The following video, Strike Force, is a presentation
of NFL Championship hits by superstar performers.
It is brought to you exclusively by Castrol, the motor oil that provides maximum protection
against viscosity and thermal breakdown.
In the past two decades, defenses have come wrapped in glossy packages replete with catchy
nicknames like Doomsday, Orange Crush, Purple People Eaters, and Steel Kirk.
In the history of the NFL, there have been many great defensive players, but few great
defensive teams, units whose Strike Force is measured on the lofty scale of success.
Hi, I'm your host, Harry Carson.
When my former team, the New York Giants, won the 1986 Super Bowl against Denver, our
defense attacked John Elway, stopping the Broncos' big man from having a big game.
Nearly all championship teams have that one ingredient, a Strike Force that can make any
quarterback look bad.
They are the toughest defenses in America's roughest game.
Because a defense that was very aggressive, that had the ability to make things happen.
People that work together, and work together very well, and I like to say bounced off of
one another, helped one another, inspired one another, had confidence in one another.
All of these things that go together to let you unleash everything that you have and perform.
The Steelers defense of the 70s performed with a blend of talent and teamwork unequaled in
the history of the NFL.
In one Pro Bowl, we had every member of our defense, with the exception of very homes.
The most important thing is that we were playing for one another and not ourselves as individuals.
Sometimes it got so tough that I didn't want to pay the price individually, but there was
no price I wouldn't pay for the group, so I would go the distance.
That was the difference, I think, in our team and some of the other teams that were competing
each and every year for the championships.
Pittsburgh Steel Curtain made its mark in Super Bowl IX by completely dominating the
game.
Tackles Joe Green and Ernie Holmes used looping, stunting, stack oversets that posed a riddle
the Vikings' Fran Tarkington never saw.
A bankrupt Viking ground game managed the unbelievable total of only 17 yards.
The key player on defense was Elsie Greenwood.
Elsie could have easily been the MVP of the first Super Bowl.
If they had picked a defensive MVP, I think it would have been Elsie Greenwood, because
Targings had liked to roll out, and Elsie was getting upfield and knocked three passes
down, which is virtually as good as three interceptions.
After running Tarkington out of Super Bowl IX, one year later in Super Bowl X, the Steel
Curtain chased Roger Sklau back all over the Orange Bowl.
Seven sacks and the second straight Super Bowl title brought national attention to the
front four.
We had a front four who put so much pressure on the quarterback.
We could sit back here in his own defense and play almost like center field.
You knew the ball was going to be thrown in about three or four seconds.
You knew he was going to get rid of the football, and a lot of times they got rid of it a lot
quicker than that.
That enabled a lot of us to make a lot of interceptions back here.
I'm going in this Hall of Fame only because our football team played so well and the guys
in front of me played so well.
You can't be a good linebacker with a bad front four, and our front four are the greatest
in the game.
Green and Greenwood gathered the publicity, but Ernie Holmes and Dwight White were just
as good.
I was the attack defensive man, I guess, because I like to think of myself that way.
I mean, I would attack.
Getting the weak side in gave you an excellent vantage point because you had the blind side
hit.
One of those or two of those in the course of a few games sort of made up for all the
action going away from you all the time.
Unfortunately, the considerable skills of number 63, massive Fats Holmes, seemed overshadowed
by his notorious arrowhead hairdo.
Fats did that, you know, for the publicity, and he was an incredible defensive tackle
for about two or three years there, there was no better than Fats.
In fact, a lot of guys on opposing teams, they said they'd rather face Green than Fats.
The playful, bare-like persona of ten-time all-pro Joe Green belied the mean Joe image
he fostered on a football field.
His award-winning Coke commercial shattered the meanness myth forever.
I didn't know what I was getting into when I signed up to do the Coca-Cola spot, didn't
know what magnitude it would have.
I was still trying to dispel the mean Joe image.
I was depicted as an animal-like character, but most of the time it was displeasing.
When we did the commercial, it exposed me to not just football fans, but to the country.
I've been a fallacy, for sure.
I know personally I'm probably the nicest guy that could possibly play the game.
Serious.
You don't believe that, huh?
While Green was the Steelers' spiritual leader, ferocious Jack Lambert was the team's catalyst
with his frenzied intensity at middle linebacker.
Jack Lambert, without question, was a catalyst.
