Archive: Jack Lambert's Inauspicious Steelers Camp Debut

Archive: Jack Lambert's inauspicious Steelers camp debut
Written by Dan Gigler
http://blogs.post-gazette.com/sports...ers-camp-debut

Yesterday on the practice fields of Saint Vincent College, all eyes were on Steelers rookie linebacker and first round draft pick Ryan Shazier as he dealt and absorbed NFL-level contact for the first time in a fully padded, full speed backs-on-backers drill and team session with live tackling, and Shazier made quite the first impression according to our Ray Fittipaldo.
Even if Shazier had flopped in his debut, he could've taken heart knowing that plenty before him had whiffed in their first outing, including some of the best to ever play the game -- like Jack Splat.
Before he was a terrorizing force in the middle of the Steelers' defense, Jack Lambert, too was a rookie. And in his first day of full contact practice 40 years and 2 weeks ago, he got his butt kicked by another rookie who went on to have quite legendary career of his own: Mike Webster.
The late, great Phil Musick recounts the scene in the Tuesday, July 16, 1974 Pittsburgh Press:
Jack Lambert: ‘I’ll Play Someplace’
Steelers’ 2nd Pick Has Rough Debut
By Phil Musick / Press Sports Writer
LATROBE – The second day in a professional football training camp never varies. Not even when freedom is a bone being gnawed at by both management and the workers.
The first day of camp is cake. Meetings, room assignments, equipment issue and other exciting stuff. They tell the rookies where to find the chow hall, and to pay attention during the meetings, and not to lose their playbooks, and to beware of the cigarette machine in the snack bar, and that it’ll cost them a hundred if they get caught sneaking off down the road to the wicked temptations of Latrobe.
The second day they throw out the raw meat to find out who’s the hungriest. That was the modus operandi yesterday at St. Vincent. The first blood-letting came during the morning workout. They call it the Oklahoma Drill; it looks more like an Oklahoman bumping into a Texan along the border.
Two players face each other, one protecting a ballcarrier, the other trying to behead him. The ball is snapped. The survivor gets up. This is the business of discovering who, in the vernacular, “likes it.” The hitters stand out sharply; as do the hittees.
Yesterday the hitters were center Mike Webster, a fifth round draft pick, and guard Rick Druschel, chosen one round later. Webster tattooed No. 2 pick Jack Lambert. Druschel lifted his helmet against the chin of rookie Jim Wolf, who briefly gave a credible imitation of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
The notable hittee was Lambert, although the situation shows no sign of being permanent. “Mr. Webster is one heck of a fine center,” Lambert thought after being blown off the line.
It is considered by Steeler brass that Mr. Lambert may well become one heck of a fine pro linebacker. It is further considered that he is lean and mean, fine credentials for a pro ‘backer.
“I have to act that way sometimes because of my weight,” Lambert was saying after the morning drill. Lambert is the Nureyev of linebackers, what might be called wiry if it didn’t seem too ludicrous to apply that adjective to someone weiging 216 pounds.
He is smallish. So much so that he has been placed on a nutrient diet which has built him up to 216, nice size for a placekicker but sort of gaunt for a linebacker.
“I’m not worried about it,” Lambert says in a tone of voice that indicates he is not often worried about anything. “I think I can make this team. I’ll be playing some place.”
If that is to become a face rather than an opinion formed while the veterans are carrying picket signs a mile away, Lambert will almost certainly have to unseat eight-year veteran George Webster for the right to work the special teams and watch Jack Ham play.
The Steelers will have – management and Ed Garvey willing – six veteran linebackers in camp sooner or later. Six is the quota. “I didn’t come here to sit on the bench,” counters Lambert, who will get a look at both middle and outside linebacker.
“My big problem will be learning both the middle and outside. But they feel I can do it.” Given his druthers, Lambert prefers the middle “because that’s where the action’s at.”
The pressure of being a No. 2 pick -- he has been preceded in recent years by such worthy second-round selections as Ham and Terry Hanratty – does not bother Lambert.
“I really don’t feel any pressure,” he says. “Whether you’re a No. 1 or a free agent, you have to go out and get it done.”
Yesterday Mike Webster did, but there figures to be a lot of tomorrows for Jack Lambert.
[Lambert would go on to start every game in 1974 including the Steelers victory over Minnesota in Super Bowl IX]