Steelers couldn't spell cat... yada yada yada

The Steelers may be the preeminent current practitioners of dirty, lowdown, possibly career-ending hits, but they certainly weren't the founders of the cheap hit. Like most lunkheads, Steelers are strictly followers, and the franchise seems to have been plagued by the stupidity virus since its very inception. You remember Hollywood Henderson's quote about Bradshaw's spelling ablities, of course.

So no, Steelers don't have enough brain cells to come up with the best way to utilize the dirty, cheap, a**hole hit. Apparently, it took a "genius". Check out who SI's Dr. Z thinks thunk up the whole hit 'em below the knees idea:

Tough question from Clay of L.A. Says he has great respect for Bill Walsh, but was Walsh the real architect of the vicious 49ers chop block scheme? "I would love it if you said this question was just silly, but it's bugging me, so I thought I'd ask."

You're not going to like my answer. My feeling is that yes, it was his baby. I mean, Bobb McKittrick didn't think this up all by himself. I'm guessing it was a collaboration of the two. I could never pin it down. The closest I came was I a conversation I had with Russ Francis, the tight end, the night before a Redskins game.

"You want to seem like a genius in the press box?" he said. I certainly did. "Before our first play, tell everyone that there's gonna be a fight."

What? Says which? How come?

"Our first play will be a run left, wide, and what they've got me doing is splitting out and coming back and cracking on Dexter Manley, at knee level." Low crackbacks were allowed in those days.

Sure enough, Manley and Francis went at it after the first play, but the difference was that Francis took him on high, not low. I talked to him about it afterward.

"When we came back to the bench, they all yelled at me," he said. "'We told you to cut him!' I said, "'Did he make the tackle?' There's no way in the world I would do it, and that's what I told Dexter when he jumped me. He calmed down."

"Who told you? Whose idea was that block?" I asked him, but all he would do was shake his head. "Who do you think?" he said. I've heard this from other sources, too.