Welcome to the NFL 100, The Athletic’s endeavor to identify the 100 best players in football history. You can order the book versionhere. Every day until the season begins, we’ll unveil new members of the list, with the No. 1 player to be crowned on Wednesday, Sept. 8.
“You know how you get an ingrown toenail and it starts throbbing and keeps you awake? So, I go in and tell them that my toe is throbbing, and Doc said they will take care of it. At the very top of your toe and under your nail, you stick a needle in there and shoot you up so they can cut the toenail out. I take the shot and was told to sit there for 10 minutes and it will numb up and he will cut it out. He gets pliers and scissors and starts to cut the stupid toenail out, right? Whatever shot he gave me, it isn’t working. This is my rookie year or second year and I am sitting on this table with blood shooting out and Doc is cutting like a mad hatter and I can feel it. All of a sudden, Jack Lambert walks in and walks behind the Doc and goes, ‘Go ahead, scream. Scream. I know you want to.’ I am like, ‘I am looking at Jack Lambert, I can’t scream.’ He is like, ‘You better not cry, Craig.’ So I bit down on the imaginary bullet and he’s laughing at me.” — Craig Wolfley, Jack Lambert’s teammate from 1980-84
They called him “Jack Splat” (it was a nickname Myron Cope gave him that Jack Lambert didn’t necessarily like).
“Dracula in Cleats,” he was called (there’s an entry on Urban Dictionary about it).
The scariest-looking player in NFL history and a downright frightening middle linebacker for the league’s most storied defense; the guy who bodyslammed Cliff Harris in Super Bowl X because he tapped his kicker on the head after a miss; the guy who once told Howard Cosell quarterbacks should wear dresses; the guy who “Mean” Joe Greene once said was so mean he didn’t even like himself; and the guy who once sat at his locker wearing a black Stetson and a black T-shirt that said “I’m a Fuckin’ Maniac” in orange bubble letters on his back is everything you would think the middle linebacker of the Pittsburgh Steelers should look like.
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Toothless. Mustached. Menacing. Before being drafted by the Steelers in 1974, the scouting report on Lambert, a marginal player at Kent State, noted that while he didn’t have ideal size for a linebacker, he had a “lust for contact.”
Nearly 30 years after Lambert retired because of a toe injury, he’s still talked about in the same way — one mean SOB whom Steelers fans adore to this day.
But there was much more to Lambert than being an undersized badass of a middle linebacker. He was the Defensive Rookie of the Year in 1974, an All-Pro eight times, a nine-time Pro Bowl player, the Defensive Player of the Year in 1976 and a Super Bowl winner after the 1974, ’75, ’78 and ’79 seasons.
Lambert was a funny dude (at times) — Wolfley can vouch for that. He appeared in a series of commercials for Kennywood Park, a Pittsburgh-area amusement park, near the end of his storied 11-year career.
But Lambert was all about ruthless aggression during practices and games and wasn’t ever about to apologize for that. Lambert’s persona was a perfect fit for the 1970s “Steel Curtain” defense, which featured tough guys like Greene, Jack Ham, Mel Blount, L.C. Greenwood, Dwight White, Donnie Shell and others.
“Jack was the most intense player I played with on the Steelers,” Shell said. “He had the intensity every week. It is very hard to stay at that level for 16 games. At practice and in the game, he always had that intensity. It was just one of his gifts. He was very intimidating and didn’t take any stuff from anybody, and he would stand up for our teammates.”
Lambert did that plenty of times over his career, but none was more memorable than Super Bowl X. It is a clip that might be most associated with Lambert — and Harris.
The Steelers were trailing the Cowboys and struggling to set a tone in the game. Trailing 10-7 in the third quarter, Roy Gerela missed a 33-yard field goal — his second miss of the game. Harris, who trash-talked Lynn Swann all week about being scared to get hit, turned to Gerela and patted him on the head.
Lambert saw that and tossed Harris to the ground. That’s all the Steelers needed. They outscored the Cowboys 14-7 over the final 25 minutes on the strength of two field goals by Gerela. Lambert led everybody with 14 tackles.
“I think in the first half, we were intimidated a little bit,” Lambert said after the game. “The Pittsburgh Steelers aren’t supposed to be intimidated. We are supposed to be intimidators. I was a little excited, and after the second field goal Gerela missed, Harris slapped him around the head a little bit, and that’s just not going to happen when I am out there, as far as I am concerned.”
