What are your thoughts on Dermontti Dawson and his career?
I thought that he was an outstanding center for the Steelers. He was one of the best players that we have ever played against at that position. He had exceptional quickness; I think that really the measure of a center is his ability to play against powerful guys that are lined up over him and try to bull-rush the pocket and collapse it in the middle so that the quarterback can’t step up. Dawson had great leverage and quickness with his hands and his feet where he did a great job of keeping that pocket clean for (Neil) O’Donnell and those guys who played behind him. The other thing that I think was a key to the Pittsburgh running game for years is when the nose tackle or the defensive tackle is offset to the play side; if you are running to the right and the nose tackle is lined up in the center-guard gap on the right, or sometimes even on the inside shoulder of the guard; that is a very hard block for the center to get. Defensively, you feel like they should not be able to cut him off from the center position, but Dawson made that block consistently. He could reach to the front side of the play which enabled the Steelers to pull their guards and their tackles and get to the edge on all of those off-tackle plays that all their backs ran so well and gained so many yards on. Without him making those blocks inside, a lot of those runs for (Jerome) Bettis and (Barry) Foster would not have been able to get downhill like they did. As great as those Steelers’ running games where over the last decade-and-a-half that I played against them, the effectiveness of the center position has had a lot to do with that. Dawson was outstanding; as well as his protection in the passing game.
