Bettis gets his due
CANTON, Ohio – There are many lasting memories of Jerome Bettis’ NFL career. When you log nearly 3,500 regular-season carries and run for 13,662 yards – the equivalent of 7.8 miles – you’re bound to have a play or two people remember.
With Bettis, however, what he did for the Steelers after joining them in 1996 after a trade with the St. Louis Rams, goes way beyond what he did on the football field.
Bettis wasn’t just a member of the Steelers. He symbolized the Steelers as much as any of the great players that came before him.
For a decade, Bettis was the man who personified one of the most storied franchises in the NFL.
Don’t think so?
Ask Joey Porter, who currently serves as the Steelers’ outside linebackers coach and was a Pro Bowl linebacker with the team from 1999 through 2006.
“He was the guy. He was the face of the team,” said Porter, one of dozens of former teammates who made the trip here to see Bettis inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame Saturday night.
“Coming in as a rookie, I’d go to Giant Eagle and his face was on every food item in the store and he’d be driving a big bus with a picture of him on the front and it had marble floors and everything. I came in as a rookie and that’s what I’m seeing. The guy was larger than life everywhere we went.”
And yet, Bettis never got too big for anybody. From the biggest stars on the team to the last player on the practice squad, Bettis was a friend. It was the same with people in the front office, the fans, even the media.
Bettis was the same guy to everybody.
But what really made Bettis special were two things. First was his toughness. Second was his willingness to accept whatever role the team needed.
During the 2000 season, Bettis was playing despite turf toe, a lower leg contusion, broken ribs and a sore knee.
After every game, he would sit at his locker, struggling to get dressed, his back a mass of welts that made it look as if he had been in a fight and the other guy had been hitting him with a baseball bat.
At one point, his backup, Richard Huntley, was asked if he could imagine playing through the injuries that Bettis was fighting through.
“(Guys) are hitting you and stuff out there,” Huntley replied in more colorful terms. “(The heck) with that.”
Huntley was out of the NFL in two more seasons. Bettis, who at that point was 28, carried the ball 355 times – the second-highest total of his career – rushing for 1,341 yards.
If Bettis wasn’t playing in a game, then you knew he had a serious injury.
As for Bettis’ ability to accept a role, Cowher attempted to replace him on several occasions, first with Huntley, then with Amos Zereoue, then Duce Staley, and finally Willie Parker.
Only Parker, who by that time was playing with a 33-year-old Bettis, made it stick.
Every time before that, it was Bettis getting the important carries once the usurper to his thrown failed. And he never complained about his role with the team.
Through it all, he embodied the Steelers and was the bridge between the great teams of the 1970s and the teams that would win two Super Bowls in the 2000s and go to a third.
Bettis was only a member of one of those Super Bowl teams, in his final season in 2005, but he was the guy who taught players such as Porter, James Harrison, Ben Roethlisberger, Hines Ward and so many others what it was to be a professional.
Who can forget a tearful Ward talking about how the team had let down Bettis, who had told many that he was going to retire, in 2004 when they lost in the AFC Championship to the New England Patriots?
Bettis was talked into coming back in 2005, and while statistically he wasn’t a huge factor – though he did score nine touchdowns – his role was much larger.
“He was the glue that held everything together,” said Steelers tight end Heath Miller, then a rookie.
And he went out on top, on his own terms.
“That was beautiful the way that happened,” said Porter.
“He was, in our minds, already a Hall of Famer,” said Harrison.
And now, it is official.
F. Dale Lolley can be reached at dlolley@observer-reporter.com.