Jethro Pugh, Unsung Pillar for Cowboys on the Doomsday Defense, Is Dead at 70
Jethro Pugh, a durable lineman for the Dallas Cowboys who played in four Super Bowls as part of a famed unit nicknamed the Doomsday Defense, died on Wednesday. He was 70. \
The Cowboys reported the death on their website without specifying the cause or the location.
Tall and athletic at 6 feet 6 inches and 260 pounds, Pugh was a fine pass rusher who led the Cowboys in quarterback sacks from 1968 to 1972 and recorded 95 ½ sacks over the course of his 14-year career, all of it played in Dallas when the Cowboys were a dominant team — winning 10 or more regular-season games 11 times, finishing first in their division 10 times and winning the Super Bowl twice.
In 1978, his final season, he played in 13 regular-season games but because of injuries missed his fifth Super Bowl, which the Cowboys lost to Pittsburgh.
He was, by most accounts, an underappreciated cog on a fierce defensive squad whose other members at various times included players who landed in the Hall of Fame, among them tackles Bob Lilly and Randy White and the defensive back Mel Renfro, as well as a host of fabled Cowboys, including linebackers Chuck Howley and Lee Roy Jordan and the lineman Ed (Too Tall) Jones.
“He was a terribly unsung person among that bunch of great players,” Gil Brandt, the Cowboys’ personnel director for all of Pugh’s tenure with the club, told The Associated Press after Pugh’s death.
With Pugh as a starter at left defensive tackle, the Cowboys lost in Super Bowl V to the Baltimore Colts in 1971, defeated the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl VI in 1972, lost to the Steelers in Super Bowl X in 1976 and then whipped the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XII in 1978.
But the contest for which he is probably best remembered was the National Football League championship game played in Green Bay against the Packers on Dec. 31, 1967. Known as the Ice Bowl because of the subzero playing conditions, the game came down to one play. Pugh was so cold, he said in an interview with ESPN.com in 2008, that he started to hallucinate, recalling childhood warnings from his mother.
“I swear,” Pugh said. “I heard her say, ‘Jethro, what are you doing out in that weather, you fool?’ ”
Dallas was ahead, 17-14, with 16 seconds left in the fourth quarter, but Green Bay had the ball inside the Dallas 1-yard line. The winner would face the Oakland Raiders, the American Football League champions, in Super Bowl II.
It ended badly for Pugh and the Cowboys. Bart Starr, the Green Bay quarterback, took the snap and sneaked into the end zone behind the right guard, Jerry Kramer, who, with a double-team from center Ken Bowman, had blasted Pugh out of the hole. Kramer had kept a diary of the 1967 season, and the block — which in Green Bay became known as “The Block” — was immortalized in his classic football book, “Instant Replay.” “Bart called the ‘hut’ signal,” Kramer wrote. “Jethro was on my inside shoulder, my left shoulder. I came off the ball as fast as I ever have in my life.”
He added: “I slammed into Jethro hard. All he had time to do was raise his left arm. He didn’t even get it up all the way and I charged into him. His body was a little high, the way we’d noticed in the movies, and with Bowman’s help I moved him outside.
“Willie Townes, next to Jethro, was down low, very low. He was supposed to come in low and close to the middle. He was low, but he didn’t close. He might have filled the hole, but he didn’t, and Bart churned into the opening and stretched and fell and landed over the goal line.”
The Packers went on to defeat the Raiders, and the Cowboys went home.
Jethro Pugh Jr. was born on July 3, 1944, in Windsor, N.C. He graduated in 1965 from Elizabeth City State College in North Carolina and was drafted by the Cowboys in the 11th round. Two years later he was the starting defensive tackle.
Information about survivors was not immediately available.
On Sunday, the Cowboys are to play the Packers in the teams’ first playoff game in Green Bay since the Ice Bowl.
No comments:
Post a Comment