Dan Rooney

by Dan Rooney

  I strongly supported Paul, and told everyone, “We’ve already been through this—we’re not changing anything at this stage of the game. This is the deal we agreed on. Let’s vote!” Fortunately, the CEC ignored Sullivan and approved the agreement, which then went on to the league for its approval.

  The new CBA would run through 1986, and the NFL draft was extended through 1992. The veteran free-agent system was left unchanged. We agreed to a minimum salary schedule based on seniority; training camp and postseason pay increased; medical insurance and retirement benefits increased; and a severance pay system was introduced—a first in professional sports.

  These were exciting times, and we got a lot accomplished as we built mutual respect and trust. Working together, we formed the Player Club Relations Committee (PCRC). Gene Upshaw and Len Hauss represented the players; Wellington Mara and I spoke for management. We solved problems and made the collective bargaining process work.

  It’s not hard to know just why we didn’t have a more successful season on the field in 1977: distractions. The “criminal element” trial certainly didn’t help. Then there were the holdouts by Jack Lambert and Mel Blount; Glen Edwards and Jimmy Allen both left the team briefly during the season in protest of their contract situations; Bradshaw broke his wrist in October and played with a cast for much of the season; and just to top everything off, Chuck Noll slipped on a patch of ice in Cincinnati and broke his arm on the night before a December 10 game against the Bengals that we ended up losing.

  We, along with other teams, had to adjust to the rule changes. Noll and the coaching staff liked running the ball, but now with the new rules favoring the passing game, we had to adapt. In the long run the rules changes would help Terry, but this season we couldn’t put it all together. Don’t get me wrong, in the old days we would have been proud of a 9-5 record. But after two Super Bowl victories, our team and our fans expected more. We knew we had a great football team. We got to the playoffs, but lost in the divisional championship to Denver. The Dallas Cowboys dominated Super Bowl XII, crushing the Broncos, 27-10.

  In 1978 everything came together for the Steelers. At one time, NFL Films rated this team as the greatest in football history. And it’s hard to dispute that claim. We had the players on both sides of the ball. Bradshaw won the passing title that year and was named NFL Player of the Year. Harris had another tremendous year—I believe Franco, as much as anyone, was the key to our success. Swann and Stallworth were the best receiving duo in the game. Even with the new rules, our defense continued to dominate.

  We had the coaches. Chuck Noll assembled a coaching staff second to none—guys like Rollie Dotsch (defensive line), Dick Hoak (offensive backfield), George Perles (defensive coordinator), and Woody Widenhofer (linebacker and secondary). Chuck said he would build the team with young new talent, and he did. But it was his vision and commitment to excellence that lifted this team to a new level. Joe Greene said, “I’ve been in locker rooms where you get all kinds of speeches and platitudes—they don’t mean a thing. All Chuck said was, ‘Play the way you’ve been coached,’ and that’s what developed the consistency in that football team.”

  We had the closeness, one of the essential ingredients in a winning team and perhaps one of the hardest to come by. That’s where you need leadership in the locker room and off the field. Joe Greene provided this kind of leadership. It’s more than one man, though. It’s everyone coming together with a common goal. Players have to care not only about winning but about one another. They coach each other, they look out for one another, they’re your best men at weddings and godfathers at baptisms. This closeness permeates the entire organization, from the grounds crew to the players to the coaches to scouts and the front office. We’re all in it together.

  The management has to recruit the talent and provide the resources to win. It also has to set a tone of honesty, fairness, and integrity, because without these things, there won’t be trust.

  This is why it came together for us in 1978. We ended the season with a 14-2 record, then defeated the Broncos in the playoffs, 33-10. We played Houston in the AFC championship game at Three Rivers Stadium in a freezing rain. The Astrodome-coddled Oilers never knew what hit them. Our defense didn’t allow them a touchdown and nearly shut them out, 34-5. The game was over for all practical purposes by halftime, when we led, 31-3.

  A special coin toss opened Super Bowl XIII—Steelers vs. Cowboys—at the Orange Bowl in Miami, January 21, 1979, a game that would crown the first team to win three Lombardi trophies. And it wasn’t just any coin that was tossed. In a tribute to the 1920 founding of the NFL, an antique car transported Bears founder and owner, George Halas, to midfield, where he flipped an 1820 gold piece. I know George appreciated this honor, and no one deserved it more. He was there in Canton when team owners got together with the idea of starting a national football league. Their dream had come true.

