chuck Noll took advantage of the rules changes to unleash Terry Bradshaw, Lynn Swann, John Stallworth, and Bennie Cunningham and Super Bowls XIII and XIV followed.

The NFC Titan’s of the 1980’s followed suit Bill Walsh and Joe Montana and Joe Gibbs and a trio of quarterbacks dominated a decade.

• But as happens, NFL defensive coordinators did what they do – they adapted.

And the way you adapt to making it more difficult to cover downfield is to increase pressure on the quarterback upfront. Pass rush specialists like Lawrence Taylor emerged. Others developed schemes to bring pressure from unique angles – you may have heard of Dick LeBeau and the Zone Blitz.

• Of course increase pressure resulted in more injuries to quarterbacks.

So the NFL began legislating to protect its prized primiadonnas – nary a consideration was given to the root cause of the issue.

The same thing is repeating itself today. The NFL is rightly attempting to protect players, both defensive and offensive, from head injuries. So defensive backs adjust their technique to avoid the head and neck.

• The result is that players like Dustin Keller suffer knee injuries as a result of a hit by D.J. Swearinger.

And of course the NFL steps in. Nothing is illegal. Yet. But we will investigate.

And the one doing the investigating is none other than the Steelers old friend Ray Anderson….

…Ray Anderson who made a similar “not illegal now but…” statement after Hines Ward devastating block of Keith Rivers. Ray Anderson who singled out James Harrison while turning a bind eye to questionable hits on Ben Roethlisberger…. (Click here for more on the Steelers and Anderson)

Yeah, Ryan Clark is right to call out the NFL.

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Watch Tower: Scab Referee, '87 Strike, Todd Haley, and More...

Steel Curtain Rising’s Watch Tower has been quiet for a while, mainly because there’s a lot going on in life. No issue has dominated the news as the replacement referees have, so that’s where the Watch Tower first shines its light.

AP, ESPN Ignore the 4th Time Out Awarded to Houston vs. the 1989 Steelers

Regular readers know that the 1989 Steelers are near and dear to Steel Curtain Rising. So what could they possibly have to do with the replacement refs?

Well, the biggest news flub early on by the scab refs was the 4th Time Out they awarded to Seattle in their loss to Arizona in week 1. However, the Associated Press article that ESPN ran was more problematic:  Refs Error in Arizona Third of its Kind.

ESPN Inaccurate on 4th Time Out

The article discusses the extra timeouts the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens got in 2003 and 2009 respectively. But to read the headline and story, those were the only times such errors occurred in NFL history.

It happened at least once before, on December 3rd 1989 in Three Rivers Stadium when the Houston Oilers got an extra time out on a touchdown drive in a Oilers 23-16 victory over the Steelers. Chuck Noll protested and fired off an apology letter to the league, which admitted the error, not that much could be done about it….

Seattle Seahawks Fans Can Shut Up Now

Of course the biggest news relating to the scab refs was the highway robbery in the form of a Seahawks touchdown instead of a Packers interception.

That blow call generated a lot of Sound and Fury (not to mention a quick agreement between the NFL and its officials), but no one had a more astute observation than my good friend Tony Defeo on “Pittsburgh Best Sports Blog” where he contrasted how Seahawks fans are fine with this blow call, but still whine about Super Bowl XL.

Is there a living soul in Steeler Nation who isn’t sick of hearing the Seahawk’s unending excuse making for losing Super Bowl XL? To listen to them, you’d think that Willie Parker’s 75 yard run came on a questionable call.

As Tony succinctly  concluded, “Seahawks fans need to be very quiet now.”

It’s mildly ironic that Defeo would make such an observation, because in early August, he wrote an excellent tongue and cheek article in Behind the Steel Curtain panning the possibility that scab refs could do much worse than the regular season refs by invoking the interception that Troy Polamalu had stolen from him in the 2005 AFC Divisional playoffs thanks to incompetent use of instant replay.

If you don’t remember the play, check it out here, but do it while you can (available 9/29/12). With the official lockout settled, Goodell now has the time to unleash his YouTube police:


Replacement Refs, What about Replacement Players?

Whether it was editorial coincidence or editorial competition, last Sunday the Post Gazette and Tribune Review featured dueling stories recounting the 1987 players strike.

