Man of Steel The Greatest Middle Linebacker of All Time. My original copy of this issue is long since gone, the victim of a garage sale when I needed money to buy a new guitar as a teenager. Thankfully, I recently got my hands on another copy of this classic issue of Sports Illustrated and was so completely blown away when I read the article again that I had to post it here for fellow Lambert fans. After many painstaking hours of typing believe me, I mean MANY hours I type with two fingers and some late hours at the office scanning pictures, here it is.

Hope 'ya enjoy it, my bruthas! To author Paul Zimmerman, wherever you are Click on the pics for larger images! A Rose By Any Other Name Steeler linebacker Jack Lambert is not known as a sweetie, but he sure knows the sweet smell of success By Paul Zimmerman As published in Sports Illustrated July 30, The painting hangs on the wall outside the office of Art Rooney, Jr. It's not the kind of thing you'd want your mother or your wife to see.

It's what Attila must've looked like while he was sacking a village, or the way a Viking chieftan was with his blood lust up. Only this Viking wears No. Jack Lambert's portrait epitomizes the viciousness and cruelty of our national game.

The portrait was done by Merv Corning. It was one of two he submitted the the Steelers' publicity director, Joe Gordon, for possible use as a program cover, and it was rejected immediately. He called Corning, "Can I buy the original? The deal was made, and Rooney hung it outside his office. Then he had misgivings. So he removed it and sent for Lambert.

What do you think? He stepped back, he stepped forward. Then he asked me, 'Can you get me a couple of copies? Off the field he's a quiet, extremely private man, a bird watcher and avid fisherman.

A bachelor, he owns a home in the exclusive Fox Chapel suburb of Pittsburgh, and he spent much of the offseason ensuring greater privacy by building himself a country retreat on 85 acres he bought about 40 miles northeast of the city. At one time he was bothered by all the Count Dracula-Darth Vader stuff everyone used to write about him. When the Steelers played the Rams in the '80 Super Bowl, Jim Murray, the columnist for the Los Angeles Timesreferred to him as "the pro from Pittsburgh, Transylvania.

Right now he thinks he's John Wayne. Actually, though, he's sort of a larger-than-life type guy. He came to the Steelers a tough, skinny kid out of Kent State, and he found a spot on a team that was just reaching the crest of its greatness. He arrived at exactly the right time, in exactly the right place. Pittsburgh fans have always appreciated talented athletes, but they reserve a special place in their hearts for their tough guys -- Fran Rogel, Ernie Stautner, John Henry Johnson, those people.

And Lambert played the ultimate tough-guy position, middle linebacker. At one time middle linebackers roamed the league like Goliaths. Nitschke, Butkus, Schmidt -- names as tough as the people who carried them.

Wille Lanier, with the pad he wore on the front of his helmet. Mike Curtis, the Animal. Bob Griese talks about staring across the line at Butkus and feeling his legs turn to jelly. Gene Upshaw, the Raiders' ex-guard, remembers the terror he felt when he looked into Lanier's eyes.

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But then a few years ago, something sad happed to these great middle linebackers. The defense robbed them of their identity. They divided, like an amoeba. Instead of one, there were two of them, inside strong and inside weak, or, in the Steelers' case, left and right.

The great gunfighters of the past had gone corporate. It was if Wyatt Earp had taken on a job with Pinkerton's, or Bat Masterson had become director of security for the National Bank. It happened to Harry Carson with the Giants, then to Jack Reynolds when he went from the Rams to the 49ers. And then the last of them, the last of the great old middle linebackers, Jack Lambert, got his two years ago.

Lambert, I've heard of you. And what position do you play, Mr. Oh, there are still middle linebackers -- seven of them. They get the hook on passing downs, when the defense goes into its nickel. There's the Bears' Mike Singletary, the best of the bunch, but the rest of the names won't quicken the pulse; Ken Fantetti, David Ahrens, Neal Olkewicz, Bob Crable, Bob Breunig, Fulton Kuykendall -- all good steady workers, but there's no magic there.

So can you blame Lambert for trying to recapture a little of the old imagery, some of the old glamor -- and terror -- that went with the position? Actually, if you look at Lambert's career with the Steelers you find a remarkable collection of big plays in big situations, but no trail of bloodied and broken bodies; you find very little to justify all the adjectives and mayhem that give writers so many easy off-day features.

