The Pittsburgh Steelers report to Saint Vincent College in Latrobe Wednesday. Here is one of our final series to bridge the gap between the end of offseason practices and the start of training camp. This is the second of five parts.
Tunch and Wolf. Wolf and Tunch. You can’t think of one without the other, the peanut butter and jelly of the Steelers. The best friends, more formally known as Tunch Ilkin and Craig Wolfley, carved out long playing careers along Pittsburgh’s offensive line and later became two of the Steelers’ most distinctive voices.
I started this series with Tunch, so it only seems right to follow it with a Wolf story. Like Tunch’s tale, it is a gem, if a little more hands-on than Wolf would have preferred.
Full disclosure: Wolfley told this as the keynote speaker of the Westmoreland County Scholar-Athlete banquet in May. I am a member of the committee, so I was at the banquet.
Wolfley crushed it that night and one of the stories he told starred a defensive tackle by the name of Joe Greene. Maybe you have heard of him.
Maybe you have also heard of the Oklahoma drill. Now part of a bygone era, like one-platoon football and running backs making top dollar, it was a drill that measured want-to more than anything. Skeleton offense versus skeleton defense with the former running the ball right at the latter.
Wolfley was taking part in his first training camp, having been selected in the sixth round of the 1980 NFL Draft. The hills overlooking the Saint Vincent fields were swollen with fans, hardly a surprise since the Steelers had recently won their fourth Super Bowl.
“You want to talk about spectacle and you’re there in front of all your peers,” Wolfley said. “Coaches. Scouts. My parents were there. It was cool because now you’re about to get your man card checked.”
As he waited in line with the other offensive linemen, Wolfley did the math in the line with the defensive linemen.
“I’m counting off, counting off, how many to go,” he said. “I’m counting, one, two, three, four…you’re kidding me.”
He counted again but came to the same unsettling conclusion: He would be mano a mano with Greene in his first-ever Oklahoma drill.
“Technically, you could say I was having an anxiety attack,” Wolfley said. “I get in the huddle and Joe’s standing at the line, eight yards away. Cliff Stoudt was the backup quarterback, and he looks at me and goes, ‘You ready for this?’ I go, ‘I can do this.’ He started laughing. Sydney Thornton was the running back. He said, ‘Syd, you ready to do this?’ Syd goes, ‘Oh, no…’ I said, ‘Don’t worry Syd, I’ll move him.’ It took everything I had to get up there.”
Wolfley and Greene crashed into one other after the ball was snapped. For a couple of seconds, Wolfley thought he had leverage on the soul of The Steel Curtain.
“In my mind, I’m screaming, ‘I’m doing it! I’m whipping Mean Joe Greene!’” Wolfley said.
But Wolfley wasn’t at Syracuse anymore. Greene lifted up the rookie and slammed him on his head. Wolfley saw stars while tasting a mixture of grass and dirt.
He staggered to his feet with blood on his mouth and could not see.
“I’m like, ‘Joe Greene blinded me!’” Wolfley said. “Chuck Noll came up behind me and grabbed my helmet. He turned it around and said, ‘You’re not going to last long in the NFL looking out of your earhole.’”
Welcome to the league, Wolf.