  The modern NFL was a far cry from that first season when Jim Thorpe was commissioner. As I watched the Steelers take the field, I thought back on the men who founded the NFL and felt privileged to have personally known them. People used to call Halas “Mr. Everything,” because he did everything for the Chicago Bears—as player, coach, PR man, and ticket seller. “Papa Bear” was always hawking tickets. He would even sell seats on the visiting team’s bench. He did whatever it took to win, from weighing balls before the game to withholding scouting information.

  My father and I often argued with George at league meetings. He was always looking for an advantage, but he was a real football man. We used to kid him about “retiring” from coaching every decade. He would put in a coach like Paddy Driscoll, a former player, who would clean house. George would then return to coach and begin the cycle again. In 1967, at age seventy-three, he retired—this time for good. I have the greatest respect for George Halas, and this ceremony was a fitting tribute and a proper way to begin Super Bowl XIII. In 1983, when he died at age eighty-eight, he had been a part of the league for all sixty-three years of its existence.

  Dallas won the coin toss for Super Bowl XIII and drove down the field to our 34-yard line, where Drew Pearson fumbled a handoff from Tony Dorsett on an ill-advised gadget play. We recovered on our 47, and seven plays later Bradshaw hit John Stallworth for a 28-yard touchdown. Noll and the defense had done their homework. Poring over game film, we had found a weakness in the Dallas corner-backs and exploited it the first chance we got.

  Dallas came right back with a scoring drive of their own, the first time we’d been scored on in the first quarter all season. The Cowboys scored again in the second quarter when Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson locked Bradshaw’s arms at his sides, while teammate Mike Hegman ripped it from Terry’s grasp and ran in for a touchdown.

  Undeterred, on our next drive, Bradshaw fired a pass from our 25-yard line to Stallworth, who broke a tackle and took it in for a touchdown. Before the half ended, the Cowboys went into their two-minute drill. Staubach threw to Drew Pearson, but Mel Blount stepped in and picked it off. With passes to Swann, a run by Harris, and a perfectly timed pass to Rocky Bleier in the end zone, the Steelers pulled ahead, 21-14, as the half ended.

  The Steelers bent the highly touted Dallas flex defense nearly to the breaking point. Terry was on fire. He’d outpassed Staubach 229 yards to 61. We held them to a field goal in the third quarter after a wide-open Jackie Smith dropped a Staubach pass in the end zone.

  Like most Super Bowls, this game was not without controversy. On a Bradshaw pass to Swann, the Cowboys cornerback Bennie Barnes tripped Lynn before the ball arrived. Both players fell down as the ball bounded away untouched. The back judge didn’t make a call. But Fred Swearingen, the field judge, threw a flag and called Barnes for tripping. Coach Tom Landry protested, claiming Swann had interfered with Barnes. Barnes himself shouted, “Swearingen needs glasses, maybe he’s from Pittsburgh!” Bradshaw later said, “There was a safety blitz and no pickup and I knew it, so I put the ‘Hail Mary’ on the ball. It was a goo
d call by the official.” Swearingen’s call stood. Several plays later, Bradshaw correctly read a Dallas blitz and called a trap play for Franco, who broke over the left side for a touchdown. Terry said, “I was expecting a blitz, so I called for a quick off-tackle trap. You blitz on that play—and Franco will bust it.” And he did. We now led, 28-17.

  The Cowboys fumbled the kickoff. On the next play, Bradshaw hit Swann in the end zone for an 18-yard touchdown. Gerela’s extra point made it 35-17.

  I have to tell you, I didn’t like the celebration I saw on our bench with six minutes still to play. Our guys were laughing, shaking hands, and slapping each other on the back. I thought a lot could happen in six minutes, especially when you’re playing a Super Bowl championship team like the Dallas Cowboys. I could see on their faces they had plenty of fight left. I wasn’t surprised when Staubach led an 89-yard touchdown drive. The Cowboys scored again following an onside kick. The score was now 35-31 with twenty-two seconds remaining. The Cowboys lined up for another onside kick, but this time Rocky Bleier fell on it. Terry ran out the clock and we had our third Super Bowl victory. The Steelers were the first team ever to achieve this distinction.