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There were others.
In 1976, Terry Bradshaw was hurt when he was sacked by the Browns’ Turkey Jones, and the Steelers started the season 1-4. Mike Kruczek replaced Bradshaw the next week against the Bengals, and Bo Harris clobbered him out of bounds early in the game. Lambert raced down the sideline to smack Harris around because of what he thought was a late hit.
“It wasn’t something that I sat down and planned to do,” Lambert said to NFL Films. “I didn’t think about things out there. I reacted. The Cliff Harris incident in the Super Bowl, I never thought about doing that. I saw him whacking Roy in the helmet, so I turned around and grabbed him and threw him to the ground.
“Sometimes I got the feeling that people thought I was a dirty football player, and that bothered me. I never went out there and tried to hurt anybody or anything like that. I could play anywhere you wanted. We had some guys out there from time to time that wanted to do some things that weren’t legal, and I could do that too if I had to, but I’d rather play by the rules.”
Lambert was kind of an anomaly coming out of Kent State in 1974.
Many scouts and coaches believed he was too small to play linebacker in the NFL. Lambert, whose front teeth were knocked out as a teenager, was a quarterback at Crestwood High School in suburban Cleveland before switching to defensive end in college. Art Rooney Jr., who scouted Lambert and was responsible for drafting him, knew Lambert was small but loved his toughness.
“I scouted him on a day when the fields were muddy,” Rooney told ESPN in 2003. “They were practicing on a cinder parking lot. They’re out there in their underwear, not going hard, and Lambert launches himself at the running back, takes him down. He’s picking cinders out of his arm and I’m thinking, ‘If he could just gain a little weight, his toughness will put him over the top.'”
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Despite his being 6-foot-4 and 204 pounds, the Steelers selected Lambert in the fourth round. He was called “a fifth linebacker at best” by a local sportswriter after the draft. The Steelers didn’t expect much more out of Lambert, either. They picked him to back up Andy Russell and Jack Ham at outside linebacker. When middle linebacker Henry Davis was injured, Lambert was moved inside as a rookie and the rest was history.
Lambert was a defensive captain for eight years. He played in six AFC Championship Games and had 28 interceptions, 1,479 tackles and 23.5 sacks.
“To look at Lambert, he doesn’t look like a middle linebacker,” Greene once said. “At 6-5, 218 pounds, he didn’t pass the eye test. But he could play.”
Lambert couldn’t use his size or strength to his advantage, so he used his determination and his smarts. His ability to anticipate and his knowledge of the game were greatly underrated and appreciated.
“He was smart and he was physical,” said Keith Butler, now the Steelers’ defensive coordinator and a middle linebacker for the Seahawks when Lambert played. “He didn’t give a crap about his body. He would throw his body around all over the place. I used to watch him before I got drafted, and as a youngster in college, you always look at guys you think you can emulate when you get in the league, so I watched him a lot. He was a tall and skinny guy just like me. I loved how he played because of him being physical and a smart football player.”
Known for his durability, Lambert missed only seven games during his first 10 seasons, but his career came to an end after a serious toe injury in 1984.
“Probably one of the best linebackers in the modern era was Ray Lewis, and what made Ray Lewis so great was his ability to beat the blocker to the point of interaction with the running back,” Wolfley said. “That is exactly the way it was with Jack. He could read an offense like you can read a book. He was so intelligent and so quick to react. His ability to see the traffic and not being influenced by shiny things that could persuade you was phenomenal. He was a tough little bump. He earned his respect, that’s for sure.”
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Lambert was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1990. He hasn’t been heard from much since as he stays almost completely out of the spotlight. Lambert has spent his retirement years serving as a volunteer deputy wildlife officer, coaching youth baseball and basketball teams and taking care of his area’s local athletic fields. He also played for a men’s hockey team for a while.
He never returns for Steelers events, let alone take part in the yearly Hall of Fame ceremonies. Lambert did make a rare public appearance two years ago for a memorabilia signing, but that was unusual.
“I never looked at professional football as a popularity contest,” Lambert once said. “I looked at it as my job. I don’t care if my opponents liked me. I cared if they respected me.”
(Illustration: Wes McCabe / The Athletic; photo: George Gojkovich / Getty Images)