Lambert hits hard, of course. Always has, ever since his high school days. Knocked his helmet and one shoe off. Poling's head collided with Lambert's mouth in practice one afternoon. He got away from that after his first few years.

First there was the Cliff Harris affair in the Super Bowl after the '75 season, Lambert's second year. In the third quarter the Steelers' Roy Gerela missed a yard field goal. Harris, the Cowboys' free safety, tapped Gerela on the helmet and said, "Way to go. No flag was thrown, but referee Norm Schacter was on the verge of kicking Lambert out of the game.

Lambert talked him out of it. Each time Lambert hit the Cleveland quarterback as he was releasing the ball. Too late, decided the referee, who was Ben Dreith the last two times. Each time Lambert got mobbed by the Browns' bench, each time he was flagged, and twice he was ejected from the game and fined by the league. After the '78 hit he spent 20 minutes in Pete Rozelle's office. Lambert explained he had crossed both arms in front of him to soften the blow. The hit was still late, Rozelle said.

This was the hit that spawned Lambert's famous "Quarterbacks should wear dresses" quote during a Monday Night interview with Howard Cosell the following week. He said what the Browns did to Lambert on the sidelines was "criminal Same play, same ref. It was getting a bit old. He capsuled the situation in his terse and hard-bitten style: He knows I'm going to hit him.

At the Pro Bowl this year I was talking to one of the officials.

He said, 'I saw films of that Cleveland game. What did you do?

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He lay on the ground like a sniper had shot him, so they threw me out. And the image grew, fed on itself, took hold. Sometimes Lambert helped it along.

My agent talked to his, but he wouldn't go along with it. I don't sit in front of my locker thinking of fighting or hurting somebody. All I want to do is be able to play football hard and aggressively, the way it's meant to be played.

But when someone deliberately clips me or someone comes off the bench and tries to bait me, I'm not going to stand for it. I will be no man's punching bag. Kids are tough to fool.

Besides, it works to my advantage in the [football] camp I run. When I tell the kids to quiet and got to bed, they listen. Cosell even repeated it later, and I said, "Oh my God, he believed it. No, Jack's a whole lot more. The range he has They gave him assignments that old Bears or Packers never would've dreamed of. He brought a whole new concept to the position, and that's why, for me anyway, he's the greatest there has ever been. His first step is never wrong, his techniques have always been perfect.

His greatness has nothing to do with his popular image. Close your eyes and you can see Lambert ranging from sideline to sideline in the old days, a big wingless bird, half an inch over 6'4", barely pounds, alwayssquared up to the line, always around the ball.

He has made Pro Bowl in 9 of his 10 years and leads active players for appearances. He missed out only in his rookie season. Lambert was defensive rookie of the year in '74]. He has led the Steelers in tackles all They didn't keep stats for tackles and assists in the old days, but he probably has more than any Steeler ever. He had 22 at halftime. I don't see how his body could stand it. Jack Ham, Joe Greene, and Terry Bradshaw, his teammates from Pittsburgh's Super Bowl era, will probably get in before him.

And he'll most likely still be active when Franco Harris has retired to begin his five-year wait for enshrinement. I grew up right down the road from Canton, and I've been to the Hall a few times, and one thing always struck me, how few people actually made it --and 15 or so weren't active players. It's a town of some 1, living off light industry and the small dairy farms that dot the countryside southeast of Cleveland.

The folks in Mantua are impressed forex trading notes a famous citizen, by a Jack Lambert who goes off and makes a name for himself, but they're not dazzled.

Still, inthey renamed Crestwood High's football stadium Jack Lambert Stadium, an honor that Lambert calls how much money does a linebacker make greatest I've ever had in my life.

Post gave it to me. He didn't recognize me, and I didn't say anything. He brushes off his achievements at Crestwood, where he earned nine letters in football, basketball, and baseball. When Jack played there was a 6'8" center on the basketball team named Denver Belknap and he was the freak of northeast Ohio.

Sometimes maybe a couple of kids would sneak off and drink a beer in the back of a car -- all farmer kids like beer -- but that was the extent of it.

I remember once the kids came to me and said they saw Belknap smoking cornsilk while he was driving a tractor. That was how much we knew. Lambert's mother pulls out a sixth-grade class picture from Shalersville Ohio Public School, where she and Jack Lambert Sr. Jack Senior is in the front row, a blond, wode-shouldered little boy with the same tight-lipped, slightly sardonic smile that marks Jack, Jr. It was his father's side of the family that also supplied Lambert with toughness, or at least a good share of it.

