The Pittsburgh Steelers won four Super Bowls in the 1970s. But the first one I s always the sweetest. And even nearly 50 years since the Steelers knocked off the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IX, Hall of Fame linebacker Jack Ham is shocked by the Vikings’ game plan. Their strategy essentially amounted to running into a brick wall for four quarters, limiting the Vikings to just two field goals in a 16-6 Steelers victory.
Appearing on 93.7 The Fan’s Cook and Joe Show Thursday morning, Ham recalls having to do little that day. The defensive line did all the heavy lifting.
“We played that stunt 4-3 where we had Joe [Greene] or Ernie Holmes on the nose on the center,” Ham told hosts Ron Cook and Joe Starkey. “I think they ran the ball for 18, 19 yards. I made one tackle. I made one tackle on Chuck Foreman, who couldn’t go up the middle and bounced to the outside and I made a tackle for a four- or five-yard loss. That was the only tackle I had in the game. Because they tried to run right into the teeth of our stunt 4-3 defense.”
Ham’s memory is strong. That day, the Vikings ran the ball 21 times for 17 yards. Foreman had 12 carries for just 18 yards while RB/FB Dave Osborn had eight carries for -1 yards, completely shut down by the Steelers’ front.
The “stunt 4-3” Ham refers to is having the nose tackle line up as a “tilted nose” over the center, turned so he can shoot into the A gap. On paper alone, it made for a tough block. It sure was a lot harder when it’s Joe Greene you’re trying to stop.
“I don’t think anybody in their right minds would try to run the ball against Joe Greene and Ernie Holmes in that stunt 4-3. And it didn’t work all day long,” Ham said.
But the Vikings kept trying to no avail. Despite having Fran Tarkenton at quarterback, they ran up the gut throughout the game. Granted, things weren’t any better when he dropped back to pass. Tarkenton completed only 11 of 26 passes and threw three picks, though the total lack of a running game made Minnesota’s offense one-dimensional and predictable. And for Ham, one of the greatest linebackers of all-time, his Super Bowl was relatively uneventful.
On the other end, Pittsburgh found plenty of success running the ball. With a whopping 57 attempts, still a Super Bowl record, the Steelers churned out 249 rushing yards. The ground game also produced one of the team’s two touchdowns of the game, a nine-yard score by Franco Harris in the third quarter. That day, the Steel Curtain was better than the Purple People Eaters.
The Super Bowl victory broke the Steelers’ history of losing. There was the Immaculate Receptions two years before, officially ringing in a new era of Pittsburgh football, but the Super Bowl wiped away the previous 40 years of disappointment. For Ham, the first of his four rings will always be the most special, in part because he got to see The Chief, Art Rooney Sr., finally hoist a championship trophy.
“In typical Chief fashion, when [the commissioner] gave him the Lombardi Trophy, he just said ‘thanks.’ That’s all he said,” Ham recalled. “To a man, the highlight of all of those guys who played in those four Super Bowls was the first one. Because we finally got The Chief that championship he was looking for for a long time.”
