''Turkey'' won't forget 1976 game

09.13.2008

Joe "Turkey" Jones couldn't wait for this big day.

"My wife has been telling me every night to go back to sleep, but I can't. I'm just too excited," Jones said with a big smile.

That's understandable.

He was returning to the field at Cleveland for the first time since he was traded from the Browns to the Washington Redskins after the 1978 season.

But no longer was there a long, narrow tunnel leading to the first-base dugout and out onto the field, as there had been at Cleveland Stadium. No, this time, there was a wide opening -- at Cleveland Browns Stadium, built on the footprint of the old place.

And the grass -- ah, yes, the grass. That's different -- so different -- as well.

"We never had nice plush grass like this when I played here," Jones.

No, the Browns were lucky to have any grass growing at all on the field then. What there was of it was patchy, or painted to look thick and green.

And instead of the 80,000 who sat in the old stadium to watch him and the Browns on Sunday afternoons, there was no one in the stands except two cleaning people power-washing seats. It was Thursday afternoon. Unless it's Thanksgiving Day, no one in the NFL ever plays on Thursday afternoon. Thursday night maybe -- in fact, the Browns have a Thursday night game against the Denver Broncos this year -- but never Thursday afternoon.

None of that mattered, though, because there was enough that was the same -- that he remembered.

Jones rubbed his hands along the top of the grass and then took a whiff.

The smile got even wider.

"You never forget the smell of the grass on the field," Jones said.

He was home again, back to where he had made his mark in football -- back in the home stadium of the team that had selected him in the second round of the 1970 NFL Draft, back to the team for which he had played 6½ years of his decade-long career.

Back to where he made a play for which he will forever be known.

The timing of Jones' visit is not coincidental. He is in Cleveland to be the featured guest at Browns Backers events and to play in a charity golf tournament.

And he is here because it's Steelers week. The Browns host Pittsburgh on Sunday night in a nationally-televised game.

It was against the Steelers where that play occurred, on Oct. 10, 1976.

You know the play we're talking about.

Steelers' ball. The opening play of a drive. First and 10 from the Pittsburgh 26 with 10:46 left in the fourth quarter. Cleveland 15, Pittsburgh 10.

Terry Bradshaw goes back to throw. Jones, playing left end, uses what he called "a swim move" -- "I'm no engineer," he laughed -- to maneuver past right tackle Chip "Moon" Mullins. He gets to Bradshaw, grabs him, picks him up, twirls him around and drives him head-first into the ground at the 9 for a 17-yard loss.

The crowd of 76,411, the largest of the year for the Browns at home, goes crazy. That's especially the case only about 25 yards away in the packed bleachers, which would later come to be known as the Dawg Pound.

While on his back, Bradshaw flops like a fish. It looks as if Jones has broken the quarterback's back, or spine, or maybe both.

Penalty flags fly. Jones is assessed a 15-yard personal foul penalty for unnecessary roughness.

Fortunately, Bradshaw is not seriously hurt, suffering only a bruised spine. But he's knocked out of the game.

The Browns go on to defeat the two-time defending Super Bowl champions 18-16, but that's hardly the story. Rather, it's THE play that is being discussed -- and watched on sports highlight shows -- not just in Cleveland and Pittsburgh, Akron and Altoona, Canton and Clairton, Wadsworth and Warrendale, but throughout the country.

It is still being discussed and viewed today, 32 years later. It will get a lot of play as the Browns and Steelers prepare to battle in the national limelight on Sunday.

To be sure, it epitomizes, better than anything else, the ferociousness and intensity of the Browns-Steelers rivalry, which people in Northeast Ohio and Western Pennsylvania believe has been the best in football since it started 58 years ago.

Two rough, tough teams from two working-class towns going at each other.

Jones remembers the play as if it were yesterday. He had no problem Thursday going to the exact spot where he lined up on the play, then to the spot where he corralled Bradshaw and finally to the place where he used the quarterback as a human post-hole digger.

It was the first time he had ever re-enacted the play on the field where it occurred.

"We had had a good week of practice," said Jones, now 60 and living with his wife of 26 years, Benita, in Irving, Tex., on land his ancestors first settled back in the 1800s that's located just a stone's throw from the Dallas Cowboys' present and soon-to-be stadiums. "It was Steelers week, so everything was tight, shut down. It was as if the president was coming."

No, just the Browns' arch rivals.

The 1-3 Browns had lost three in a row by lopsided margin and were in need of a win, lest their season get away from them before they arrived at the halfway point. The Steelers were also scuffling along at 1-3, their lone win being a 31-14 decision over the Browns three weeks earlier after they had rallied from a 14-0 halftime deficit.

It was a typical bruising Browns-Steelers game. Cleveland quarterback Brian Sipe was knocked out of the game with a concussion midway through the second quarter and replaced by Dave "Doc" Mays, the first African American QB in Browns history.

The Browns passed for 179 yards and the Steelers for 134 -- both paltry amounts. Both teams relied on their running games, Cleveland getting 147 yards and Pittsburgh 111.

The Browns got four field goals from Don Cockroft and a one-yard touchdown run from Cleo Miller, after which Cockroft's extra point was blocked. The Steelers' points came on a one-yard scoring run by Franco Harris, a 22-yard TD burst by Bradshaw's backup, Mike Kruczek, after which Roy Gerela's extra point was blocked, and a Gerela field goal.

The Browns knew they needed to play well defensively -- and with a lot of physicality -- to have a chance to pull the upset. Jones' role in that would be to put pressure on Bradshaw. At 6-foot-6 and 250 pounds, and with good quickness and speed, he had all the physical tools to do it.

He was trying to fulfill that role when he sacked Bradshaw late in the game.

"I didn't get all joyful or anything about it when it happened," he said. "I was a football player, and that's what I was trained to do."

He insists he didn't hear any whistle to stop play before he dumped Bradshaw.

"Oh, no," he said. "With all the fans in the bleachers screaming, it was too loud to hear any whistle. The first whistle I heard was when the play was over."

Jones insists he wasn't trying to hurt Bradshaw.

"It never crossed my mind to try to maim him," he said. "I would never do that to anyone. It was the heat of the game, and when I got him, the adrenaline took over."

He went to see Bradshaw after the game in the Cleveland training room, where he was being X-rayed. Bradshaw's wife at the time, figure skater JoJo Starbuck, and what Jones called "their goons (bodyguards)" would have no part of any reconciliation then.

"She kept screaming at me, "You hurt my husband!' " Jones said.

Through the years, though, Jones has had a chance to sit down with Bradshaw and make amends. He even plays regularly in a charity golf tournament in Texas involving a lot of Steelers players from that time.

"Joe Greene, Franco Harris, those guys really give me the business," he said.

Jones looked up at the bright blue, nearly cloudless sky, the kind there had been that day in 1976. It was a little warmer this time, but it had also been comfortably warm that afternoon for those sitting in the sun.

He looked down at his No. 64 white Browns jersey, a replica of the one he wore that day.

He looked around at the big stadium.

He looked at the spot where he had etched his name and place in Browns-Steelers history for all-time.

And Joe Jones probably didn't sleep Thursday night, either.