But he was best known for his boxing. He fought under the name Johnny Lemons because his mother didn't want him to fight. They tell me he once fought Johnny Risko in Cleveland, even though he was how to raise private money real estate investing more than a middleweight and Risko was a heavy. I know he was a guy with a short wick; he saw things right or wrong and that was it.

Once he was driving in downtown Cleveland and my aunt was in the car. She was about 11 or 12 and they'd just been shopping. He stopped for a light and three or four drunks in the beretta cx4 storm folding stock car said something to my aunt.

My grandfather never said a word, but he reached in one of the grocery bags in the back and pulled out a wine bottle, busted it and opened up a guy's arm, and that was the end of the argument. He'd spend weekends with his father. Most of the time they'd play ball. A few years ago Jim O'Brien of The Pittsburgh Press asked Lambert if his parents' divorce had affected him in any way.

But his first love was always football. All the kids in the area were Browns fans," he says. Jim Brown was everyone's favorite player. I remember chasing him one time to get an autograph, running after his car, a green Cadillac. I even remember the license plate, JB I finally did get it. I'll never turn down a kid for an autograph, but first he's got to say, "Please.

He got the number after his sophomore season, and it's since been retired, along with the 99 he wore at Kent State, giving him a record for range of retired numbers that will never be broken unless they go into three digits.

He was a shrimp as a high school freshman and sophomore, with a cute blonde crew cut. He was disgusted, but he looked so cute. He said, 'Never again. He was smart, technically very sound. He always knew what had to be done. In his senior year Ken Roosevelt High had a 6'5" how much money does a linebacker make named Andy Steigmeier who later made All-State and played for Ohio State, a real cocky kid.

Before the game Kack said to me, 'Can I guard him? When he got mad he got real quiet.

When he didn't like a call he'd hold the ball maybe an extra second or twobefore he threw it back to the ref, but he wasn't the kind of guy who'd throw a basketball up to the ceiling. His first step was always correct. He always knew the angles. And God, he would hit 'em. First they stopped throwing curls in front of him, then they just stopped throwing to the split end in general. He used to say, 'I don't knowwhere I'm gonna lay someday and I don't care, but I will play ' He'd play in pain, too.

He played against Field High his senior year with a sprained ankle, a deep calf bruise that was black and blue, a knee sprain and a thigh bruise that was starting to turn purplish-yellow.

Oh yes, he also had a hip pointer that would have kept anyone else out of the game. Our wrestling coach, Frank DiNapoli, taped him from ankleto waist. We held him stock purchase limit order on offense, but he went the whole way on defense and we won Miami's coach was Bill Mallory.

He told Myers that Lambert was too slow to play the secondary in college; maybe, if he got up aroundhe'd be a defensive end someday, but not at Miami.

Beat 'em on a goal-line stand. He made four straight tackles inside list of binary options on golden goose two. I mean if you can't get a guy into your own school, geez. Wisconsin toyed around for a while. So did a few MAC schools, but no one would give him a full scholarship.

The only real blue-chipper he had was Don Nottingham [who went on to play fullback for the Miami Dolphins]. He asked, 'What kind of a kid is Lambert? If you're gonna gamble, this kid is the one to gamble on. He's only 17 and he's been playing against older kids. He hasn't really started to mature. Notts [Nottingham] nearly cuts him in half with his blocks, but he keeps getting up and going for the ballcarrier. When he puts on some weight and learns the position, he'll be a terror.

But he was due to go back to defensive end as a junior. They had no choice. It was the greatest break of my life. Right away I loved it. Last time I heard about Bender he was a bodyguard for the Rolling Stones. That year Lambert was voted MAC Defensive Player of the Year and MVP of the Tangerine Bowl, despite the presence of Tampa's John Matuszak, the first player drafted by the NFL that spring. The pros had a book on him, aslo some questions.

Rooney pulls out the Steelers' old scouting file on Lambert. The reports run pretty much true to type: Lambert was the team captain. He went to Fitzgerald and said, "You can't. You'll wreck the team. The field was muddy. They were practicing in a parking lot, with cinders. Lambert dived at someone and when he got up, all these cinders were sticking to him.

