|
|
 |
|
ARTICLE
1976 AFC Championship
Game Another in a series of stories about
the 47 playoff games in Steelers history. Steelers' shot at history ends in
By BOB
LABRIOLA Steelers.com In the NFL, conference championship
games are important just because of what they are. Win and go to the Super Bowl.
Lose and a season that was successful just for the fact of getting this far ends
in bitter disappointment. Those are the stakes for a normal conference
championship game, but the 1976 version in the AFC was anything but
normal. The 1976 AFC Championship Game would
be Steelers vs. Raiders, and at that time there was nothing normal about
matchups between these teams. And beyond the typical malevolence these teams
brought to games against each other, there were some extras that added to the
intrigue of this one. There were the injuries to the
Steelers' pair of 1,000-yard rushers: Rocky Bleier's toe and Franco Harris'
ribs. And to a lesser extent, there were the injuries to
This was yet another rematch of the
NFL's two undisputed heavyweights in another win-or-go-home playoff game, and
the violence quotient had grown exponentially. Jack Tatum and then George
Atkinson had taken And this wasn't just media hype,
either. Tommy Bell, a long-time distinguished NFL referee was going to retire at
the end of the season, and the league office allowed him
t The Steelers-Raiders rivalry had
gone to another level earlier in the year when for the second straight time
Oakland defensive backs attacked Swann with the apparent intent of knocking him
out of the game. In the 1975 AFC Championship Game, Swann had been knocked out
of the game by Jack Tatum with a concussion, and in the 1976 opener Atkinson
committed what is aggravated assault when performed on a city sidewalk instead
of on a football field. With Franco Harris running down the
far sideline after catching a swing pass, Atkinson came at Swann from behind and
swung his forearm Swann's head. Don Meredith, the NBC color commentator, said on
the air at the time, "I'm telling you, they're picking on
After the game, in which the Raiders
staged a dramatic fourth-quarter rally to win, 31-28, Chuck Noll had been
gracious toward the winners until he was asked about the Atkinson hit on Swann.
Then Noll became caustic. "I took (Swann) out because he kept
getting hit in the back of the head," Noll began sarcastically, before turning
serious. "There was a lot of discussion about putting a rule in against it this
year. It wasn't done and the reason given was that, although it was illegal, no
special rule was needed." Noll was referring to the tactic
involving the swinging of a forearm and hitting a receiver in the head. "They
said the officials couldn't control it. There should've been a rule against
slapping receivers years ago. Maybe they're waiting for somebody to get
killed. "They went after Swann again," added
Noll. "People that sick shouldn't be allowed t When it came time
t "They can do without me," said
Bleier, "but it'd be tough without the big man." Added Joe Greene, about Harris:
"Broken ribs are kind of hard to suck up. Even if they're not broken, a bad
bruise there makes it very difficult to breathe. Damn near
impossible." This situation with the injured
running backs was what concerned the football people in both organizations, but
the media was all over the rhetoric about the charges and countercharges of
dirty play. "The Steelers started all this, but
their coach was smart enough to turn it around on us," said Al Davis of the
Raiders. "(Noll) was smart. He made us look like the villains, but you don't
think the Steelers got where they are by playing nice, soft football, do you? Be
assured, they didn't get to the Super Bowl the last two years by being nice
fellows." One
"Greene is trying to become the
Muhammad Ali of pro football," said The hype for this game was 30 years
ahead of its time, and just as so often happens today in such instances, the
actual game part of the whole extravaganza was
disappointing. The Steelers opened with three tight
ends – rookie Bennie Cunningham, Randy Grossman and
about-to-be-converted-to-tackle Larry Brown. The only healthy running back was
Reggie Harrison, and he started. "We knew all along that Deloplaine
was out, and when we kept hearing that the other guys – Rocky and Franco and
Frenchy – weren't practicing, we started working against a four-end offense,"
said Raiders coach Joe Gibbs would win Super Bowls in
the 1980s coaching the Washington Redskins with a power-running offense that
operated from a one-back set, but in 1976 this was avant-garde stuff. Noll had
only one week to come up with something to use, and do it on the road against a
great Raiders team geeked to the max for the occasion. Even though some of what
the Steelers showed that afternoon in terms of utilization of offensive
formations was among the stuff Gibbs' teams used later so successfully, trying
to get it done in a week with backups against the Raiders had little chance to
succeed, what with the Steelers also forced to go with backup center Ray
Mansfield as their kicker. In the first quarter, a Pittsburgh
offense that rushed for over 200 yards in nine of its previous 10 games, managed
8 yards, and because Bradshaw combined that by going 0-for-5, the Steelers
didn't get their initial first down until there was 8:32 left in the first
half. With the Steelers defense doing a
lot of the same things to the Raiders offense, the game's first score came from
the kind of mistake that's critical in games like this. When Mike Webster went
to the sideline briefly with an injury, one of the plays he missed was one of
More mistakes helped the Raiders get
to 10-0. Fuqua's run for a first down was nullified by a penalty on Cunningham
for offside; on the do-over, Bradshaw's pass was tipped, intercepted by Willie
Hall and returned to the 1-yard line. Clarence Davis took over from
there. The Steelers offense answered this
with a 75-yard drive keyed by passes of 11 yards to Frank Lewis, 18 to
Suddenly the offenses were awake.
The Raiders didn't have a lot of time before the end of the first half, and a
turnover would've been a disaster. The Steelers defense was averaging over three
takeaways a game and maybe looking too much for one here.
When the early part of the second
half didn't go well for the Steelers, the game essentially was over. After their
offense went three-and-out on its first tw Afterwards, the game that was
supposed to generate into a street fight ended up as one with nothing except a
dozen 5-yard penalties combined, but it didn't lack for hard hitting. The
Raiders were jubilant because in their minds they finally had righted the many
wrongs done to them by the Steelers/league office starting with the Immaculate
Reception, which was four playoff matchups ago; the Steelers were
"I'd play 'em again tomorrow. Just
give me a few beers, a couple of hours of sleep, and I'll be out there at
Steelers 0 7 0 0 7 Raiders 3 14 7 0 24
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