He was the guy that turned us from a very good football team and defensive team to a
great defensive team.
He was a very inspirational player, a tough player.
There just are no other Jack Lamberts.
I've never seen anyone like him.
Without Jack Lambert, I'm not sure we would have ever quite made it over the hump.
That's part of the game.
That's the way the game is played.
I made the comment, we should put dresses on quarterbacks.
I got a lot of play out of that one, you know, but I meant it.
For me, football's a very emotional game, and if there's something I can do on a football
field that might fire my teammates up, that's all well and good.
But if anything, I try and lead by example.
On any defense, the members come from different directions and soon go different ways.
They are only together for a few brief moments.
It is not just talent and personalities that must mesh.
The time must be right as well.
The Steelers combined all those elements, and of all the great defenses, the swarm and smothering
steel curtain left the greatest legacy, a showcase of four Super Bowl trophies, an accomplishment
no other team can match.
If Pittsburgh's steel curtain was the defense of the 70s, the Chicago Bears have to be considered
the defense of the 80s.
The current Bears have preserved the ferocious image the team had during the 20s and 30s
when they were first known as the Monsters of the Midway.
Three, two, one, the dream is reality.
The Chicago Bears are world champions of football.
The 1985 Chicago Bears laid waste to the NFL behind a new defensive system called the 46.
But while its mind was modern, its heart was in the 1950s for the 85 Bears for the legacy
of the fabled Monsters of the Midway, a bad tempered band of marauders who perpetrated
more evil on the football field than the world has seen before or since.
They were the meanest, most difficult team I've ever played against anywhere in Chicago.
They were real tough and mean.
They had players like Ed Sprinkle, Bulldog Turner, and people of that caliber who would
go out of their way to decapitate somebody.
Although the Bears of the 50s never won a championship, their unique approach to the
game left a more gripping impression than any title ever could.
Three decades later, the spirit of Sprinkle was reborn in the body of Singletown.
We are the new Monsters of the Midway and I don't like to use the word mean, but when
I look at the film that we played, once we get out there on the field, you know, we are
pretty mean.
It's like a pack of wild dogs, you know, if one of them's mean, they're all gonna be mean.
In Singletary's fiery stare, the Bears had the perfect expression of their intensity,
and on every down the captain's eye sent the opposition, his singular and unmistakable
message.
I want to make sure that the guy on the other side of the ball realizes that I'm gonna give
him all I've got and realize that I wasn't trying to hurt him and go back to the huddle
and say, I don't want to go back that way.
I don't ever want to do that again.
Singletary's partners in crime included linebackers Otis Wilson and Wilbur Marshall, number 58.
It was the design of the 46 defense to put as much pressure as possible on the quarterback.
The massive forward thrust of the line allowed the linebackers the freedom to create defensive
opportunities on the fly, and the unmatched athletic ability of the Bears threesome thrived
in its ideal home.
As the Bears march through the NFL reveal, the 46 unleashed not only physical gifts,
but a special sort of temperament as well.
A defensive player is nuts, and the more nuts you can go within reason, maybe the better
you'll become.
You know, anytime that Bear defense went out on the field with his practice against their
own teammates or what, everybody had to have their chin strapped tight because they didn't
take any prisoners.
After the regular season, the Bears were 15 and 1.
The city of Chicago became a hub of toughness centered around head coach Mike Ditka and
his magnificent defenders.
From the sidewalks of Michigan Avenue to the city hall desk of the late Mayor Harold Washington,
no one was safe from Bear mania.
But the Bears' greatest glory was still to come, and after a 21 to nothing thrashing
of the New York Giants in the divisional playoff, the Bears' dominance and arrogance were still
on the rise.
They were cocky, arrogant, you know, they'd tell you what they were going to do to you,
and as long as they did it, you know, I didn't consider that bragging.
I've never seen the team 15 and 1 talk so much.
A week later, the Bears rewrote history with a flourish of mythical proportion.
It has gotten colder steadily, and now the weather that everybody talked about has finally
arrived.
Maybe they're cheering for the snow.
I think they are.
The weather that everybody from Chicago was hoping for has arrived.
Not to get theatrical, but I mean, how better can you write a script here, McReynolds.
Third down, 11 yards to go for Dieter Brock and company.
Brock back to pass.
The crowning jewel in their NFC Championship.
