'Burgh's best to wear it, No. 64: Steve Furness played key role on Steel Curtain, won 4 rings

The Tribune-Review sports staff is conducting a daily countdown of the best 100 players in Pittsburgh pro and college sports history to wear each jersey number.

No. 64: Steve Furness

If he played today, Steve Furness never would impress anyone with his size. He played defensive tackle in the NFL for 10 seasons with a 255-pound frame.

Yet, he put good pressure on the quarterback — more than half the time as a backup — but his 32 sacks go largely unrecognized. The NFL did not acknowledge the sack as an official statistic until 1982, the year after Furness retired.

But he was a valuable member of perhaps the greatest defensive line in NFL history, replacing an injured Joe Greene in Super Bowls X and XIII.

He also practiced all week before Super Bowl IX in place of Dwight White, who was hospitalized with pneumonia. Furness, however, stepped aside on game day to allow White to leave his hospital bed and play.

“Anytime we called upon Steve, he delivered,” Greene said.

Furness was one of 22 Steelers to earn four Super Bowl rings, and he is the Tribune-Review sports staff’s choice for the best Pittsburgh athlete to wear jersey No. 64.

Furness, who lived in Bethel Park, was the first of that elite group of Steelers to die when he suffered a heart attack in 2000.

Furness played collegiately at Rhode Island — he was inducted into that university’s Hall of Fame in 1987 — where he considered dentistry and entering the Olympic Trails in the hammer throw.

But the Steelers intervened, drafting him in the fifth round in 1972. He played in 97 games (47 starts) through 1980 and spent his final season (’81) with the Detroit Lions.

When Steelers defensive coordinator George Perles became coach of the USFL’s Philadelphia Stars in 1982 and later that year Michigan State, he hired Furness to his staff at both places.

Furness was an assistant at Michigan State through 1990. He returned to the NFL as an assistant with the Indianapolis Colts in 1991 before joining Bill Cowher’s first staff with the Steelers in 1992.

After two seasons and two first-round playoff losses, Cowher fired Furness, who went on to work in real estate and as a representative for Field Turf, a firm that installs football fields.

It was a close call for Furness to earn the No. 64 distinction because Jeff Hartings, one of the Steelers’ best all-time free-agent signings, also wore that number.

Hartings, who played at Penn State, was the Lions’ top draft choice (No. 23 overall) in 1996. He played guard with Detroit for five seasons before spending the next six with the Steelers (including Super Bowl XL) as Dermontti Dawson’s replacement at center.

In 11 NFL seasons, Hartings played and started in all 16 regular-season games seven times, three in a row with the Steelers from 2003-05.

Also, Pitt guard Rob Fada wore No. 64 as a two-time Academic All-American on teams that finished 11-1 and 9-3 in 1981 and ’82.