36. Steelers Super Bowl Victory over the Dallas Cowboys, 1979
After winning two straight Super Bowls, the Steelers struggled with injuries and were eliminated in the playoffs for the next two years. They bounced back in 1978 and ended with a 14–2 regular season record, the best in team history. They dominated the Denver Broncos and the Houston Oilers in the playoffs and headed back to Miami for a rematch with the Dallas Cowboys. In their first two Super Bowl seasons, the Steel Curtain defense and the running of Franco Harris led the Steelers, but 1978 was the year of Terry Bradshaw. He passed for 28 touchdowns, ten more than his previous high, and was named the Steelers MVP and the NFL Player of the Year. Despite the pregame taunting of Cowboys linebacker Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson, Bradshaw dominated Super Bowl XIII. He threw for 318 yards and four touchdowns in a 35–31 Steelers victory and was the unanimous choice for Super Bowl MVP. A late Dallas rally made the score close, but the Steelers, not the Cowboys, became the first NFL team to win three Super Bowls.
SUPER, SUPER, SUPER
Bradshaw’s 4 TD Passes Set Record
MIAMI—Light up the skies. Beat the drums. Let the words ring out.
The Pittsburgh Steelers are a team for the ages and Terry Bradshaw is a quarterback for any era.
The Steelers carved their niche in the pro football history books yesterday by becoming the first team to win three Super Bowls.
Before 78,656 fans in the Orange Bowl—many of them Steeler partisans waving their “Terrible Towels”—the Steelers whipped the Dallas Cowboys 35–31 in Super Bowl XIII in a game that wasn’t as close as the score sounded.
Putting a football in Terry Bradshaw’s hands is like handing Picasso a brush or Hemingway a pen. He riddled the Cowboys for 318 yards and four touchdowns in the best day of his pro career.
That enabled the Steelers to become the “team of the 70s” by winning their third championship in five years. Only the Green Bay Packers, who won five titles in seven years in the 1960s (three of them before the Super Bowl was founded), have surpassed the Steelers.
But that was a different era and the Steelers feel they have established themselves as the best football team ever to play the game.
“We’d have Ray Nitschke (the celebrated Green Bay middle linebacker) and those guys for lunch,” boasted Dwight White.
Jack Ham, a man not give to extravagant claims, said simply, “This is the best football team I’ve ever seen.”
The way the Steelers rolled through the playoffs was awe-inspiring. They got one point better with each game.
They beat Denver 33–10, Houston 34–5, and had a 35–17 lead on Dallas in the fourth period before the Cowboys scored two late touchdowns to make it close.
The Steelers finished pro football’s longest season with a 17–2 record for a percentage topped in modern times only by Miami’s 17–0 mark in 1972 and Green Bay’s 14–1 mark in 1962.
The headline on the January 22, 1979, Post-Gazette front page says it all, after the Steelers beat Dallas in Super Bowl XIII.
Dallas, becoming the second team to lose three Super Bowls (Minnesota has lost four), finished at 14–5.
Although Bradshaw overcame an interception and two fumbles to win the MVP award, it wasn’t a one-man show.
The Steelers, who have 22 veterans from their first Super Bowl team, showed they’re champions for a lot of reasons.
They’re champions because they have an offensive line that neutralized the vaunted Dallas defensive line.
They’re the champions because they have a pair of receivers named Lynn Swann and John Stallworth, who burned the Dallas cornerbacks time and time again.
They’re champions because they have a defense that can still make the big play and dominate a game.
They’re the champions because they have a blocking back named Rocky Bleier, who plays in the shadow but can come up with a crucial touchdown catch.
They’re champions because Franco Harris can be bottled up for much of the game and then break a critical play.
But it all comes back to Bradshaw. It is not enough to say he’s the best quarterback playing the game. You have to look back at people like Unitas and Starr and Layne and Graham when you talk about him.
“I told Bradshaw he had a hell of a game,” Dallas’ Cliff Harris said. “You don’t psyche him.”
There was a lot of talking during the week and Bradshaw did none of it. He just did the playing. He fell behind 14–7 in the second period after Mike Hegman pulled a ball from his arms and ran 37 yards for a Dallas touchdown.
A lesser quarterback might have been rattled. Not Terry Bradshaw. “It’s the mark of the maturity of the man,” Joe Greene marveled.
Bradshaw put two more touchdowns on the board in the first half for a 21–14 lead. When Dallas cut the lead to 21–17 and Pittsburgh was held to one first down in the third quarter, a lesser quarterback might have been rattled again. But not Bradshaw. He drove the team 85 yards in the fourth quarter for the touchdown that broke the Cowboys’ back.
When the Steeler offense took the field with 12:08 left in the game, the situation looked critical. The Steelers were ahead, 21–17, but they had the lead only because Jackie Smith had dropped a sure touchdown pass in the end zone. The Cowboys settled for a field goal.
The Steelers had not moved the ball in the second half. “In the huddle, guys were saying, ‘We’ve got to go 85 (yards)…we’ve got to go 85,’” John Kolb noted.
They went 85.
“Chuck (Noll) wasn’t conservative,” Bradshaw said, explaining the third quarter lag. “We knew they’d change their coverages. I wanted to take my time.”
Time was running out, Kolb said. “We knew we couldn’t tread water with Dallas. We were conscious of the fact that if we didn’t make something happen, Dallas would. If we had one fault all year, it was that when we got ahead, we didn’t knock out teams.”
The Steelers went ahead for the knockout. Bradshaw hit Randy Grossman for nine yards. He hit Lynn Swann for 13. Franco Harris went for five yards. Then Benny Barnes was called for tripping Swann, producing a 33-yard penalty. Barnes protested the most controversial call of the game.
Four plays later, Bradshaw faced a third-and-nine on the Dallas 22. The Cowboys were looking for the pass. Bradshaw called a tackle trap play.
“We caught ’em blitzing, and there was a really nice hole,” Franco said.
The run was poetic justice. On the previous play, Harris jawed with Thomas Henderson. Henderson tackled Bradshaw after the whistle had blown when the Steelers were called for too much time.
“I wish we could say we planned it that way,” Greene said.
With a 28–17 lead, the Steelers had a seemingly comfortable margin. Dirt Winston recovered a fumble on the ensuing kickoff and Bradshaw fired an 18-yard strike to Swann to wrap it up.
Dallas scored two touchdowns to make it closer and make the bettors sweat, but the game was decided.
It was close and exciting enough to leave Dallas with a lot of “what ifs?” What if Tom Landry had run Dorsett more? He got 38 yards on his first three carries and carried only 12 times the rest of the game. Landry’s call for a reverse that turned into a fumble killing the first drive also was puzzling. The tripping penalty on Barnes also caused much consternation in Dallas.
The Steelers were simply the better team. Three years ago, the same teams did the same thing and the Steelers won by four points, 21–17.
They were better then and they’re better now. After two frustrating years, the Steelers are back on top.
“It’s taken all year to prove we’re the best team,” Loren Toews said.
They have proved it. Without a doubt.
They’re the Super Steelers. Super Steelers III.