Never before had a team put together back-to-back shutouts in the playoffs, and with pro football's
most coveted prize at stake, the Bears made Super Bowl XX their final step to greatness.
In the end, the score was 46 to 10, making the 1985 Bears the most dominating postseason
defense of all time.
The Papa Bear, George Hallis, had left them his heritage, and the new Monsters of the
Midway brought Chicago a Super Bowl champion.
Undoubtedly, the Chicago Bears symbolized defense in its most devastating form, but
in 1988, a new team joined the Savage Elite.
The Houston Tough Tackling Bad Boys Secondary paved the way to the accurate nickname, the
Houston Hitmen.
If you get real aggressive and you swarm and you gang tackle, and you try to get as many
people to the ball, then I think there's a group of people that really like that type
of football, really love to see the hustle and the hitting, and then there's a group
that would rather see a forward pass, one on one, 40 love you big savage type of game.
The Houston Oilers do not subscribe to the latter theory.
To them, football is war, and the gridiron is a battlefield where no prisoners are taken.
Like the Raiders of old, these Oilers like to engage in both physical and psychological
warfare.
What we decided to do, our entire staff, Coach Clamville and the rest of us, sat down during
camp and came up with the slogan that would be hit the beach in terms of in the war when
the boats came in and landed and the flaps came open, that everybody was shooting at
you and the tough guys survived.
Hit the beach on the set.
Hit the beach!
You can't let that number 93 stick his hand out there.
Hit the beach! Hit the beach!
You can't let that number 93 stick his hand in somebody's face past every play over there!
Let's go, baby! Let's go! Let's go!
Yes, the orders do have a rather feisty nature about them, and no, they are not always diplomats when it comes to negotiating peace treaties.
Well, you know, they're kind of like the guy that always goes around saying how tough he is.
And instead of saying how tough you are when you're in a group of guys, they wait until they're pulling off in their car,
and they start saying, ah, we're tough, we're going to beat you guys up.
Hey, 48! You better get your stuff dusted, buddy!
We just have a bad reputation because we're a bunch of young crazies that like to live on the edge, but no, we're not dirty.
I think we play within the rules. Every so often we get caught doing something wrong, but that's human nature.
I don't think it's anything we're doing wrong. I just think that we're playing the game the way it was meant to be played.
For instance, if a running back is running a football and he's tackled by one guy and he's not down on the ground yet,
well, it's okay for him to get hit by four or five other defenders.
And I think because of that, people have accused us of being cheap shot artists and being the bad guys,
but we're not necessarily bad guys, we're just very aggressive.
You know, they come close to some cheap shots at times, and I think they try to play.
I don't know that they necessarily coach that. I think they definitely try to teach very aggressive football,
and if there's any doubt in their mind, they're going to go ahead and take the, you know, give the lick.
You know, I think you've got to be very careful about that because that's a two-sided coin.
You know, people have a way of policing themselves.
Filthy football. This guy tries to blow his knees apart in the last place. That's what's going on.
He tried to blow his knees out.
Like warriors of old, the Oilers know that to live by the sword is to die by it.
But more times than not in the past season and a half, they have been the predator, not the prey.
The Oilers' defense is a strike force that, as a unit, is definitely living on the edge.
After earning playoff berths in 1987 and 88, they will likely continue to march to the beat of their own different drummer
in a band known as the Houston Hitmen.
Today, the Houston Oilers are the newest bullies on the block,
the latest in a long line of intimidating tacklers.
For the men whose mission it is to search and destroy, their roots go back to the mid-50s
when the New York Giants were the first defense with a real identity.
The great giant defense that I was privileged to be a part of owes them a debt of gratitude.
It is the most tribal and universal of football fan rituals.
Yet there are those among NFL historians who believe that this battle cry was first chanted in the mid-1950s,
originating from the rafters of New York's Yankee Stadium.
In a game that climaxed the NFL's first season of nationally televised broadcasts,
millions of home viewers heard the deafening roar and watched a very responsive giant defense.
The Giants' crushing championship win over the Chicago Bears was the beginning of an eight-year era
that saw a whole new type of slugging power come to the fabled house that Ruth built.
It began when head coach Jim Lee Howell added a young Tom Landry to his already talented staff of assistants.
Landry's innovative mind melded together with men like Jimmy Patton, Andy Robostelli, Jim Katkiewicz,
Rosie Greer and Dick Moduleski to produce the NFL's most dominant and difficult to detect defense of its day.
