Dan Rooney (19 page)

Chuck and I hit it off from the start. Why wouldn't we? We were
both thirty-five years old. He'd grown up in Cleveland, a working-class city much like Pittsburgh, and attended Benedictine High, a Catholic school, where he played football as a running back and defensive lineman. At the University of Dayton, he made an impression as an undersized guard and linebacker. The coaches matched him up against bigger players, forcing him to learn techniques that would offset the size difference. He had to play smart.

In 1953 Paul Brown recruited him. He played seven seasons with the Cleveland Browns as an offensive guard and linebacker. Brown respected Noll's knowledge of the game and once said Chuck could have called the plays as well as the quarterback—or maybe the coach. I think that's right. While Chuck was playing for the Browns, he also attended Cleveland Marshall Law School at night. He told me the reason he chose football over law was because he didn't really like the constant confrontation and arguments that come with being a lawyer. I'm sure there are a lot of NFL officials from his time as a head coach who would laugh if they heard that. Then, in 1960, when the American Football League got started, Sid Gillman lured him to the West Coast to coach for the Chargers.

His good reputation as a defensive coach attracted the attention of Don Shula, who brought him to Baltimore as the Colts' defensive backfield coach. By the end of his three-year run in Baltimore, Noll had taken charge of the entire defense. During his years as coach for the Chargers and Colts, Noll had learned how to win.

No question about it. Noll impressed me, but this time I was determined to go through a thoughtful and systematic hiring process. When I told my father about my interview with Noll, he said, “Sounds pretty good. Keep him on the list.”

We interviewed Joe Paterno. In three years as head coach at Penn State, Joe's Nittany Lions racked up an impressive 24-7-1 record. He topped off his 1968, 11-0 season with an Orange Bowl victory over Kansas. The forty-year-old Paterno was a coach's coach and an outstanding
teacher. Joe and his wife Sue were good friends of mine before he was the head coach at Penn State. Joe and I attended coaches' conventions and loafed together when we could. When he came to Pittsburgh recruiting for the Nittany Lions, I would tell him about the kids from North Catholic. Of course I saw him when he would speak at banquets in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. He talked to me when he got offers to coach in the NFL, and I always gave him the best advice I could. After the first interview, we were interested, but it became clear Joe was committed to Penn State. So we turned to the other candidates on our short list, interviewed them, and circled back around to Noll.

The second time I met with Chuck, the Chief sat in. He saw right away Chuck was a good man. He had character and integrity. Though he wasn't from Pittsburgh, he appreciated the city and understood the people. My father and I both picked up on his intensity and his passion for winning. He was our kind of guy.

Though we didn't agree on every issue, I admired his honesty and willingness to stand up for what he believed. We wanted someone who shared our philosophy, but not a yes-man. We needed a coach who could take the team, mold it, and make it his own.

By the third meeting, we were convinced Noll was our man. For this last interview, he brought his wife and son to Pittsburgh. Marianne and Chris stayed at our house. While Marianne and Patricia talked about school and housing, Chris and our kids played in the backyard of our Mt. Lebanon home. We knew Chuck had interviewed with other teams, Buffalo and Boston, but all of us seemed to know that Pittsburgh was the right fit.

On January 27, 1969, we announced Chuck Noll as the Steelers head coach and introduced him to the Pittsburgh press corps. The reporters noted that Noll was the fourteenth head coach in the Steelers' thirty-six-year history. One writer asked him why he thought he was the guy who could end all the years of losing football teams in
Pittsburgh. I loved Chuck's answer. He looked the reporter right in the eye and said, “Losing has nothing to do with geography.” We'd had a new coach every two or three years. If Noll was the guy we thought he was, we'd put a stop to this revolving door.

