The rebuilt defensive backfield is beginning to stir comparisons to the terrific quartet of the 1990s that featured Rod Woodson and Carnell Lake
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
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The Steelers' secondary had the look of a barn on fire, only those weren't horses back there, they were hens, seemingly running around with their heads cut off. The joke was that old horse Mel Blount, despite his age, still could line up wearing his 10-gallon cowboy hat and start at cornerback for these modern-day Steelers.
They weren't all bad in the secondary, but collectively it was all bad.
So the Steelers did something about it. They flooded their secondary with draft picks. High ones and middle ones. Cornerbacks and safeties. They built one of the best young secondaries in the league with depth to boot.
The current Steelers hope history repeats itself after rebuilding their secondary the past few years because the one they remade in the late 1980s that featured Rod Woodson and Carnell Lake eventually helped get them to their only Super Bowl in the past 25 years.
"Those two were pretty special, now," said Steelers coordinator Dick LeBeau, who inherited Woodson and Lake when he became their secondary coach on Bill Cowher's first staff in 1992.
His current secondary might not have a Woodson at cornerback, but LeBeau acknowledges it as the best young group since the Steelers rebuilt their porous secondary in the late '80s and early '90s through the draft.
Strong safety Troy Polamalu made the Pro Bowl last year, his first season as a starter. Free safety Chris Hope, also in his second season as a starter, is making the kind of big plays expected of his position. Cornerback Ike Taylor, in his third season and first as a starter, is playing like a Pro Bowler. Veteran Deshea Townsend remains the other starting cornerback, but two others, Ricardo Colclough and rookie Bryant McFadden, the team's second-round picks in each of the past two years, are making their moves.
"Right now, I do see a comparison to when I was playing with Rod Woodson, Carnell and those guys," said cornerback Willie Williams, who is in his second tour with the Steelers after joining them as a rookie in 1993. "It's starting to develop as a good secondary.
"We had some Pro Bowlers back then. Right now, we have some Pro Bowl potential in these young guys."
Woodson is headed for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Lake was the best safety in the league for a number of years and played a good cornerback in 1995 when Woodson missed virtually all of the season with a knee injury.
The Steelers had another good free safety join them in '92 as a rookie, and he now serves as the new breed's secondary coach.
"When I first came here?" Darren Perry wonders. "We were pretty good. That was probably the best group we had right there. We had two Hall of Famers out there."
Woodson and Lake were the constants with several cornerbacks passing through such as Delton Hall, Deon Figures and D.J. Johnson. Perry brought the whole group together.
"They loved Darren Perry," said Tom Modrak, Buffalo's assistant general manager and longtime Steelers personnel man. "He just ran the show, and all they had to do was play. He was one of those guys who could take charge."
Perry believes his current group has that kind of potential.
"Maybe from a talent standpoint, yes," Perry said. "The mental part of it, I wouldn't go with it just yet because of their youth. Rod was in a class of his own, but, as a whole, group, yes, the potential is there."
The Steelers' secondary in the mid-1980s was so bad that one starting cornerback is still known by his nickname.
"Harvey 'Toast' Clayton," Modrak said without prompting.
Coach Chuck Noll once told Modrak to "get him out of here," and they did in short order. They also showed the same kind of determination to correct their secondary problem the way the Steelers did starting in 2002. In 1987, they drafted Woodson in the first round, Hall in the second and safety Thomas Everett in the fourth. All became starters. They picked up Lake in the second round in '89 to solidify matters, and Perry (8th round) joined them in '92, Figures (1st) and Williams (6th) in '93.
"The secondary got fixed to a high degree in a rather short period of time," Modrak said.
There was luck involved in the Steelers getting Woodson because two teams drafting ahead of them made grievous mistakes, allowing them to steal him with the 10th pick.
Cowher and Kevin Colbert, the team's director of football operations, made their own luck in 2003 when they traded their third-round pick to move 11 spots higher in the first round and draft Polamalu with the 16th pick. They made what appears to be another great choice in the fourth round when they drafted Taylor, who had size, speed and raw talent but played cornerback only one season at Louisiana-Lafayette.
They forced the issue again in 2004 when they traded their fourth pick to move higher in the second round to draft Colclough from Division II Tusculum and added Florida State's McFadden in the second round this year.
"God forbid any of us gets hurt or has serious injuries, but we have an opportunity to be one of the best secondaries in that we're all still young, all still learning," Hope said.
"The athletic ability is there and all of us tackle, all of us are aggressive, all of us are willing to learn. There's no guy in our secondary who has the big head or thinks he's bigger than the group. If we keep that same attitude and continue to work hard and keep up the level of competitiveness, we'll be tough."
(Ed Bouchette can be reached at ebouchette@post-gazette.com or 412-263-3878.)
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