  Terry Bradshaw was the MVP of Super Bowl XIII, and deservedly so. You can’t imagine the negative press and ribbing Terry took in the two weeks leading up to the game. Bradshaw’s performance silenced a lot of critics. He had passed for a record four touchdowns and 318 yards, blowing the top off Bart Starr’s old Super Bowl record of 250 yards.

  Bradshaw had come into his own, and the Steelers had come of age as well. The next year, we went 12-4 in the regular season, beat Miami in the first round of the playoffs, and defeated Houston once again for the AFC title. On January 20, 1980, we faced the Los Angeles Rams in Pasadena for Super Bowl XIV.

  I was worried going into this game. Three of our top assistant coaches—Lionel Taylor, Dan Radakovich, and Bud Carson—had left the Steelers and gone over to the Rams after the 1977 season. They knew our system. They knew everything about us. We’d have to execute perfectly and come up with some new stuff if we were going to win.

  It was a close game. We trailed, 13-10, and after the game, Lambert admitted to the press, “At halftime, I was really concerned. I was more than concerned. I was scared. They had all the momentum, and our defense just wasn’t playing up to par. It was just a shaky situation. It had been a big-play game, and in those games anything can happen. In the first half, they used a lot of man-in-motion, and it confused us. We finally made some adjustments at halftime.”

  In the third quarter we went ahead 17-13, when Bradshaw hit Swann with a 47-yard touchdown pass. Rams quarterback Vince Ferragamo connected on a 50-yard pass that moved Los Angeles to the Steelers’ 24. On the next play, Lawrence McCutcheon passed to Ron Smith on a halfback option, putting the Rams up 19-17. On the very first possession of the fourth quarter Bradshaw let loose a 73-yard bomb to John Stallworth, and we regained the lead 24-19.

  The Rams were driving again, and with 5:35 left in the game they had the ball on our 32-yard line. In another example of a great player making a big play at a critical moment, Lambert dropped deep from his middle linebacker position and cut across a lazy route run by Rams receiver Ron Smith and intercepted Ferragamo’s pass. “I was responsible for the deep middle on the play,” said Lambert later. “It was a play they like, but they had only run it once before which surprised me. We worked on it in practice the last two weeks, because it had been successful for them all year.”

  After Lambert’s interception, the Chief got up from his seat in our box and started to get ready to go down to the locker room. I asked him, “Where are you going? The game’s not over.”

  He just looked at me and said, “It is now.”

  He was right. A few plays after Lambert’s interception, facing another critical third-down situation, Bradshaw went deep to Stallworth again, this time for 45 yards. Franco Harris sealed the deal on a 1-yard run for a touchdown. The final score: 31-19.

  Bradshaw completed fourteen of twenty-one passes for a total of 309 yards and was again voted the game’s MVP.

  With four Super Bowls in six years, sportswriters and fans now talked about the “Steelers Dynasty.” There’s no question we were the team of the decade.

  But nothing stays the same. The only thing certain in life is change. And so it was with the Steelers, the NFL, and me.

  CHAPTER 7

  A NEW ERA

  THE STEELERS DYNASTY of the 1970s was built around players of extraordinary talent. As I’ve said, to consistently win in the National Football League, a team must have four things: great coaching, team closeness, good management, and talented players. Of course you need great players. Some teams get them in ones and twos, but in the early 1970s we hit the jackpot. The Pro Football Hall of Fame inducted nine of those athletes, an amazing tribute to the quality of the teams that brought four Lombardi trophies home to Pittsburgh. I have lasting memories of all those players. Though each one of them had unique abilities, all of them shared the desire to be the best, personally and as a team. They were winners—they thrived on the thrill of victory.

  Joe Greene could not abide losing. He took it personally. It’s what made him great, both as a player and as a team leader. Everyone who came in contact with him felt the heat of the competitive fire that burned within him. No Steeler gave more to his team than Joe Greene. Andy Russell said, “Joe was extremely strong in his attitudes, his opinions, and he wasn’t afraid to voice them in the locker room. He was a very positive influence in the locker room.”

