About Rocky Bleier

Born and raised in Appleton, Wisconsin, Bleier was the oldest of four children of Bob and Ellen Bleier, who ran Bleier’s Bar, while the family of six lived above it. He had a paper route as a youth, and graduated from Xavier High School in 1964, where he starred in football and basketball.

Bleier played college football at the University of Notre Dame, and graduated in 1968 with a degree in business management. During his junior season in 1966, the Fighting Irish won the national championship and he was a team captain as a senior in 1967. He was selected in the 16th round of the 1968 NFL/AFL Draft by the Pittsburgh Steelers, 417th overall.

Military Service – Vietnam
After his rookie season with the Steelers, Bleier was drafted into the U.S. Army on December 4, 1968, during the Vietnam War. He shipped out for Vietnam in May 1969 assigned to Company C, 4th Battalion (Light), 31st Infantry, 196th Light Infantry Brigade and assigned as a squad grenadier operating a 40mm M79 grenade launcher. On August 20, while on patrol in Hiep Duc, Bleier was wounded in the left thigh by an enemy rifle bullet when his platoon was ambushed in a rice paddy. While he was down, an enemy grenade landed nearby after bouncing off a fellow soldier, he tried to leap over it and it exploded sending shrapnel into his lower right leg. His right foot was severely damaged in the blast as well. He was later awarded the Bronze Star, Combat Infantry Badge and Purple Heart. His rank was Specialist 4.

While he was recovering in a hospital in Tokyo, doctors told him that he could not play football again. Soon after, he received a postcard from Steelers owner Art Rooney which simply read “Rock – the team’s not doing well. We need you. Art Rooney”. Bleier later said, “When you have somebody take the time and interest to send you a postcard, something that they didn’t have to do, you have a special place for those kinds of people”. After several surgeries, he was discharged from the Army in July 1970, and began informal workouts with Steeler teammates.
Bleier’s military service is commemorated in the Pentagon’s Wounded Warrior corridor.

NFL career
Bleier rejoined the Steelers in camp in 1970. He was put on injured reserve for the season, but returned in 1971 and made the taxi squad. But Bleier never gave up. In 1972 he made the team primarily playing on special teams and said “that he worked hard, so that sometime in the future you didn’t have to ask yourself ‘what if?’”. An offseason training regimen brought Bleier back to 212 lb. (96 kg) in the summer of 1973, and he ultimately earned a spot in the Steelers’ starting lineup.

In addition to being a great lead blocker, Bleier was the second of the Steelers’ rushing weapons (Franco Harris was the primary back), but was effective nonetheless at both blocking and rushing. In 1976, both Harris and Bleier rushed for over 1,000 yards, making them the second NFL tandem to accomplish this feat in the history of the NFL.

Bleier played in the first four Steeler Super Bowl victories, and caught the touchdown pass from Terry Bradshaw that gave Pittsburgh a lead it would never relinquish in Super Bowl XIII. He also recovered Dallas’s onside kick in the closing seconds, sealing the Steelers’ victory.

Bleier retired after the 1980 season, with 3,865 rushing yards, 136 receptions for 1,294 yards, and 25 touchdowns. At the time of his retirement, he was the Steelers’ fourth all-time leading rusher.

Off the field
Bleier wrote a book of his struggle to recover from his war wounds called Fighting Back: The Rocky Bleier Story, and it was made into a television movie in 1980, with Robert Urich starring as Bleier, Art Carney as team owner Art Rooney, and many of Bleier’s teammates as themselves. Bleier is featured in the 2014 feature documentary “Project 22”, which chronicles the cross-country motorcycle journey of two young veterans exploring alternative treatments for PTSD and TBI.

In 2019 Bleier went back to Vietnam after fifty years with ESPN to record the documentary entitled “The Return”. An emotional trip back in time.

Bleier has four children and 7 grandchildren. He and his wife Jan reside in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

Honors
The football stadium at Xavier High School was renamed Rocky Bleier Field on the Knights of Columbus Sports Complex on October 12, 2007. Bleier tossed the coin to start the high school football game that day. He had spoken earlier in the day to students at an assembly. The entire student body wore T-shirts with his number 23, the only number retired in the school’s history. On the following day, the third day of a three-day event, mayor Tim Hanna unveiled a street named in his honor. The former Oneida Court was renamed Rocky Bleier Run. In 2017, Rocky became the subject of a children’s book called, “Rock Solid-The Courageous Journey of Rocky Bleier.” The story was written and illustrated by Pittsburgh artist, Larry Klu. In 2019, he was inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame.