THOSE SAME OLD STEELERS

'That ball hit Frenchy . . . he knows it did!" Tatum still wails.  The Frenchman, a free spirit who wore boots in which goldfish swam contentedly in plastic heels, remains silent.  "I'm going to write about it and put it in a time capsule," Fuqua grins of the remarkable play.

Art Rooney was probably the only person in Pittsburgh who didn't see it.  He was en route to the locker-room to, as he had so often before, console the troops. "You won, you won," a security guard screamed at Rooney as he departed an elevator near the dressing-room.  "How do you like that?" Rooney replied calmly.

After 39 years of owning the Steelers, he was impervious to surprise.  In the AFC title game, the bloom quickly left the rose and the Steelers lost to Miami, but only after Noll gambled on rushing only one outside man on a punt and Dolphin kicker Larry Seiple's run had set up the deciding points in a 21-17 victory.

Still, could the Super Bowl be far away?  At least another winter, as it turned out. Injuries claimed Bradshaw, Harris, Hanratty and Fuqua for large parts of 1973 and the Steelers staggered to a 10-4 record and into the playoffs, where Oakland summarily dismissed them, 33-14.

Patient through five seasons, except for the odd occasions when he would grab Bradshaw and shake him along the sideline after a particularly onerous mistake, Noll lost his cool when the players struck just before the 1974 training camp opened.

The previous season was a mistake he planned to rectify; the strike was interfering. Neither Bradshaw nor Hanratty would cross the picket line and the gifted but troubled Gilliam inherited the regular quarterback job. If he was inconsistent, if he was using the drugs which would shortly wreck a promising career, Gilliam could throw the football and Noll, logic lost to his passion over the strike which badly disrupted camp, used him for six games.

Jefferson Street Joe Gilliam, an 11th round draft pick, sat in the Three Rivers dugout after a mini-camp workout and all but seethed confidence. "I can play, man... I can play," he said over and over, a compulsion to do so as a starting quarterback in the NFL born years before under the tutelage of his father, a college coach. "I can do it. I can beat out Bradshaw. Believe me."

A reporter lifted Gilliam's arm up to his eyes and asked a question: "What color do you see?"  "Yeah, I know," Joe Gilliam.  But the coach was color-blind.  "I'm not prejudiced, at least I don't think I am," Chuck Noll said one afternoon, watching Gilliam fire streaks across the July sky.

Two years later, for a couple of months during which his judgment was marred by emotion, Noll thought his young black quarterback's arm and a defense best-described as ominous would prove matchless.

Gilliam, who had presumptuously thrown 11 straight passes in his first Steeler scrimmage, was 4-1-1 early in 1974, but lost his job to Bradshaw after completing just five of 18 passes in a shaky win over Cleveland.

Returned to grace, Bradshaw shortly became the quarterback Noll had envisioned him becoming years before.  Through his apprenticeship, he was thought stupid.

Local sportscaster Sam Nover - perhaps hoping controversial commentaries would lift WIIC from a very poor third in the TV news rankings locally - questioned whether Bradshaw possessed the intellectual capacity to lead a winner in the NFL.

But anyone familiar with the situation realized Bradshaw's I.Q. had nothing to do with his early problems.  Simply put, he lacked poise.  The pressure of being the first player chosen in the draft had been too much.  "I wanted so badly to win, to show them they hadn't made a mistake," he would say years later.  "I'm not dumb, but I pushed too hard."

So he did, at a team barbeque days after he was drafted, Bradshaw had stood around, drinking beer and telling dirty jokes.  "He was trying to be the leader before he ever put on a uniform," one Steeler mused.  "To us, he just seemed like a scared kid."

They were not sold on Terry Bradshaw until he had won them a Super Bowl, until he quit becoming rattled.  Once, in his rookie year, Bradshaw had come unhinged to the point that receiver Ron Shanklin was forced to call plays in the huddle.  Once, he was so nervous he vomited on tight end Bob Adams' hands.

Once, in a third-and-17 situation, from the Steeler 17, in the final moments of a 1971 game they had to win to remain in contention for the division championship, he had called an off-tackle running play.  A veteran Steeler lineman grabbed Bradshaw and roared, "God damn it, call something else." Bradshaw called for a pass, was too nervous to throw it and was sacked.

"If we do ever get to a Super Bowl, Terry'll be so shook that we won't even get a first down," that veteran said in 1972.  There were moments of continuing struggle for Bradshaw during the 1974 season, but he sensed Noll's unwavering confidence in him.  Their relationship, far more discordant than was ever publicly known, became more comfortable.

"He let me know I was his quarterback," Bradshaw says.  "What I had lacked was confidence... I was pressing, trying to do too much.  In 1974, Chuck took the heat off me."  

And Bradshaw applied it to the Steeler opponents.  An offense which had set a club record 343 points two years before, was equally powerful and the Steeler defense was simply perhaps the finest defensive unit in the game's history.

The Steelers buried Buffalo in the playoffs, then went to Oakland for what had become a holy war with the Raiders.  The defense was so dominant that Oakland got just 29 yards rushing in 21 carries and it pushed the Steelers into their first Super Bowl.

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