Professional Football Researchers Association Forum
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Rupert Patrick wrote:
Watching replays of the game, the Raiders Browns field conditions looked just as bad as the Ice Bowl. Maybe 1975 AFC Championship was a little better.
I was 11 and living in Pittsburgh when the 1975 Championship was played and remember that day well. It was very cold and windy, a few flurries, but there was nowhere near the threat of frostbite that the players faced in Cleveland or Green Bay. The main conditions in Pittsburgh that day were the wind and the ice along the sidelines. Madden still contends to this day that the Steelers intentionally watered down the edges of the sidelines the night before so they would freeze and it would cut down on the Raiders vertical passing game. That was perhaps the most physically brutal game I have ever seen.
Not that the fields at Lambeau and Cleveland Stadium were any softer, but the fact that the Steelers and Raiders were essentially playing on frozen carpeted cement makes me wonder how much pain players were in the next day--outside of Swann, who got an "assist" on his concussion.
Grant's teams charted out the spots on the field that would freeze in shadow or hold water on muddy days.
"We had all those places marked out -- where we could do certain things," Grant said. "We used to kick the ball on the ground a lot -- we weren’t kicking through the end zone in those days -- so we put it on parts of the field that were wet and frozen and soft. [Kicker] Fred [Cox] played soccer in college; he was a straight-on kicker, but he could also kick in the soccer style. He could kick it into certain parts of the field and put it on the ground, where it would pick up some mud and some snow and some wet. It would throw off their timing on their returns. The kicking game was extremely important."
Grant's teams charted out the spots on the field that would freeze in shadow or hold water on muddy days.
"We had all those places marked out -- where we could do certain things," Grant said. "We used to kick the ball on the ground a lot -- we weren’t kicking through the end zone in those days -- so we put it on parts of the field that were wet and frozen and soft. [Kicker] Fred [Cox] played soccer in college; he was a straight-on kicker, but he could also kick in the soccer style. He could kick it into certain parts of the field and put it on the ground, where it would pick up some mud and some snow and some wet. It would throw off their timing on their returns. The kicking game was extremely important."
Their second TD in the 1969 title game resulted because a Cleveland defender slipped on the ice, allowing Gene Washington to go untouched for a 75-yard score.
