This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

And welcome to the second of our two episodes on the Pittsburgh Steelers,

and the first one, J.A. and I chronicled the Steelers history

from the nearly total futility of their first 35 years to their dominance in the 1970s and beyond.

So today, we're going to interview one of the key players from those 1970s teams,

Robert Patrick Rocky Blyer.

If Terry Bradshaw, Joe Green, Lynn Swan, John Stallworth, Franco Harris were the Steelers stars in the 70s.

Blyer was the heart.

Yeah, he was an undersized and overachieving halfback on Notre Dame's 1968 national championship team.

And he wasn't seen as much of a pro prospect.

In fact, it wasn't drafted by the Steelers until the 16th round of the 1968 draft.

That's when they used to have 16 rounds.

So he would have been undrafted in the modern era.

And then he was also drafted by the U.S. armed forces in the draft in Vietnam in that era.

And in August in 1969, he was severely wounded when his company was ambushed.

And he was airlifted to Tokyo.

The doctor was removed over a hundred shards,

shards of shrapnel from Blyer's shredded foot and his leg. And the best case scenario they're

hoping was that he would walk without a limp. They classified him as 40% disabled playing football

again. And the NFL did not seem like it was in the cards.

And yet during the long rehab for Blyer, a note arrived from Steelers owner, Art Roney.

...