“Fifty years. I just can’t believe it. And I’m still around to enjoy it.”
–Franco Harris, on Tuesday afternoon, hours before his shocking death, to Steelers defensive star Cam Heyward on Heyward’s “Not Just Football” podcast.
The Steelers got nothing done offensively all game. Two field goals against the impenetrable Raiders in the first 59 minutes—that’s all—with a piddling passing game. Six points on a frigid winterscape at the confluence of the three rivers, with dozens of frustrated Santa Clauses in the stands. The Steelers, desperate in the final seconds to steal a win they probably did not deserve.
Wait. Are we talking Christmas weekend 1972 or Christmas weekend 2022?
Both.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night 🎄 pic.twitter.com/omtw2oii8Z
— Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) December 25, 2022
And the Raiders went home both times, on Dec. 23, 1972 and then 50 years and one night later, with a brutally frustrating loss that had Franco Harris’ fingerprints all over it.
It’s eerie. That’s what it is. The Steelers beat the Raiders 13-7 a half-century ago on a TD pass to rookie Harris in the final minute. The Steelers beat the Raiders 13-10 Saturday night on a TD pass to rookie George Pickens in the final minutes.
The first game was the Immaculate Reception game, when Harris picked the ball out of the air and ran it for a shocking 60-yard touchdown to beat Oakland. The second game, three days after Harris died, was a tribute to a hero. Heyward and his teammates wore Harris’ black number 32 jersey to Acrisure Stadium for Saturday night’s game against the Raiders, a game that celebrated Harris’ legacy as he became the third Steeler to have his number retired.
“Everyone in the organization felt Franco tonight,” Heyward told me an hour after the game ended, wearing the black Harris jersey. “It’s one thing to wear the jersey. It’s another thing to embody what he was about, what the Steelers are about. I feel that’s what we did tonight.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Steelers president Art Rooney II told a doleful crowd at the halftime jersey retirement for Harris.
No, but life goes on, and this team handled it the way a championship team should—even if this edition of the Steelers, at 7-8, is quite unlikely to win one this year. The NFL’s black-and-gold franchise is the gold standard in class and doing things right. When Cam Heyward led the team onto the field with a huge black 32 flag before the game, when quarterback Kenny Pickett used “FRANCO! FRANCO!” as a dummy audible call, when Frenchy Fuqua waved the Terrible Towel to get the crowd pumped (not necessary, by the way), when Harris’ widow leaned on Rooney at halftime for support at an emotional moment, and when the Steelers found a way to handle the family business the right way by winning in the final minute … I mean, what did you expect? This is what the Steelers do. They do the right thing.
It’s like what Harris told Heyward in a warm conversation, a half-day before he died. “What an honor—the third jersey to be retired here in 90 years,” Harris said on the podcast. “And the first offensive player.”
Harris, 50 years ago, caught a desperate caromed pass in the final minute and scored the winning touchdown to beat the Raiders. On this night, Pickett threw the game-winner to Pickens. “For Franco,” Pickens said.
“I wasn’t going to air the interview we did,” Heyward told me around midnight Saturday night. “But I talked to Franco’s wife, and she told me to share it. ‘Just share his joy.’ So I did. Franco is loved by so many people in this organization and so many players. He cared so much about everybody who came into that locker room. You interacted with Franco, no matter who you were, you were the most important person in the room.
“He understood the magnitude of what was about to happen, retiring his jersey. Franco was a big part of kick-starting the dynasty. We tried to honor him tonight. Winning this game is who we are as a franchise. It’s the grit of the Steelers.
“Sometimes I hear, ‘Why is there a statue of Franco at the airport here in Pittsburgh?’ It’s not just the Immaculate Reception. It’s everything—how he treated people, how he gave back, how he welcomed the new Steelers every year, how he was an ambassador to the franchise and to the city.”
The Steelers did Harris right, and did his grieving family right, on this night. We need more of that in sports, and in life.
Read more in Peter King’s full Football Morning in America column
