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Show by Jim Murray Moniripay nmi Spaprits Donnie Shell will tell you it's better to receive It is late in the second quarter, the Raiders nave the ball on the Pittsburgh 20, first and goal, and the pass is right where Marc Wilson wants it a nice high spiral in the comer of the end zone. It is the only pass Wilsonwill complete in the end zone all day but it is a beauty as it finds the open man. Only, the open man is wearing a Pittsburgh uniform. No. 31. Let's go now to the fourth quarter. There are only two minutes left, the Raiders trail, 13-7, as quarterback Jim Plunkett fades to pass near midfield. The throw is intended for Raider tight end Todd Christensen but he is not open. No. 31 of the Pittsburgh Steelers is. He usually is. He runs nice patterns. No. 31 of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Donnie Shell, is listed on the roster as strong safety. Commissioner Pete Rozelle should come down hard on them about this. Shell isn't a safety. He's a wide receiver. That's his job. He's one of the best receivers Pittsburgh's got. The Steelers should be made to list him as such. Fair's fair. The receptions he made in the Raider game were the most important of the game, maybe the season. It's tough enough to catch the ball in this league when the quarterback is aiming for you. To catch a ball intended for anybody but you is an art. The world lost a great pickpocket when Donnie Shell turned pro. The two receptions he had in the Raider game, one in the end zone and one at midfield, were the 42nd and 43rd of his larcenous career. In the locker room afterward, Donnie Shell couldn't remember if they were the most important ones. It was like asking Willie Sutton what was the best bank he ever robbed. He has a warm spot in his heart for all of them. But if the Pittsburgh Steelers make the Super Bowl, those two thefts may rank with the Brink's job in football lore. For NFL quarterbacks, trying to keep Donnie Shell out of their pass patterns is like trying to keep Butch Cassidy off a bullion shipment or Willie Sutton but of a vault when he knows the combination. But NFL quarterbacks are not as surprised that Donnie Shell is in their pass patterns as they are that he's in the league. He's like the last of the James gang, a desperado they all thought had hung up his guns a long time ago. Shell was a part of one of the toughest platoons that ever marauded a football field the infamous Steel Curtain that included, besides himself, Mean Joe Greene, LC. Greenwood, Dwight White, Ernie Holmes, Jack Lambert, Jack Ham. Andy Russell. Mel Blount, Glen Edwards and Mike Wagner. That bank of terrorists in black and gold roamed the football fields in the '70s, passing out concussions, nosebleeds and compound fractures from Super Bowls to practice games. ' "They hit you like a safe falling out of an airplane," Dallas quarterback Roger Staubach was once moved to observe. Shell was as tough as any of them. There were guys who made more tackles, and guys who had more interceptions. But nobody had any bigger ones. Shell had a positive propensity for stalling victory drives in the late going. It was as if he waited till the game, or the season, was on the line before he made his moves. No one ever called him Mean Donnie but, in 1980, Shell saved three victories with last-second interceptions. intercep-tions. He stopped a Baltimore victory drive with an interception on the five-yard line. He stopped Minnesota with an interception on the seven-yard line with 24 seconds to play. He turned back Tampa Bay with a goal line interception in the last quarter. The Raiders are not the only team in the league to have been Shell-shocked. How does he do it? How does a fish swim? "Donnie!" shouted broadcaster Myron Cope in the locker room after the Raider game. "You're five years older than your team's defensive coordinator! et you keep coming up with these plays? How do you do it?" Shell chuckled. "Well, on the previous play, they picked me. (English translation: A decoy receiver screened him away from the primary receiver by running a crossing pattern. ) So, I stepped between him and the tight end. I got a good read on the quarterback. (Picked up a telltale sign from his movements. ) I went for the ball where I knew it was going to be." In other words, he got open. Don Hutson couldn't have done it any better. Lance Alworth. Crazylegs Hirsch. That's the essence of this Shell game. To be a wide receiver who comes disguised as a safety. To be the most open man in the secondary when the ball comes down. It has put 9-7 Pittsburgh's otherwise punchless Steelers in the playoffs. I mean, someone has to catch passes for this team. "We were desperate. We played a desperate game," admits this anti-aircraft Shell. "The old guard are gone the Mean Joes, LC, Mel, Lambert all gone now." Well, not all of them. In fact, not enough of them, as it turns out. (c) 1984, Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate |
