You won Super Bowls, are in the Hall of Fame, and now have an award and a football field named after you, wrote two books…. you made a big impact on the game. Do you think about that a lot?
First, it’s such a weird time now. I went to a small, Baptist college in Arkansas. When I played there we may have had at most 5,000 people at the stadium, and that’s including people packing in on the side of the stadium. I remember one time playing in Texas Stadium backpeddling during a play and thinking “I don’t hear any noise. It was quiet.” Then I pulled myself back together and focused on the play.”
As for my career. Wow. It creeps up on you. Life is so strange. My junior year at Hot Springs High School I was second-string JV quarterback. My dad got re-assigned to a different town and I ended up being the starting quarterback and our team went undefeated. From there – five Super Bowls, Hall of Fame,… I think to myself “What?” If you polled the guys from that Hot Spring team and asked which player they thought would go to the NFL, I guarantee it wasn’t going to be me!
I was a tall and skinny kid who was still developing physically even in the NFL.
Any thoughts on having helped redefine the safety position for guys like Shell and Lott?
Gosh.. Troy Polamalu too. I started off as a quarterback in high school. When I moved to safety I realized how important – h0w key it was in the keys a quarterback was reading. How much our job was to dictate where the strength of the defense was – and wasn’t. Typically I’d help the defensive backs in coverage or protect an area of the field we were weakest in.
In Dallas, we ran a 34 Flex Weak defense – that was our best defense. We had 34 various defenses we ran though. When we ran the 34 Flex, I’d often slide over to help the strong side even though my job was also to help the defensive back. But I’d slide down the line and was able to make tackles at the line of scrimmage doing so.
Landry would pull me over and say “Chris. Paul…” he never got my name right. I said “Yes sir?” He said I knew my responsibility was to help the corner – that if they threw deep that was my play. “You got that?” I said “Yes sir.”
That was his way of saying I better be very sure it wasn’t a pass if I was doing that. That was the balance of risk and aggressiveness I tried to bring to the position.
What enabled you to find the confidence t play that style of football?
The flex defense allowed for the flexibility for me to do so – it provided those opportunities. I’m not sure Tom Landry fully realized that. I studied film a lot. The 34 defense meant that you had a fraction of a second as a safety to attack the line of scrimmage or cover the pass. It’s that split second of run versus pass – if you know you can determine what you will do right away.
Landry taught us something I still use today – “Anticipation beats reaction.” If you can read a play by studying film you had an advantage. We were ahead of the time then – we had a computer system that charted every play of the teams we played against by down, score, run versus pass….We had every team charted over their last three-to-four games and had that all printed out to review.
What made playing against Bradshaw and the Steelers different from other teams?
Not to demean Terry – he was just a beast. If we were going to double-cover the tight end – we knew through our analysis they liked to go to tight ends on third downs – I didn’t want to give that coverage away. I’d line up on the other side and hurry over to the other side at the snap. We figured I’d get chances to bat the ball away or intercept it. But Terry had such a strong arm he’d be able to get it in there anyway. You had to be on top of the receiver to stop it – you had to be that close. You don’t want to give the coverage away so you have to try and fool him, but his arm was just too strong to make a play on the ball.
And Terry also didn’t care. He would throw it into coverage – he had a strong enough arm to pull it off. How do you stop that?
I spoke to Henderson who talked about that draw play to Franco…
So many things went into that defense and play. I still have nightmares about it. Charlie and I tried to trick Bradshaw – we switched positions on the play. Had we not done that I would have been in perfect position to make the play.
I asked Bradshaw after the game about the play. I was wondering if he called the draw because he thought we were double-covering Swann. He said “No – I thought you guys were blitzing!”
I think about that and the other bad plays all the time – I rarely think about the good plays. I think that’s how defensive players think. We think of the bad plays most, and when I talk to offensive guys, they can name every catch they made!
You did try and and blitz him too….
One thing I know – I can guarantee that Noll told Terry – I bet he told him that if he saw me blitzing he should close his eyes and throw it as far as he could down the middle of the field. That’s exactly what happened – they hurt us a few times that way. I was so close to getting to him but just not in time.