 

 

Chuck hadn't even unpacked his bags when the 1969 draft began on January 29, 1969. For the last three years he had personally scouted Joe Greene, a six-foot-four, 275-pound defensive tackle at North Texas State. Chuck saw something special in Greene: He refused to lose. In his three-year career at North Texas, he had lost only five games and acquired the nickname “Mean Joe,” though Greene himself hated it. Initially, Chuck was drawn to Joe's ferocious play, but looking deeper, he saw a natural athlete who had the potential to be a team leader. Noll believed a man had to be a great player on the field before he could become a team leader. A leader didn't just talk a good game—he played a good game. In Noll's mind, Greene would be the Steelers' number-one draft pick.

The Steelers' scouting corps, however, had been looking at quarterback Terry Hanratty. Terry was a Western Pennsylvania boy from Butler and a Notre Dame All-American. In 1966, he had led the Irish to a national championship.

My brother Art came to the Steelers in 1964, and by 1969 he headed our scouting corps. In the mid-1960s, Buddy Parker came up with the idea for a scouting combine. Under Parker's direction former Steelers cornerback and later scout, Jack Butler, established the multiteam scouting collaborative known as LESTO (Lions, Eagles, Steelers Talent Organization). I talked to Jack almost every night and reviewed with him the operations of the combine. When the Chicago Bears later joined, it became BLESTO. The combine allowed member clubs to scout college talent across the nation, while sharing the
expense four ways. BLESTO scouts tested and scored players, providing measurable information—weight, height, speed, strength, and productivity—as well as intangibles like intensity and attitude. This system vastly improved our ability to scout and make good draft decisions. It was a far cry from the days of Ray Byrne's letters, newspaper clippings, and three-by-five cards.

Under Butler's leadership, BLESTO became one of the best scouting collaboratives in football. For fifty years, he did a great job and trained most of the good scouts in the NFL.

Noll took into account BLESTO information, but relied heavily on his own knowledge and keen sights. He knew exactly what players he needed. First, he would build his defense. He always said, “In order to win a game, you have to first not lose it.” Chuck picked Joe Greene—not Hanratty—in the first round.

He didn't even have business cards yet, and already he had made one of the most important draft selections in Steelers history. He would build the team on Joe Greene's broad shoulders. Hanratty came to us in the second round. Bill Nunn advised Chuck and Art to draft defensive lineman L.C. Greenwood, who with Joe Greene would make up half the famed “Steel Curtain” of the 1970s.

It was a good start.

Now Noll had to win the team. He had to get them together and make them think and act as one. They had to care about winning—and they had to care about one another. He knew he couldn't build a championship team without that kind of closeness. This was easier said than done. From the very first there was trouble. Joe Greene, our Steelers number-one draft pick, held out in a salary dispute and reported to summer camp at Latrobe a day late.

He wasn't happy about being drafted by Pittsburgh. He felt the Steelers were losers and admitted, “When I came into the league, you could have given me a choice of all the professional teams in existence at that time and I would have picked the Pittsburgh Steelers last. It
wasn't a very good football team, it lost a lot of ballgames. I didn't celebrate the day I got drafted.”

To make matters worse, the Pittsburgh press wasn't kind to Greene—“Joe Who?” the Pittsburgh headlines read. As big and mean as he looked, Joe was a sensitive guy. The mean-spirited headlines hurt his pride, and when he finally reported to camp after all the other players, we feared his negative attitude might infect the entire team. But, in fact, it was just the opposite. Joe's intensity and his desire to win marked him as a leader from the very start.

At his first practice, Noll called an “Oklahoma Drill,” a scrimmage which pitted one offensive lineman against one defensive lineman. The job for the offense was to open a hole for the running back, while the goal for the defense was to shed the blocker and make the tackle—full speed, full contact. Our veteran linemen—Sam Davis, Ray Mansfield, Bruce Van Dyke—were waiting for him, eager to show the rookie what professional football was all about. But Joe put on a defensive tour de force, a clinic on how the game should be played. He literally threw our offensive linemen aside and clobbered our backs. This one-man wrecking crew shook up our players and made them realize they would have to kick it into high gear if they were to compete with this “rookie.”