He went back to the huddle picking the cinders off. It had been between Lambert and UCLA linebacker Cla Peterson, who wound up in Dallas. Where was he going to play? The left linebacker, Ham, was just emerging as a superstar. Russell, on the right side, had played in four straight Pro Bowls, and Henry Davis, the pound middle linebacker, had been a Pro Bowler 2 years before. Lambert began driving to the Steelers' office every weekend to watch film.

Lambert got an extralong look in camp. So did Mike Webster and Lynn Swann and John Stallworth, and a free agent named Donnie Shell. All of them wound up as Pro Bowlers.

The veterans returned, and Lambert backed up Ham for a while, but in the next-to-last exhibition game Davis went down with a nerve injury in his neck and Lambert was thrown in the middle. In terms of defensive talent there has probably never been anything like the Steelers' first two Super Bowl Champions, the '74 and '75 teams.

In the Pro Bowl following the '75 season, seven Steelers were on the starting AFC team, including all three linebackers.

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Another Steeler was a backup, another had made it earlier and another, Shell, was a future. That's 10 defensive Steelers with Pro Bowl credentials on one squad. He'd assign him the first back out of the backfield.

Normally the middle linebacker covered the second back, which is a piece of cake; he's just a floater. But the first back, my God, it was thought to be an impossible assignment for a middle linebacker. He'd have Lambert making calls and changing the defense three, four, five times when we'd play a team like the Cowboys that kept changing their sets. No one ever tried to match the Cowboys call for call. Usually Dallas would get a team into some kind of simplistic zone, and that's when Staubach went to work, but Carson would have us changing our calls as many times as they changed sets.

And Jack had to know everything, call everything. Lambert read it and positioned himself on Kwalick to take the lateral away, and Mel Blount tackled Branch on the yard line. It ws a great play by Lambert, a great read, and it never showed up in the stats. In '77 they lost to Denver in the playoffs. Lambert had missed three games with a knee injury.

He'd been a day holdout in training camp, over contract matters. A few people partly blamed the demise of the Steelers on him. He didn't take it kindly. Eventually he signed a five-year contract worth a reported 1. Lambert was still a young player, but by now he'd picked up an old-pro image, hard-bitten, no time for chitchat.

In '77, Houston had beaten Cincinnati to allow the Steelers to back into the playoffs, and a day before Pittsburgh's first round game Joe Greene announced that in appreciation the Steelers were sending each Oiler player and attache' case. Lambert threw his helmet into his locker in disgust. We get paid to win. Winter rains had turned the practive field heavy and soggy, deadening the legs.

The team had an air of defeat about it. One day after practice Lambert and a couple of teammates were having a beer in the Main Brace, the bar in their hotel in Newport Beach. A bunch of teeny-boppers spotted them. The kids in Pittsburgh saw another side on him, though. So did the people who'd get him to make one of his rare banquet appearances -- always unpaid. The audience would stare at him.

Is this a put-on or what? At one affair someone asked him what he'd do to the drug dealers. His reply was typically blunt. I've had kids at my camp who I damn well know would listen to me before their parents or their teacher. We have a responsibility, and if I can keep one kid from going on drugs I've accomplished something. Only Lambert and Shell remain. And in the Steelers gave Lambert a partner at and inside linebacker spot, going to the Jack didn't like it.

I didn't know how I'd adjust. Having to worry about cutbacks, well, it goes against my nature. I always want to go to the ball and pursue all over the field. This way is an efficient way to play the game and I accept it -- but that doesn't mean I like it. His range on deep coverages is still amazing. He called it a "career ender. I heard someone talking about an older player the other day and he said, 'Yeah, that was back when he could play. He's always said he'd play as long as it was fun.

When he was home at Christmastime he didn't look like he was having fun.

I'd like to see him get out of it. He's had a marvelous career -- eight years in high school and college, 10 years as a pro. That's a lot of beating for one body.

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Huff has written me a couple of short notes. I think you're a fine linebacker. I met Ray Nitschke one time and we sat down and talked, about anything and everything. Most middle linebackers do. Isn't it enough that Brown is remembered as the greatest running back? I'd like to think I'll be like Huff. I'd like to say I played the best I could. If somebody comes along and makes the fans forget about me, God bless him.

I hope he makes more interceptions and tackles. I can't envision myself 15 years from now being bitter about another linebacker. I belong with the Steelers of the '30s and '40s. Win or lose, I'm a Steeler. I said, 'God, please let me see his first year in professional football. Let me live that long. Someone says, 'You son's gonna be in the Hall of Fame. God, please let me live to see that. Jack gives me something to live for.

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