Both articles were fairly general. Both pointed out that John Stallworth caught his 500th pass from a scab quarterback. Bouchette reminded us that the Steelers refunded tickets, unlike other teams, and that for a time admitted that their sellout record had been broken, although they claim otherwise today.

Robinson went further back, discussing both the ’87 and ’82 strike, and unearthed a story of Steve Courson and Gary Dunn hearing WTAE rebroadcast a Steelers game from a previous season while in the car, and racing back to Pittsburgh thinking a deal had been reached and that they were missing a game. My, how did we live without cell phones and the internet….

Both men wrote good stories, but both left one of the juiciest quotes on the table. It was Christmas time in 1987, and I was sitting with my father and grandfather in some second story waiting room in an office off of Brownsville Road in Carrick, thumbing through the year end edition of Pittsburgh Magazine, when I saw, if memory serves, this priceless gem:

“Yeah, Malone threw one too. But he missed.”

The caption read something on the order of, “A fan recounts striking Steelers pelting Ernest Jackson’s van with Jelly doughnuts as he cross the picket line.”

Mark Malone started all 12 of the 1987 Steelers non-strike games and finished the ’87 season with a 46.7 passer rating….

Haley Holds Court

No off season topic generated as much noise as the decision to fire Bruce Arians and replace him with Todd Haley. Haley returned to Pittsburgh with a checkered past and was known as one who often had trouble working and playing well with others.

The Steelers press office has taken a very proactive approach to diffusing the issue. In PG Plus, Ed Bouchette has lamented several times that under Mike Tomlin the Steelers have been reluctant to grant media access to assistant coaches.

That has not been the case this year. By all appearances, during training camp the press had free access to Todd Haley, and he’s been interviewed regularly since the season started.

While the Watch Tower certainly does not have the time to do any sort of formal count, one is not needed to see that Haley was quoted during training camp more often than Tomlin himself.

The big issue was how would Ben Roethlisberger and Haley co-exist. There’ve been a number of attempts to extrapolate on some of the things Roethlisberger has said to indicate tension. But so far the story has gained no traction.

Part of it is because Ben has immediately shot down such talk. But keeping Haley in front of the microphones also lends a ton of credibility to Roethlisberger’s denials.

It’s still early, but score one win for the Steelers PR team.

Carson Palmer Gets the Last Laugh

This had no impact on the game itself, but both the Post Gazette’s Blog and Gold and Behind the Steel Curtain ran profiles on Carson Palmer’s past, and often miserable, experience vs. the Steelers.

The Steelers play former players all of the time, but Palmer was a little different, in that he’s the first ex AFC North QB to face off against the Steelers in another division. And of course Palmer got the last laugh in the Raider’s victory.

Steelers Problems with Stringing Three Strong Seasons Together

Prior to the season, the media never tired of reminding Steeler Nation that the Steelers have trouble putting three strong seasons in a row. Steel Curtain Rising blasted already blasted this on the merits its preseason analysis.

Its understandable that the press would mention this recent tendency, but sometimes things go too far. Case in point, in his preseason predictions, Alan Robinson mentioned this tendency twice in his 5 arguments against the Steelers winning the Super Bowl.

Ben No Longer a Game Closer? + Timmons Troubles

No one is a better come from behind artist than Ben Roethlisberger, right?

Dale Lolley points out that Ben Roethlisberger failed to rally the Steelers against Oakand, and that in the last two seasons, he’s only done that once.

While I think this is more of a coincidence than anything else, Lolley’s the first person in the Pittsburgh press corps to make this observation, and it is a story that bears watching.

Lolley also came up with some interesting stats on Lawrence Timmons.

[Woodley] was still better than Timmons, who had three tackles. In fact, after recording seven sacks and four forced fumbles in 2009, Timmons has five sacks and two forced fumbles - in the past two-plus seasons.

That hurts. Do numbers lie?

Not exactly, but for all of his splash plays in 2009, Timmons was inconsistent. In contrast, he played extremely well in 2010, even if he lacked the “Splash” plays.

However, Lolley is dead on in concluding that right now the Steelers aren’t getting their money’s worth out of Timmons.

Thanks for visiting. To read more analysis of the media that cover the Steelers, click here to read more from Steel Curtain Rising's Watch Tower.

