Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [68]
Less than an hour before Sunday’s kickoff, the team was introduced, one by one, to the crowd during the pregame festivities. Video of each player’s individual Super Bowl highlights appeared on the Sony JumboTron at Tampa Stadium.
“I was moved by my selection to this Silver Anniversary team because of the way we got here—through the fans,” Steelers defensive tackle “Mean” Joe Greene said. “This is probably the most special recognition I’ve ever gotten for my football skills because fans took the time to go out and vote.”
Several of Greene’s former Pittsburgh teammates stood with him during the ceremony, including five from the fabled “Steel Curtain” defense: L. C.
Greenwood, Jack Lambert, Jack Ham, Mel Blount, and Donnie Shell. In total, eight members of the 1970s Steelers dynasty (far more than any other franchise) were chosen for the silver-anniversary team. But only one of them actually came to Tampa Stadium that day to work.
Two wide receivers had been named to the all-time team. Although San Francisco’s Jerry Rice had played in just two Super Bowls, he owned both the single-game and career record for receiving yardage and touchdown catches. The MVP of Super Bowl XXIII was an easy choice for the all-time team. So was the other wide receiver selection, the Steelers’ Lynn Swann.
In Super Bowl IX, Pittsburgh faced the Minnesota Vikings at a chilly Tulane Stadium in New Orleans. A rookie from the University of Southern California, Swann did not catch a pass in the Steelers’ 16-6 victory. Neither did most of his teammates. Quarterback Terry Bradshaw completed just nine attempts, as running back Franco Harris and the Steel Curtain defense claimed their first-ever NFL championship.
The following season (1975), Swann emerged as one of the league’s premier receivers and a focal point of the Pittsburgh offense, leading the team in touchdowns, receiving yardage, and receptions. But when Pittsburgh repeated as conference champions the following January, it seemed likely—even before kickoff—that again Swann would go without a reception in the Super Bowl. He left the AFC Championship Game two weeks earlier on a stretcher: a concussion resulting from a defensive back’s crushing hit.
“I did not think I was gonna be able to play,” Swann told NFL Films in 2007. “I was certainly unsure. I had never sustained a concussion of that level. I was in the hospital for two or three days—wasn’t catching the ball extremely well at practice. Frankly, my confidence was a little bit low. And the doctors essentially left it up to me as to whether or not I felt that I could play the game.”
On game day, he elected to play, and in the Super Bowl’s tenth anniversary showdown, Swann stole the show. He caught four passes for 161 yards, and it was his fourth-quarter touchdown that proved the difference in Pittsburgh’s 21-17 victory over the Dallas Cowboys.
Swann’s statistics, impact on the victory, and return from injury earned him the Most Valuable Player Award. But it was how he caught those passes that forged an indelible place in American sports history. Each reception was a mesmerizing display of concentration and grace.
The first came adjacent to the sidelines, where he twisted high in the air and inconceivably brought both feet down in bounds. Next was the most famous: leaping over a defensive back, juggling the ball midair, and sprawling out to make the grab. But the pièce de résistance was a sixty-four-yard bomb down the middle that Swann settled under and made an over-the-shoulder grab with three minutes remaining in the game.
“I never had a day when I felt as loose as this in my life,” he told the press in the locker room afterward.
The Steelers returned to win another pair of Super Bowls at the end of the 1978 and 1979 seasons. In those two victories, he combined for twelve catches, 203 yards, and two touchdowns. Until Jerry Rice came along, Swann owned or shared