San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Bauer remembers Bolts’ chance 41 years ago.
Hank Bauer can relax next Sunday as he watches the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Kansas City Chiefs from his San Diego home. The Super Bowl isn’t a Holy Grail anymore for the former NFL special teams star, now 66. He can enjoy the game instead of obsessing to get there, and enjoy it he will.
“This sets up to be one of the greatest Super Bowls ever,” Bauer said the other day. “I cannot wait to watch it.”
Decades ago, Bauer risked his health as coverage teams ace and running back for the San Diego Chargers under Don Coryell.
Chasing Super Bowl bids was the norm, as San Diego, starting in 1979, reached four consecutive Super Bowl tournaments.
Bauer earned the nickname Hammer, by slamming into countless NFL opponents.
In the playoffs, Air Coryell kept getting grounded.
Plagued by turnovers, none of San Diego’s four consecutive bids panned out and two failed with a Super Bowl berth on the line.
Recently Bauer gave off a “life is good” vibe while talking about Super Bowl LV. He often does.
But, knowing that the Coryell Chargers had many awesome performances against NFL powerhouses, only to conk out in the playoffs, he said the sight of Super Bowl jewelry can induce a green state.
“Don’t think for a minute that every time I see guys wearing Super Bowl rings that I am not envious,” the former team captain said while waiting in line to get a COVID-19 vaccination. “To get so close and to be on a team that was so good — gosh!”
The biggest bummer from the Coryell Era is that the ’79 alums don’t own Super Bowl XIV diamond rings.
The ’79 Chargers, thanks to a defense that matched the slick Coryell offense by finishing second in points, had the best balance of those four Bolts teams. Though the team was young, it represented the franchise’s most serious push. Draft capital was mortgaged, raising the stakes.
Bauer made no excuse for the ’79 team’s playoff defeat in the AFC divisional round, nor should anyone. The Houston Oilers earned the upset victory at San Diego Stadium that knocked the franchise out of its first NFL postseason.
Bum Phillips’ team created five turnovers and blocked a short field goal.
But the Bolts, whose errors included a four-point swing caused by having 12 men on the field, picked the worst time to underperform.
Of all the Chargers teams in the Super Bowl era — and for that matter, all the Padres teams — the ’79 Chargers had the best case for believing they should’ve won their sport’s title.
The logic for this is too strong to dismiss.
The ’79 Chargers won by large margins against both the Pittsburgh Steelers and Los Angeles Rams, who would reach the Super Bowl.
Would the ’79 Rams, who were 40-16 losers at home to San Diego in Week 8, have improved upon an eightturnover performance in a Super Bowl matchup against Coryell’s team?
The Chargers would’ve faced not Pat Haden but Vince Ferragamo at quarterback. Strong-armed but erratic, Ferragamo had led L.A. to a 4-1 record and playoff berth after replacing Haden (fractured pinky).
In a stunner at Dallas, the Rams won their playoff opener on Ferragamo’s 50-yard scoring pass to Billy Waddy before blanking the Bucs in the NFC title game.
But the ’79 Rams had been unable to deal with Chargers Hall of Famers Fouts and Charlie Joiner, who combined for seven completions worth 168 yards at the Los Angeles Coliseum, to say nothing of John Jefferson (65-yard TD catch) and a defense whose line had two 1979 Pro Bowlers in Fred Dean and Gary Johnson. San Diego also led the NFL in fewest touchdown passes allowed.
“In all honesty, the Rams were probably a better football team between 1973 and 1978 than we were in 1979,” former Rams end Jack Youngblood told Super Bowl historian Bob Mcginn. “We had a more dominant defense and stronger running game.”
The Steelers had fallen a notch, too. San Diegans had seen Pittsburgh’s vulnerability up close, in a game on Nov. 18 when the Chargers intercepted five of Terry Bradshaw’s passes, held the Steelers to 66 rushing yards on 29 carries and won 35-7 after taking a 21-0 lead into halftime.
Youthful Chargers stars Jefferson, 23, and Dean, 27, posed a problem for most opponents including Pittsburgh. Jefferson scored for a 7-0 lead and finished with 106 receiving yards. Hall of Fame-bound Dean and
Johnson formed a strong tandem on the line’s left side.