I thought about it later. When I blitzed I should have tried to hit his arm or jump up instead of trying to hit him. I was just hoping to smash into him instead.
The Americas Team vs blue collar team brands – was that in your minds as a source of pride then or more a media thing?
The America’s Team thing – we didn’t think about that. That was the media’s thing – not our thing. But teams definitely came after us because of it. “You’re America’s team huh?”
I think it did end up throwing some fuel on the fire – especially for a steel town like Pittsburgh who felt like they were the heart of America too.
The whole Lambert thing – do you think that affected things at all?
Let me tell you, if I could do one thing over again, that would be it. I was a young guy – I was all fired up. Just being a young guy. What really happened was that when Lambert threw me down I looked for the ref but his back was to me. “Did you see that?” I asked him – but he didn’t. Then Pugh had to hold me back from Jack. Well, ok, not really!
Any other good stories from those games/times?
Back then we had the Super Team competitions. The NFL Super Bowl teams played each other in these sports competitions and the World Series teams did the same, and the winners then faced each other. The winners got $10,000, which was a lot then!
Well, we faced the Steelers and there was a relay medley race. I didn’t want to run it – they could be grueling. But the guys wanted me to run – they told me Golden Richards was running and he’d build a 15-second lead for me. I ran a 4.4 myself so I finally said ok. Well, Richards went up against Mel Blount and by the time they got to me Blount turned on the jets and he and Richards got there at the same time. I was on the inside of the track so moved to the outside and was going up against Lynn Swann, of course.
I told myself I’d beat Swann or die trying. I ran the best quarter-mile of my life and beat him. I couldn’t let him win that one!
Any other thoughts about the Super Bowl games?
Those games made me realize how good Terry Bradshaw was.
Another thing is this. We won through some very elaborate, sophisticated systems. We had great tools for analysis. We had Pittsburgh’s last game plus three prior ones, with plays broken down by score, down, distance – everything. We really studied it and got into it.
But what we did – we took it another step. We overdid it I think. Instead of the one book we usually had of stats, we did a second book. Not only of the last three games, but of the last four games we played before that, and more. We ended working on things that Pittsburgh was doing and tweaked our great defense instead of just doing what we did best. I think if there’s a way to over-prepare, that’s what we did.
I wish I had the clout to say we shouldn’t have done that. I think I was a bit frustrated by it. Changing things like that – it’s such a fine line between success and not – just one breath away from being an effective change.
I was talking to Randy White about it the other day. I told him I had nightmares about what I didn’t do. He told me he had his own nightmares. We all think about those things we wish we had done better.
Any of those Super Bowl memories make you laugh a bit?
They were intense battles. I think what I’ve joked with Rocky about is that if he were just an inch shorter, when I leaped over him to try and get to Bradshaw on a blitz, I think I would have gotten to Bradshaw. Rocky and I actually went to Thailand together on a USO tour. We did a Sports Illustrated ad too. He asked me where Arkadelphia, Arkansas was in the ad, and I asked him where Notre Dame was!
Lastly, any thoughts on this Dallas team and this weekend’s matchup?
I think we had such great potential with Dak and Zeke. The defense was looking like it was coming together. But they lost Zak and some confidence too. Now I don’t know what to expect. My son played at Richmond and we went up and watched them play James Madison – it’s a tough place to play. DiNucci is a tough player. I’m not sure if Dalton will be back from concussion protocol- that was a brutal hit. I wouldn’t have played half of my games if we had concussion protocols back then!
For Sunday, I don’t know what to expect. McCarthy taking over this team in a pandemic season – it’s not easy putting a team together that way. And I’ll tell you one thing I knew would happen – more injuries than we’ve seen in other seasons. Guys not having the ability to work out like they normally would have done – with trainers in the team’s facility.
They have great wide receivers – I hope they can figure it out and come up with a system they can win with. I don’t think this will be a typical Steelers-Dallas rivalry game though.
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