The painting hangs on the wall outside the office of Art Rooney, Jr., the coordinator of the Pittsburgh Steelers' scouting scouting operations. It's not the kind of thing you'd want your mother or your wife to see. It's what Attila must've looked like while he was sacking a village, or the way a Viking chieftan was with his blood lust up. Only this Viking wears No. 58 and he's dressed out in the gold and black of the Steelers, eyes flashing in a maniacal frenzy; blood flecking his nose; his mouth, minus three front teeth, bared in a hideous leer. Jack Lambert's portrait epitomizes the viciousness and cruelty of our national game.

The portrait was done by Merv Corning. It was one of two he submitted the the Steelers' publicity director, Joe Gordon, for possible use as a program cover, and it was rejected immediately. Too scary. Rooney saw it. He called Corning, "Can I buy the original?" he said. The deal was made, and Rooney hung it outside his office. Then he had misgivings.

"I though, 'Holy hell, Lambert's gonna pull this thing off the wall when he sees it,'" Rooney says. So he removed it and sent for Lambert.

"Jack," he said. "I want to hang it on the wall. What do you think?"

"He got very quiet," Rooney says. "He looked at it. He studied it. He stepped back, he stepped forward. Then he asked me, 'Can you get me a couple of copies?'"

As Jack Lambert reported to camp last week for his 11th Steeler season, he still seemed larger than life. He came to the Steelers a tough, skinny kid out of Kent State, and he found a spot on a team that was just reaching the crest of its greatness. He arrived at exactly the right time, in exactly the right place. Pittsburgh fans have always appreciated talented athletes, but they reserve a special place in their hearts for their tough guys -- Fran Rogel, Ernie Stautner, John Henry Johnson, those people. And Lambert played the ultimate tough-guy position, middle linebacker.

At one time middle linebackers roamed the league like Goliaths. Nitschke, Butkus, Schmidt -- names as tough as the people who carried them. Wille Lanier, with the pad he wore on the front of his helmet. Mike Curtis, the Animal. Bob Griese talks about staring across the line at Butkus and feeling his legs turn to jelly. Gene Upshaw, the Raiders' ex-guard, remembers the terror he felt when he looked into Lanier's eyes.

But then a few years ago, something sad happed to these great middle linebackers. The 3-4 defense robbed them of their identity. They divided, like an amoeba. Instead of one, there were two of them, inside strong and inside weak, or, in the Steelers' case, left and right. The great gunfighters of the past had gone corporate. It was if Wyatt Earp had taken on a job with Pinkerton's, or Bat Masterson had become director of security for the National Bank. It happened to Harry Carson with the Giants, then to Jack Reynolds when he went from the Rams to the 49ers. And then the last of them, the last of the great old middle linebackers, Jack Lambert, got his two years ago.

"Oh yes, Mr. Lambert, I've heard of you. And what position do you play, Mr. Lambert?" And instead of snarling out "middle linebacker" through chipped and broken teeth, Lambert would answer "inside linebacker left." Sounds like a traffic signal.

Oh, there are still middle linebackers -- seven of them. They belong to the seven NFL teams that continue to use the 4-3 as their basic defense, but most of them are 60% players. They get the hook on passing downs, when the defense goes into its nickel. There's the Bears' Mike Singletary, the best of the bunch, but the rest of the names won't quicken the pulse; Ken Fantetti, David Ahrens, Neal Olkewicz, Bob Crable, Bob Breunig, Fulton Kuykendall -- all good steady workers, but there's no magic there. So can you blame Lambert for trying to recapture a little of the old imagery, some of the old glamor -- and terror -- that went with the position?

Actually, if you look at Lambert's career with the Steelers you find a remarkable collection of big plays in big situations, but no trail of bloodied and broken bodies; you find very little to justify all the adjectives and mayhem that give writers so many easy off-day features. Lambert hits hard, of course. Always has, ever since his high school days.

"After a while teams would stop running curl patterns in front of him," says Gerry Myers, his coach at Crestwood High in Mantua, Ohio. "I can close my eyes now and see him hitting the split end from Streetsboro. Knocked his helmet and one shoe off."

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