That Impossible Season

By the time the 1970 season was three games old and we had lost two and tied one, even our Oakland writers had counted us out. One said the season "should be swept under the rug immediately." But there are always criers of doom around, and I try never to listen to them or talk to them. The pro football season lasts 14 games; only fools give up after three. I remember 1961 at Houston when we won one of our first five games and everybody was counting us out and we came back to win nine straight, the division championship and the league championship. That's one reason I'm an optimist: I've seen too many "dead" teams come out of the grave and win it all. Experience has taught me optimism. Or maybe I'm just dumb.

When the gloomy articles began to appear last year I worked harder than ever to put on a happy face. I told the guys we were a much better team than our record showed, that we'd been victimized by a crazy collection of bad breaks. Which was true. Things like Charlie Smith running 65 yards for a touchdown against Miami and the referee calling it back for holding. Things like getting penalized 140 yards a game. I felt the breaks had to start going our way. It never occurred to me that we were anything but a first-place ball club.

We beat Denver and Washington to even our record at 2-2-1, but we were still down in the standings. Our sixth game of the season was against Pittsburgh, and we knew we were in for trouble. The Steelers had beaten us easily in the exhibition season, and they had allowed an average of only 13 points a game in the regular season. They had that big kid, Terry Bradshaw, at quarterback and their defense was anchored by Mean Joe Greene. It was a game I was dying to get in, but I figured I had little chance. I knew all the guys would be watching on television back at the VFW hall in Youngwood, Pa., my old home town. To those guys Pittsburgh and Cleveland were the key teams in the NFL. If you could beat Pittsburgh and Cleveland you were a pro. Everything else was vanilla.

Daryle Lamonica started at quarterback, and Kenny (The Snake) Stabler and I did our thing on the sidelines. We watched the Pittsburgh defense and tried to figure out how it could be beaten. The game wasn't very old before we realized that the Steeler secondary could be had short. It was leaving the middle wide open and it also looked weak deep on the left side where our Warren Wells was working. We'd noticed in game films that Pittsburgh seemed to red-dog by down and yardage, and the game confirmed this.

Late in the first quarter the score was 7-7, and The Snake and I were in conference when I heard John Madden holler, "George, you're going in. Throw to Chester over the middle."

I looked over and there was Daryle limping around. It was that old back trouble of his, and he could hardly move. I grabbed my helmet and ran out on the field and on the first play I hit Ray Chester right over the middle for a 29-yard touchdown. The play was called back for holding. On the next series of downs we faked a running play and sent Warren Wells running like crazy right up the field. I cut loose, and Wells and Pittsburgh Cornerback Mel Blount got to the ball at the same time, but Warren caught it for a touchdown. Then we hit a field goal, and soon after Chester caught a 19-yard touchdown pass. I wondered what the boys at the VFW hall were thinking. We won the game 31-14 and everybody had played well.

In the dressing room the reporters circled around my locker, but I refused to talk to them. I'd had enough trouble with reporters. One of them wrote later: "One thing about George, win or lose his disposition remains the same." Another wrote: " Daryle Lamonica loused up the Pittsburgh Steelers. He didn't play." At first glance that looked like a knock on Daryle, but it wasn't. What the writer meant was that the Steelers had practiced all week against Daryle's style of quarterbacking, and then they had to cope with something entirely different. As Daryle explained it himself, "George throws the slants, the poles, the quick stuff that he has all his life. They were preparing for me, for the long and intermediate passes. George comes in, sets up shorter, throws quicker, and it confuses their timing." I enjoyed those kind words, but I was even more pleased by something my little brother John said after the game: "George, we've always said you're the third-best quarterback in the family, but the way you're developing we may have to move you up a notch."

The next week we played at Kansas City and the game turned out to be a tag-team match, with Ben Davidson squaring off against Otis Taylor of the Chiefs and some of the other guys mixing it up. It got right down to the last few seconds with the Chiefs ahead 17-14, and it looked like our only hope was going to be a long field goal against the wind. It was cold and I hadn't played at all, and I was running up and down the sidelines trying to get that elderly blood moving in that elderly kicking leg. We were out of time-outs, but a Kansas City player got hurt and that gave me a few extra minutes to rub up my leg, do some more deep knee bends and knead those five ice cubes called toes. Then John Madden came over. "George, we've got to kick it," he said. Daryle slapped me on the back and said, "All you gotta do, George, is just hit it like you always do. I'll give you a good hold."

The old optimist said, "No problem. We got it." I wasn't whistling in the dark, either. Ever since I'd missed a key kick at San Diego earlier in the season, my kicking had been straight and sure, the best of my career.

We went out on the field and Daryle kneeled at their 48-yard line. I looked the Kansas Cities over. They had Buck Buchanan, all 6'7" of him, lined up in the middle. That meant I had to get the ball off quick and up high, which would take some of the distance off it.