  Bill Nunn saw the Joe Greene who sacrificed himself on the field to make his team better. “Joe Greene was a unique person. He was a mean player; Joe was an intimidator,” said Nunn. “He had the quick first-step move, and it kept being effective even when defensive line coach George Perles put him in the Stunt 4-3, which effectively made him a nose tackle who always had to take on the center and get double-teamed. That took a toll on him, because he was getting hit from all angles, but he was making everybody else around him a better player. I think Perles did that to keep blockers off Jack Lambert, to allow Lambert to be free to roam the field, which was his most effective way of playing middle linebacker.”

  When we played the Houston Oilers at Three Rivers Stadium during our first Super Bowl run in 1974 we had an 8-2 record. We had defeated them earlier in the year and were pretty confident we could do it again. But they beat us, 13-10, and it wasn’t that close. They whipped us. The next day, on Monday Night Football, Joe Greene watched the Miami Dolphins dismantle the Cincinnati Bengals. He got angry as he watched the Dolphins move the ball like a machine, making no mistakes, no penalties, and doing the things they were coached to do. Joe said, “That’s what I want us to be like. I came into our team meeting on Tuesday, and I really didn’t like what I was hearing, so I went and cleaned out my locker and walked to my car.” He was so upset about losing and playing with guys who didn’t seem to care about winning as much as he did that he was ready to walk away from the team—away from football. Fortunately, Lionel Taylor, our receivers coach, himself a Pro Bowl receiver, saw Joe walking out and was able to calm him down. Joe returned to the team. I didn’t find out about this until the end of the season, but it didn’t surprise me. Joe refused to lose, and he inspired the team with that same intensity, that winning spirit.

  We knew what we had in Joe Greene, and so we did things to help him grow and mature as a player and as a person. Over time, Joe went from wishing he hadn’t been drafted by the Steelers to appreciating what we all had built together. Joe said, “I probably couldn’t have played for a lot of teams. In some ways, I had a personality somewhat similar to Duane Thomas, who was a very talented Cowboys running back in the early 1970s who chafed under the sometimes heavy hand of team management. I told Duane, if we switched places and I was in Dallas and he was in Pittsburgh I’d probably be out of the game and he’d be thriving. The simple fact is that because of Chuck and Dan and Mr. Rooney, they knew they were
dealing with kids and they had a way of giving us a helping hand and letting us know it’s going to be better. When I had a tantrum and kicked in the door of the equipment room at training camp one summer, all Chuck ever did was he came up to my room and said, ‘That’ll be $500.’ That was it. But I understood, because you can’t do that. Through all of my antics, Dan and Chuck kind of felt that my only interest was in winning.”

  That famous Coca-Cola commercial of a battered and exhausted “Mean Joe” coming through the tunnel after a game wasn’t far off the mark. He gave it his all. He never left anything on the field. The example he set helped create the closeness that won us Super Bowls. Joe retired in 1981 and entered the Hall of Fame in 1987, his first year of eligibility.

  Jack Ham wrote the book on how to play outside linebacker. Unlike Joe Greene, who wore his emotions on his sleeve, Ham always appeared cool, calculating, and unflappable. He made a science of reading offenses, and he had awesome powers of concentration. But when he got a running back or receiver in his sights, he homed in on him like a guided missile—a stealth missile. And when he hit, there was bound to be an explosion. Bill Nunn always told me he’d hate to get into a fight with him because you’d never see him coming. He was every bit as physical as Joe Greene. Jack earned All-Pro or All-AFC honors in seven consecutive seasons. He played in eight straight Pro Bowls before retiring in 1982. Jack was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1988, in his first year of eligibility.

  Next to Johnny Unitas, I think Terry Bradshaw is the greatest quarterback in history. They called him the “Blond Bomber,” and his teammates loved his sense of humor and bravado. The press tormented him with stories about his intelligence. Pittsburgh fans were tough on him—I thought maybe too tough. But he got through all this and became a real team leader. There was no quit in him. When he threw an interception, he came right back gunning. Some sportswriters said he had a problem with Chuck Noll, but he didn’t, not really. They were about as different as two people could be, but working together they won four Super Bowls. If you call that having a problem, I’ll take it any day. Terry was MVP for Super Bowls XIII and XIV, and NFL MVP in 1978. He finished his career with 27,989 yards passing and 212 touchdowns. He retired in 1983 and entered the Hall of Fame in 1989, also in his first year of eligibility. I continue to make the point of these great players entering the Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility, because this is one real way to measure the best against the best.