18 former Steelers have died since '00
One was lifting weights at home. Another was training for a triathlon. A third was watching a game at a friend's house.
Regular guys doing regular things.
Then there were the others.
One drank antifreeze. Another was in a high-speed chase.
Two things in common among all:
They were Pittsburgh Steelers; and they died in the last six years.
Fresh off beating the Seahawks for their first Super Bowl victory in 26 years, the Steelers have experienced the emotional gamut. The franchise has lost 18 former players — ages 35 to 58 — since 2000, including seven in the last 16 months.
"There is no explanation," said Joe Gordon, a Steelers executive from 1969 to 1998. "We just shake our heads and ask, why?"
The numbers are startling. Of the NFL players active in the 1970s and '80s who have died since 2000, more than one in five — 16 of 77 — were Steelers.
"It's just an anomaly that we can't explain," said John Stallworth, a standout Steelers receiver from 1974 to 1987. "From an emotional standpoint, it just makes you sad and makes you feel like the time we spent together was even more precious."
Freak accidents led to some of the deaths, and at least one was a suicide. Others share hauntingly familiar details.
Seven died of heart failure: Jim Clack, 58; Ray Oldham, 54; Dave Brown (also a former Seahawk), 52; Mike Webster, 50; Steve Furness, 49; Joe Gilliam, 49; and Tyrone McGriff, 41. In 1996, four years before the steady succession of Steelers deaths, longtime center Ray Mansfield died of a heart attack at 55.
There is speculation steroid abuse could have played a role in some of the deaths, but no hard evidence. It is just as plausible weight issues were a factor. Counting Mansfield, five of the eight heart-attack victims played on the line.
Circumstances surrounding some of the other deaths were unusual:
• Steve Courson, 50, was killed outside his Farmington, Pa., home in November while trying to remove a 44-foot tree from his property. The former guard was crushed while apparently trying to save his dog, after a gust of wind changed the direction of the falling tree. The dog was found alive, tangled in Courson's legs.
• In March 2005, David Little was bench-pressing weights alone at his Miami home when, a coroner determined, the ex-linebacker had a heart arrhythmia — causing the 46-year-old to drop a 250-pound barbell on his chest. The bar rolled across his neck and suffocated him.
• Terry Long, 45, an offensive guard whose eight-year career was derailed by a positive test for steroids, committed suicide in Pittsburgh in June 2005 by drinking antifreeze. Twice divorced, he had serious legal problems stemming from his failed food-processing business and had made two previous suicide attempts.
• The youngest of the Steelers to die was 36-year-old Justin Strzelczyk, a tackle who had a series of run-ins with the law after he retired. He died after a 40-mile, high-speed chase in New York in September 2004. Driving his pickup at speeds in excess of 100 mph, Strzelczyk made obscene gestures and tossed beer bottles at the police following him. The chase came to a fiery end when, while on the wrong side of the road, he slammed into a tanker truck.
The string of deaths — most recently that of receiver Theo Bell, 52, who died June 21 of kidney disease and the skin ailment scleroderma — have reverberated through the Steelers, the city of Pittsburgh and beyond.
Men who won a combined 20 Super Bowl rings, the deceased Steelers were part of one of the most hallowed organizations in sports.
"When I was young, I convinced myself that I was going to do something with my life so that my death wouldn't be the end of me," Stallworth said. "In the lives of these men, they were a part of something special."
Of the 22 players who were part of all four Pittsburgh Super Bowl champions from 1975 to 1980, Webster was the last to retire and, after Furness, the second to die.
