The Pittsburgh Steelers are a storied franchise, as we are all aware. Since our founding in 1933, we have won six Super Bowls. Several players and coaches have been enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. We are one of the winningest organizations in the National Football League, having won nearly seven hundred games, which equates to a winning percentage north of fifty percent.
Alas, that has not always been the case. There have been several seasons and decades, for that matter, of futility. For example, in 1969, the first season of the Chuck Noll era and the year in which I was born, the Steelers won one game. That's correct. We won one game. Think about that for a minute.
To put that unflattering and inauspicious mark into perspective, for the entire decade of the 1950s, we won at least four games. Not a great start to the Chuck Noll era, to say the least, but for as bad as the start was, we all know how it ended. What is interesting to me are the events that led up to 1969 and the decision to hire Chuck Noll.
The Pittsburgh Steelers had finally had enough before landing the head coach who turned around the franchise
Before we delve into the next phase of our discussion, some background information about me. As I stated above, I was born in the year that Chuck Noll was hired as our head coach, so that officially makes me old, obviously, not as old as some, but probably older than most of you who are following along with our discussion.
I have memories of watching Super Bowl X with my dad. After that, I started watching not only Steelers games, when they were televised as I was born and raised in Philadelphia, but NFL games in general. I fondly reminisce about watching the 1970s Steelers hoist four Lombardi trophies in six years.
So, how did the Steelers get to the point of being as dominant as we were during the decade of the 1970s? Good question, to which I believe I can offer a good answer. Bill Austin, the head coach who immediately preceded Chuck Noll, amassed eleven wins over three seasons, having won only two games in 1968.
Rightfully so, I'm sure the Steelers braintrust, Art Rooney Sr., a.k.a. the Chief, and Dan Rooney, in particular, realized that the futility of those three years demanded that a change be made. Not only was a change made, but it was a change that would forever alter the course of the franchise.
If you take a step back and look at it from the perspective that for about three and a half decades, the Steelers did not win anything of substance. Enough was enough. It was time for a change. To further illustrate the need for a change, only one player, Rocky Bleier, who was drafted during the Austin years, made it to the 1974 Super Bowl team.
When Chuck Noll was hired in 1969, he was thirty-seven years old. Having recently been a position coach for the then Baltimore Colts, he came to the Steelers from an organization that was used to winning at a frequent clip. That winning culture is what Chuck Noll brought to the Steelers.
Chuck Noll also brought a culture of building a team through the draft, something that continued through the Bill Cowher era to the Mike Tomlin era, albeit there were years under each where we didn't draft so well, but that is a conversation for another time.
To expound on the point of building a team through the draft, from 1969 to 1973, the Steelers drafted five future Hall of Fame players. The 1974 draft produced four players who would later be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Without conducting extensive research, I dare say that no other team in NFL history has drafted four Hall of Fame players in a single draft.
To be fair, there were lean years, so to speak, after the 1974 draft, meaning the Steelers did not draft another Hall of Fame player until 1987, albeit we drafted good players along the way who contributed to the cause. The point is this: Chuck Noll implemented the plan that The Chief envisioned.
The culture of building a team through the draft and of being in the Super Bowl conversation nearly every season permeated the Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin years. Both Cowher and Tomlin have brought one Lombardi Trophy to the city of Pittsburgh.
As I stated earlier in the conversation, all three coaches had or have had some lean years, but the Rooneys never wavered in their commitment to build the best team that could possibly be built under the constraints of free agency and the salary cap.
Would I have liked for us to win more Super Bowls during the Cowher era? Of course. We had dominant defenses, but not so dominant offenses. Do I think we should have won at least one more Super Bowl since Tomlin has been the head coach? Yes. Despite never having a losing season, I believe we have underachieved, but that is a conversation for another time.
To wrap up this discussion, here is what I will end with: When the Rooneys hired Chuck Noll in 1969, the decision was made to not accept mediocrity any longer. After the short stint of Bill Austin, enough was enough. To paraphrase MikeTomoin, one man's misfortune is another man's opportunity. Chuck Noll seized that opportunity, and we have never looked back.