Andy Russell told me he felt this practice was a turning point in the history of the franchise. He said the old vets thought, “Who does this guy think he is?” He and the other veterans were very cynical, just as the media was. How good could he be? Russell and I talked about the Oklahoma Drill and how difficult it is for a defensive player. Andy said, “The offensive guy knows the count, and to make the tackle you have to be strong enough to get rid of that blocker quickly to have any chance at getting a clean shot at the running back. Ray Mansfield was first, and Joe threw him away like he was a paper doll and crushed the back. I was standing there with some other guys, and we just looked at each other. This kid was backing up his mouth. That was the start, and
from that day Joe Greene set a tone and an attitude on the practice field and in games that losing is completely unacceptable.”

If his teammates weren't playing up to their potential, Greene would get in their faces and tell them so. This was exactly what Noll wanted. He aimed to take Pittsburgh to the Super Bowl, and he dished out some pretty tough talk of his own. At his very first meeting with the players, he announced that many of them weren't good enough to make the team. Those who did would have to prove themselves. The players soon divided in their opinion of Noll. Some of them were impressed, others were just scared.

And rightly so. Chuck told me we could make some trades and quick fixes to win a game or two, but to get to the Super Bowl, we needed to start from scratch, to build for the long haul. The veterans—those few worth keeping—would have to relearn the basics of blocking and tackling. What he looked for in a rookie was athleticism: raw talent that he could shape. He'd rather have rookie athletes than experienced players, for the veterans had to unlearn bad habits. He required veterans to learn a proper three-point stance, the placement of their feet and hands—inches mattered—and how to read and exploit an opponent's look or move.

Russell, one of the veterans who did make the cut, told me later, “[Chuck] had not hired a linebacker coach that year. So he was not only the head coach, but the linebacker coach. He drove me crazy through the next few weeks because he really believed in technique. He got down to, ‘I want your right foot two inches outside of your opponent's foot. I want you to reach with your right hand.' It became very mechanical. For a while, I felt like I was losing my own personal style. I thought I'd done okay . . . He was really into detail. He taught that success is in the details. It's not about the rah-rah and macho. It doesn't have anything to do with that stuff. It has a lot to do with details. A lot of those details come from understanding the opponent and anticipating what the opponent will do.”

Even though he was already a Pro Bowler, Andy agreed that Chuck Noll made him a better player. Chuck had a way of bringing out the best in our players.

Noll imposed strict discipline on the camp. He would have rules, and they would be obeyed. He enforced curfews—if a player came in late, he got fined. That's what happened to our star receiver, Roy Jefferson. In 1968 Jefferson was our best offensive player, a receiver who had over a thousand yards and scored eleven touchdowns, a major accomplishment considering that team wasn't very good and there were only fourteen games on the schedule back then. In 1969 we played a preseason game in Montreal against the New York Giants, and Jefferson missed a curfew. This was Noll's first season, and when he found out Jefferson had come in late, Chuck called me and asked if I was going to back him when he disciplined one of the best players on the team. I told Chuck, “You know I'm going to back you.”

So we called Jefferson and had him come to Chuck's room for a meeting. Chuck told him, “You missed curfew, so we're sending you home.” Jefferson tried to talk his way out of it, but when that didn't work, he turned to me and said, “Dan, this is going to make me look like a bad guy.” But I told Roy we had to have discipline on the team—Chuck Noll was in charge, and he had my complete support. Well, there were a couple of other incidents with Roy in 1969, and even though he posted another 1,000-yard receiving season and scored nine more touchdowns and made the Pro Bowl again, we traded him to Baltimore for a fourth-round draft choice. If it seems the Colts pulled one over on us, we used that fourth-round draft pick to get Dwight White, who became part of the Steel Curtain and started at defensive end on four Super Bowl teams.

The players came to respect Chuck's authority because they respected his knowledge of the game—and his plan for success. Everyone understood what he expected of them, whether at a practice drill, the classroom, or in the weight room. He instilled in the team a winning
attitude and made the players believe in themselves, not through phony pep-talks or red-faced harangues, but through a system of intense preparation, rigorous study, and team closeness. When it all came together, the team would play better than the sum of its parts.