Old age was the greater challenge for a Steelers team whose 22 starters averaged 29 years per man. Seeking a fourth Lombardi Trophy in six years, the front office kept most of the roster intact — but the dynasty’s end could be seen on the horizon. “Our players had gotten old and we had some real weak spots,” said Art Rooney Jr., who headed the team’s scouting department. Said Joe Greene, the Hall of Fame defensive tackle: “I could feel it. I wasn’t as quick, wasn’t as fast, wasn’t as strong. Plays I was making in the past, I wasn’t making anymore.”
Bauer and Lambert
If the Steelers had lost a step, their competitive fire hadn’t waned the slightest. Certainly Jack Lambert, 27, was formidable.
With the Steelers trailing by 28 points late at San Diego, the middle linebacker went into rage. Seeing Bauer trot onto the field had triggered Lambert, who correctly deduced Bauer would try to run 2 yards for a fifth Chargers TD.
The verbal assault began when Bauer reached the huddle. “Lambert’s screaming at me,” said Bauer. “He has no teeth, and he’s huffin’ and puffin’ and blood’s spitting out, and he’s yellin’.”
Profanities excluded, the exchange went like this:
“You ... chicken. You’re not getting in this time.”
“Jack, I’m getting the ball, and I’m running right there.”
Bauer’s “40 lead” plunge behind guard Ed White and tackle Russ Washington went for a TD, a physical blow the Steelers could respect. “It was one of my favorite memories of all time,” Bauer said.
Super Bowl spectator
Rebounding from the 35-7 pasting in Mission Valley, Chuck Noll’s Steelers applied a final layer of varnish to their standing as the team of the 1970s. They won three of the final four games, losing only at Houston, and claimed the AFC Central title. After a playoff win at Miami, they reached the Super Bowl by beating the Oilers in Pittsburgh, eight days after Houston’s upset in San Diego scuttled an AFC title match in Mission Valley.
Super Bowl XIV was played in the Rose Bowl, a distance of 130 miles from San Diego Stadium. Among the 103,985 in attendance was the Chargers’ special teams star. Bauer, coming off his third NFL season, wasn’t embittered by his own team’s harsh exit or knowing that the Chargers had outscored the Super Bowl participants by a combined 52 points during the season. He was 25. He figured there’d be more chances.
“When you’re that young and everything is happening so fast around you, you don’t even understand the magnitude of it,” said Bauer, who’d run for the first and last touchdowns in the October rout of Ray Malavasi’s Rams. “It was the end of the journey for us. It was what it was. And I wasn’t going to change it. So, I was going to enjoy myself. All you can do is give everything you’ve got.”
Unfortunately for Coryell and Co., the five turnovers against Houston, in the form of five Fouts interceptions, foretold what was to come. In the next three postseasons, a total of six playoff games, the Chargers had 21 turnovers including 11 interceptions. The ’80 team, with a Super Bowl berth on the line, had three turnovers at home versus Oakland (despite the Chargers recovering four of their five fumbles).
As Bauer sat in the Rose Bowl, he saw the Steelers and his new buddy — Lambert — overcome the surprising Rams, who as a 10-point underdog helped to make Super Bowl XIV a highly entertaining contest. The Rams actually led going into the fourth quarter. Trailing by five points inside of nine minutes, they moved to Pittsburgh’s 32 on three Ferragamo completions. Then Lambert, ranging 20 yards downfield in Pittsburgh’s Cover 2 defense, picked off Ferragamo’s play-action pass meant for Ron Smith.
Bauer was happy for Lambert. Days earlier in Orange County, they’d crossed paths. “He couldn’t have been nicer,” said Bauer, who visited Steelers Super Bowl HQ as guest of lineman Jon Kolb, with whom he’d appeared at United Service Organization events.
What had happened on San Diego’s football field was left there. The 17-14 loss to the Oilers scrapped a Chargers-steelers rematch, and per a San Diego Union account, it wasn’t until well after sundown, with the San Diego Stadium parking-lot lights off, that some of the faithful finally fired up their campers and headed for the exits.
“Don’t think for a minute that every time I see guys wearing Super Bowl rings that I am not envious.” Hank Bauer • Former Chargers player and coach
tom.krasovic@sduniontribune.com