They were the first defensive team that all of a sudden started putting the good athletes over on defense.
Up to that time the better athletes, especially linemen, running backs were on the offensive side
and all of a sudden they started putting a little better athlete.
Then also they went and started studying offensive formations and what teams were doing, which is what Tom does.
It was the first. Landry and that group had put together a defense that had certain refinements to it
that the offenses hadn't caught on to yet.
One of those refinements was the creation of the 4-3 defense,
designed to take advantage of the instinctive skills of middle linebacker Sam Huff.
In this defense, the job of the four down linemen was to keep Huff free of potential blockers,
leaving him free to act as a rover, whose task was to be in the vicinity of the football.
This scheme was one of a number of ploys the Giants successfully used to neutralize their main nemesis, number 32, Jimmy Brown.
Sam was basically the quarterback of that defense and he had the flair to understand that he was in New York,
so he became an instant celebrity by attaching himself to my legs quite often.
We hit him whether he had the ball or not and we knew that we had to stop Brown because their offense was built around him.
Why shouldn't you? The man averaged 5.2 yards of carry lifetime.
We had to stop Jim Brown to beat the Cleveland Browns and we were able to do it because of the defense we had in those days.
We played what we called the coordinated defense.
We were able to shut down the gaps for him where he couldn't find the gap to get through and we were successful, probably better than anybody.
Brown stops him completely obviously. He's too great a back to have that happen, but we slowed him down enough
so that we ended up in the late 50s of being in a lot of championship games than Cleveland was.
In addition to capably handling their rivals from Cleveland,
the Giants defense also became highly proficient at putting points on the board.
This mixture of creative stratagems and game-day opportunism endeared this unit to their fans.
Along with the public praise and adulation, media attention was for the first time devoted to a defense.
Giant defenders were not portrayed as mindless brutes, but rather as a team-oriented group of friendly, thoughtful, and articulate men.
This high-gloss treatment, however, did not wear well with all of their teammates.
There's a lot of animosity, a lot of jealousy between the offensive unit and the defensive unit
because the defense really came into prominence for the first time, I guess, in the history of pro football.
In those days, they didn't even introduce the defensive ball players.
It was only the offensive ball players that were introduced before the game.
And it was always, you know, ladies and gentlemen, number 16 from Southern California, Frank Gifford.
In those days, when Sam Huff was maybe making eight or nine thousand and fighting Wellington Marra to make it ten,
I might have been making eighteen or twenty. That didn't sit too well with the likes of Sam Huff.
There was a little animosity about that because we were doing, on defense, we were doing an awful lot of playing
and we were holding teams, you know, to six points and to three points.
And we went three games, I remember, and never scored a touchdown offensively, and we won two of them.
At one period, you know, when we'd come off the field, Sam might say,
we'll see if you can hold them and we'll try and score on defense the next time around.
Despite the presence of any ill will, those who came into contact with this unit
grudgingly agreed that they were pioneers in the effort to bring teamwork and intellect to defense.
The most intelligent defensive club in football, New York Giants.
Every man knew his position, knew what he was supposed to do, knew where he was supposed to help out.
They played together probably as well as any team I've ever coached.
They had just a sense of feel, you know, between each other.
It was a good football team, it was good talent, but it wasn't really any better than some of the teams in those days.
But their ability to play together and believe in each other, the way they believed in each other was tremendous.
In 1960, Tom Landry moved on to coach the Dallas Cowboys,
but the men he left behind went on to play in three more NFL championships.
Although the Giants came up short in each of them, their defense performed bravely,
particularly in the bitter defensive struggles against Green Bay in 1962 and Chicago in 1963.
Ironically, a dynasty both began and ended with a title game against the Bears.
But while one era was passing on, a new one was dawning.
Various retirements and trades closed this chapter of defensive brilliance,
but a symbolic seed was transplanted with Rosie Greer's transfer to the Rams,
where he helped give celebrity status to Los Angeles' suddenly famous Fearsome Foresome.
It was a start of a colorful age in professional football,
where dominant defenses no longer lacked adulation and recognition.
So whether they were called the Purple People Eaters, the Steel Curtain, or Doomsday,
all of them owed a small debt of gratitude to a group of men who came together in New York's Yankee Stadium
and who were simply called the Giants Defense.
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