Super Bowl champion Greg Hawthorne dies at 69

Greg Hawthorne, a running back who entered professional football as a champion and left it as a quiet professional, died at 69, his family announced without disclosing a cause. He arrived in the NFL in 1979 as a Pittsburgh Steeler rookie and departed a Super Bowl champion — one of the rarest of entrances into any vocation. Over 105 games and four franchises, he embodied the unsung architecture of great teams: not the name on the marquee, but the hand that steadies the structure at the critical moment. His passing closes another chapter of the Steelers' dynasty era, a period that shaped the ver