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ARTICLE
1977 AFC Divisional Playoff Another in a series of stories about
the 47 playoff games in Steelers history. Loss to Broncos
reflected tumultuous season By BOB
LABRIOLA Steelers.com To characterize the 1977 season as
one unending distraction is similar to referring to the There were holdouts, walkouts,
lawsuits and counter-suits. Players demanded trades. Players and coaches faced
off in court. Players were disciplined publicly and fined heavily by
Commissioner Pete Rozelle. A rookie died in a car accident during training camp.
Things started poorly and ended badly, and when it was time for the epilogue the
1977 Steelers were written off as a bunch of washed-up malcontents who made the
trip from greatness to mediocrity in a few short months. Here's a partial timeline of their
tribulations: April 1977: Chuck Noll was summoned
to On July 28, Lambert's agent upped
the ante a little bit, and this was the headline on the lead sports story in the
Pittsburgh Press: "Agent tells Rooney: Jack wants traded." The preseason progressed the way one
would expect of a team in turmoil. There were some evenings when the Steelers
got by on their talent alone, but other times the lack of focus, the
distractions, the carnival atmosphere that seemed to have engulfed the entire
organization was too much to overcome. Six preseason games were common in the
1970s, and the Steelers were a respectable 3-3, but one of those losses was to a
Late in August, Noll named the
team's captains for the upcoming season, and even this seemingly innocuous event
became controversial. When word got to Lambert that he had been bypassed, he
voiced his disappointment publicly. Noll fired back in the media that Lambert
didn't deserve to be a captain because he held out all through training
camp. The 1977 regular season was at hand,
and the chaos simply did not abate. After much détente from both camps, Blount
dropped his lawsuit against Noll and rejoined the team after missing 56 days;
Lambert finally reported on Sept. 1; but neither of those arrivals had much of
an immediate effect on the on-field performance, as evidenced by that 30-0
debacle in Dallas, the worst loss for a Noll-coached team since 1969 when the
Steelers finished 1-13. Through most of the offseason, it
had been team president Dan Rooney at the center of most every controversy,
because he was the team's voice in contract negotiations. But three days before
the start of the regular season, it was the Steelers founder who decided to
speak. His words seemed to be a warning to all parties. "This isn't like baseball," said Art
Rooney Sr. "Baseball is an individual game. You can have eight players who
dislike each other and the management, and they can still go up to the plate and
hit. But this is a team game. Everybody has to work
together." The season opened with a 27-0 Monday
night win over Revenge, or maybe it was redemption
that was on the minds of Steelers fans as they packed Three Rivers Stadium on
Sept. 25, but it wasn't to be. The Raiders were dominant in a 16-7 win in which
they forced five turnovers and controlled the game physically throughout. When
it was over, there was no longer any doubt about the direction the AFC was
going, and the Steelers woke up the following morning to this headline, "The End
of a Dynasty." And there were more distractions,
too. Backup cornerback Jimmy Allen quit the team in October, but changed his
mind the next day and came back. A couple of days before the game in
Even though the Steelers regrouped
to win the AFC Central Division with a 9-5 record, the team also lived down to
the prediction that it had slipped back into the pack. The AFC's best records in
1977 belonged to Their playoff assignment was a
return trip to Three times the Broncos took the
lead and three times the Steelers came back before they finally cracked in the
final 10 minutes of the game. They had outgained the Broncos, 183-44, at
halftime and yet the score was 14-14, largely because of a blocked punt and a
lost fumble by Franco Harris. In the third quarter, a fair catch of a punt by
Jim Smith at the 4-yard line put the Steelers in the hole the Broncos turned
into a 41-yard touchdown drive and a 21-14 lead, but Terry Bradshaw answered
with a 4-yard touchdown pass to Larry Brown that tied the score
again. But then came two interceptions by
Bradshaw in the fourth quarter – both by linebacker Tom Jackson – and the flurry
of Broncos points that resulted eliminated the Steelers,
34-21.
Steelers 0 14 0 7 21 Broncos 7 7 7 13 34
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