PRO FOOTBALL DAILY REPORT : Colts Tinged With Sadness for Irsay

During Bob Irsay’s 24 years as owner of the Colts, the team never won a playoff game. This year it did--32 days after Irsay had suffered a severe stroke.

Irsay, who acquired the Colts from the late Carroll Rosenbloom in a swap for the Rams in 1972, remains hospitalized and the team will only say he is conscious and his condition is stable.

“You sort of feel for him,” Coach Ted Marchibroda said. “He gave so much to this. He is much more involved in the team in Indianapolis than he was in Baltimore, and this is what he wanted, and talked about. And six weeks before it happens, he’s hospitalized.”

Irsay hired Marchibroda to coach the Colts on two occasions. Marchibroda inherited a 2-12 team in Baltimore and got it to 10-4 in 1975. The Colts were 11-3 for Marchibroda in ’76 and 10-4 in ’77 before consecutive 5-11 campaigns cost him his job.

He returned to coach the Colts in Indianapolis, after a successful stint as Buffalo’s offensive coordinator, in 1992.

“I’m indebted to the Irsays [Bob’s son Jim is vice president and general manager] because I had two shots in the National Football League to be a head coach and they gave them both to me,” Marchibroda said. “Now I feel this is like repayment for what they did for me. You want to give them something back and maybe that’s by getting in the playoffs for the first time for them.”

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Marchibroda, a quarterback who played at St. Bonaventure, was the first pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1953 draft. He played a year, served in the Army for a year, and then returned to play in 1955 and 1956.

“When I go back to Pittsburgh each year I tell people I wish Pittsburgh was as good as when I was playing,” said Marchibroda, who played for a Steeler team that finished last in 1955.

Side note: The Steelers elected to keep Marchibroda and the late Jim Finks, who would go on to become the Bears’ and Saints’ general manager, and released Johnny Unitas.