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Watch the Steelers vs. the Raiders in the 1975 AFC Championship

Missed seeing Bradshaw, Lambert, Franco, Greene, Swann, Blount and Stallworth in their primes?
(Scroll down for the video.)

Fortunately those you too young to remember or those who remember but were too young to appreciate get a second chance thanks to Dan Gigler’s Blog ‘n Gold over at the Post Gazette.

Gigler’s Blog and Gold, long a supporter of this site, is a veritable trove of treasures from Steelers Nation. Dan’s schedule for updating the site is irregular, but when he does update it he always delivers.

This time he’s out done himself by securing a copy of the 1975 AFC Championship game between the Steelers and the Raiders.

You can watch a commercial free, edited version of the game here (available as of 6/17/12):

Folks, this has been up since October 2011 but its unlikely the NFL’s lawyers will allow YouTube to keep this up for much longer. So watch it while you can, it’s a good investment of an hour.

Steelers vs. the Raiders – a Legendary Feud that Defined a Decade

The Patriots and Colts of the ‘00’s can have their rivalry. Compared to the Steelers vs. the Raiders, theirs is a high school popularity between opposing pretty boys who fear dirtying their hands.

• The Steelers and the Raiders fought a grown up fight. And they played for keeps.

No one ever uttered the words “criminal element” following a Patriots-Colts match up.

This game featured the first of several illegal George Atkinson close line tackles of Lynn Swann  that prompted Chuck Noll to level the "criminal element" charge.

• The Steelers and Raiders dueled in many an epic battle in the ‘70’s but this game perhaps more than any other defines the rivalry.

Winter is bitterly cold in Pittsburgh and the Steelers had tarpped and heated the surface of Three Rivers Stadium the night before the game. But winds whipped in off of Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohiotore open the tarp, creating slick spots throughout the field, but especially on the sidelines.

Al Davis had (allegedly) watered down the field in Oakland to give his slower running backs an advantage. Davisreflexively assumed that all NFL owners were as unscrupulous as he, and accused Dan Rooney of intentionally icing down the field to stifle his sideline passing game.

The Californian Davis failed to realize this game was simply played as January football is meant to be played: in an open air stadium in single-digit temperatures in front of over 50,000 rabid fans.

Both Ken Stabler and Terry Bradshaw made some impressive throws to give Dave Casper and John Stallworth breakout moments.

• But defense defined this game.   

Monte Johnson and Jack Tatum notched three interceptions for the Raiders, while Mike Wagner had two picks, including one that was downright Troy Polamaluesque. 

Chuck Noll declared that the game featured some of the hardest hitting he had ever seen. He was right, there were 9 fumbles in this game, including three recovered by Jack Lambert.

Breaking Down the 1975 AFC Championship Game, the Steelers vs. the Raiders

While the editing on this video does make for some disjointed viewing at times, watching the raw, NBC footage allows you to enjoy the flavor of the moment in a way that NFL Films, for however much they’ve immortalized key moments in the game, misses.

Seeing the original Steel Curtain Joe Greene, Dwight White,Ernie Holmes and L.C. Greenwood play snap-by-snap in front of greats such as  Jack Ham, Andy Russell and Mel Blount lets you understand just how great they were.

It gives you a chance to appreciate things that don’t show up on the stat sheet nor make it into highlight reels, such as the way the RayMansfield, Mike Webster, and Sammy Davis kept Terry Bradshaw clean.

• The video also offers some important reminders. Yes, the Hall of Fame contingent of the Super Steelers made them great, but they were only a necessary, and not a sufficient element in the Championship runs.

Watch the AFC Championship game video and you’ll see players like J.T. Thomas and Glen Edwards make fumble forcing hits or guys like Larry Brown and Frank Lewis coming up with key hits.

• It’s also good to see guys like Franco Harris get stuffed, repeatedly by the Raiders defense.

That might sound strange, but it’s true. Franco had a hard day against the Raiders and his partly 79 yards on 27 carries shows that.

For most of the day, John Madden’s defense left nowhere for Franco to run. Nowhere at all until he ripped off 25 yard burst that ended in the end zone with Pittsburghclinging to a 3-0 lead early in the 4^th quarter.

Seeing Franco struggle then soar underscores the oft forgotten fact that the Super Steelers weren’t gods – instead they great athletes blessed with the On the Field Presence necessary to step it up and make plays when the game was on the line.

Enjoy.

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