Steel City Blitz
With the Pittsburgh Steelers BYE week following their successful adventure in Dublin, it is still another opportunity to look at the team’s history.
Chuck Noll is rightfully giving the credit for building the Same Old Steelers into the Super Bowl champions of the seventies. Art Rooney Jr. also deserves acknowledgment for his role in those championship teams. Rooney Jr. played a key role in the Steelers drafting process from 1965 until he moved over to personnel director in 1974.
Halfway through the 1971 NFL draft, a mild mutiny developed among the Steelers coaches. Some of them disagreed with Art Rooney Jr., in the draft selection. When Rooney left the room for a few minutes, one of the coaches wrote on the black board the name of the player he preferred in the next round.
On his return, Rooney erased the name and confronted the mutineer. “Nobody writes on the blackboard but me,” he said. “You don’t let me call your plays. Don’t call mine.”
Art Rooney’s draft list that year was one to be treasured. It produced seven starters for the Super Bowl champions. Frank Lewis (round 1), Jack Ham (2), Gerry Mullins (4), Dwight White (4), Larry Brown (5), Ernie Holmes (8) and Mike Wagner (11).
Although only Ham entered the Hall of Fame, every one of those draftees started in Super Bowl IX. And only Frank Lewis didn’t start in the following Super Bowl, but that was due to the drafting of Lynn Swann and John Stallworth in 1974.
Veteran Andy Russell recognised why the team had turned from the Same Old Steelers into Super Bowl champions. “The main ingredient that turned the Steelers around is talent,” said the linebacker who remembered when there wasn’t much talent on the team. “Once the talent arrived, good coaching made the difference,” Russell added.
“We had all these young guys who didn’t know they were supposed to be losers,” noted Ray Mansfield, the center who also remembered the losing teams. “When we went from 6-8 in 1971 to 11-3 in 1973, then we believed we could win.2
“It took four years from the time we set out thinking on building through the draft until we got Joe Greene in 1969,” Rooney acknowledged. “That same year we got lucky with Chuck Noll as the new coach because he was willing to go along with our program of building through the draft.”
I remember that first draft, Chuck said, ‘I like your list. Anybody you draft will be better than the players you’ve got here now.’ We didn’t draft for need. We needed everything. We drafted the best players available, not matter what the position.”
In 1969, the Steelers had the fourth pick that saw O.J. Simpson go to the Bills with the first. “When it was our turn, Joe Greene was still there,” Rooney said. “I had seen him at North Texas State and any time he wanted to make a tackle, he annihilated people. He was a great third own player...
