Larry Csonka knows about playoff challenges in Pittsburgh

[Daytona Fin]

From Ken Willis of Daytona News Journal. Csonka lives in our area part time.

[FONT=&quot]"I know how tough it is to play in Pittsburgh," the NFL Hall of Famer said this week. "Played there twice. Both brutal games. Crowd-intensive. I don' t think that place has changed one iota."[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Csonka's playoff win in Pittsburgh came with the perfect 1972 Dolphins, and the Steelers were presumably out of miracles, given how, a week earlier, they'd beaten the Raiders on Franco Harris' "Immaculate Reception" (you've seen the tape). The '79 Dolphins, in Zonk's final year, weren't so perfect, limping up the banks of the Allegheny with a 10-6 record and leaving several hours later with a 34-14 pasting clinging to them.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]"On any given Sunday," and that one has stuck because that one is true.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]"I think if our defense can get to Ben Roethlisberger, that's the key," says Csonka, who observes from the relative warmth of his Southeast Volusia home, where he spends the winter months. "I haven't watched them much, I should say, but it seems like he carries a lot of the weight on his shoulders, and teams that get to him and knock him around a little bit, it seems like they're in the heat of the fight."[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]A lot of us around these parts grew up with the Miami Dolphins as the closest NFL team geographically,[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]But here's very good news: Aside from predictable aches in the joints, he looks good, sounds better and amazingly shows none of the effects we too often associate with long-ago NFL players - especially one who carried the ball nearly 2,000 times, and mostly in a manner resembling a Pamplona bull.[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]His mental acuity and general nature - also very obvious on his slick website, LarryCsonka.com - seems rather amazing, he's told.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]"I would agree with you if everyone was given the same thickness of skull," he laughs. "But some of us are more hard headed, and some of us are lucky. Everyone's head is different. Two players get hit the same way, one can be hurt, the other not. Sometimes it's what you caught in the DNA draw."[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Csonka spends about seven months a year in Alaska, about four in the Oak Hill area (he owns the landmark Goodrich's Restaurant). In between, on the marathon drive back and forth, he spends a couple of weeks near family in his native Ohio.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Everywhere, he says, including Alaska, he runs into Dolphins fans and enjoys talking football with them. He's one of them, after all.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]"I'm a pretty avid Dolphin fan," he says. "You can't hardly play for a team for several years, particularly if you go to the playoffs a couple times, and not remain a fan. "You get ingrained in it."[/FONT]

http://www.news-journalonline.com/s...-knows-about-playoff-challenges-in-pittsburgh

 

[Bob512]

For those of us who were fortunate enough to see Csonka play.....there was nobody better!