Dan Rooney

by Dan Rooney

  Nunn: To the best of my knowledge, and it might not be the case every single time, Dan never interfered. I never saw him interfere with his brother’s job. Scouting, personnel, that was Art Jr.’s job. He’d come in and look at some film, and he saw a lot of things when he was looking at films. Dan would make a little remark every now and then. He’s a workaholic, and in all probability he would have been a good appraiser of talent himself. I never knew of him interfering with Chuck or Art or the department when it came to that.

  Would the process have been as successful if he interfered?

  Nunn: It’s hard to say. There are different ways of interfering. If you intimidate your employees by sticking your nose in, then it’s a difficult situation. If your employees are free to express themselves, then it’s something else. It takes a certain type of employee to stand up and say exactly what he thinks. Even if you get torn down, at least you’re saying what you think as opposed to what they want to hear. Dan had employees who told him what he wanted to hear, but he eventually got tired of that.

  Can you talk about Dan Rooney as a boss?

  Nunn: The thing that always impressed me about Dan was that I never heard him complain about illness or any problems. In some ways, we were brought up the same way. I was under my father and trying to prove that I really belonged on the newspaper. I worked for my father, and Dan worked for his father. But even though his father was the boss, Dan worked as hard as anybody.

  A lot of times in the off-season, I’d come over on a Sunday. I wouldn’t be doing much, so I’d come over and read books. Dan was the same way. I’ve often wondered if I had the money to control the ball club and everything that he has, if I’d be that tied up with the team, like making all these road trips. It’s admirable.

  Back when I was negotiating contracts to sign some ballplayers, I’d be fighting with an agent and I’d say, “Look, I can’t go any further. This is it.” It would be three-thirty in the morning. I’d say, “I’ll call Dan Rooney, and he’s not going to go any further.” The agent thought I was bluffing. But I called Dan, and he would answer the telephone and was coherent right away. At three-thirty in the morning. This happened numerous times. He’d just say, “How are you doing?” I’d give him all the cue words. Then Dan might say, “Take it up a couple of thousand dollars.” I’d give the agent the phone and let him speak to Dan, then I’d get back on the phone. I’d hang up and tell the agent, “You won him over. I don’t know how you did it. He said take it up $3,000.”

  Dan’s approach was always upbeat. When I ran training camp, Dan and Chuck were both the same. They would want some furniture or other stuff moved, so I’d say, “I’ll call someone.” But they would just do it themselves.

  JOE GREENE

  What made Chuck Noll great?

  Greene: Taking care of what you can control, and not getting weighed down by things beyond your control. Paying attention to instructions and then asking the right questions all the time. If you don’t understand, then ask. Don’t pretend you do know when you don’t know. Be honest with yourself.

  That’s the first thing I used to tell the young men I coached. In order to get from A to B, first you have to be truthful with yourself. You have to fess up. If you did something wrong in terms of trying to have success on the football field on a particular down, in order to get rid of that—as Chuck always said, “You have to replace bad habits with good habits”—you first had to know it was a bad habit. A lot of times those things are trivialized by calling them clichés. To us, they weren’t. They were a way of life.

  Chuck practiced what he preached. That was his lifestyle. Over all those years, he was solid and stable and didn’t waver. When you look back at those teams, a lot of us learned well. The questions asked of me right now, you could probably ask twenty other guys on those teams, and the answers would be the same. That’s because we got it all from the same guy.

  Is Noll’s career underappreciated when compared to other coaching greats?

  Greene: I think he’s acknowledged when his name comes up, because they have to acknowledge the winning and the tradition and the style of play he put together. That’s why the fondness for the Steelers of the 1970s has had such a long life—because we played with a style that was his. It was amazing to me that people would confuse Chuck Noll with another football coach named Chuck [Chuck Knox of the Buffalo Bills and the Los Angeles Rams], and that they would spell Chuck Noll’s surname with a K. Maybe it was because he didn’t cater to the media. He was respectful, and that’s what he always told us: that the media had a job to do even though it was different than our job, and we should respect them. He had an appreciation for the media, but he never played up to them, and maybe that’s why he’s underappreciated.

  What do you mean by “style of play”?

  Greene: It was a solid defense that wasn’t necessarily spectacular, but it was very difficult to run the ball on and very difficult to throw the ball on. The offense wasn’t flashy. We ran the football for the most part, and then with Terry Bradshaw we threw more later on with Lynn Swann and John Stallworth. It was standard football. You run first and you pass second; you pass-protect and you run your routes. It wasn’t the West Coast. It wasn’t the Dallas Cowboys’ shotgun with a lot of motion. It was a two-back offense when a lot of one-back offenses were emerging.

  Talk about the 1974 playoffs and finally getting to the Super Bowl and winning it.

  Greene: We played Buffalo in the first round of the playoffs, and that’s when we really introduced the Stunt 4-3. We were desperate to stop O. J. Simpson, who had put up almost two hundred yards rushing the last time he played against us. The reason we had been losing in the playoffs was that other teams were running the football on us. Miami did it in 1972, and Oakland did it in 1973.

  The thing that really, really gave us the impetus and the mind-set and, as Chuck always said, “the refuse-to-be-denied attitude” came on the Monday after we beat Buffalo in the first round of the playoffs in 1974. People on the outside would always hear things like the refuse-to-be-denied attitude and call them a cliché, but to us it was real. Anyway, we were sitting in the locker room over at the stadium, and Chuck said, “You know, the coach of the Raiders said the two best teams in football [Miami and Oakland] played yesterday, and that was the Super Bowl.” He said, “Well, the Super Bowl is three weeks from now, and the best team in pro football is sitting right here in this room.”

  I’m telling you, I think I levitated right out of my seat when I heard that. There was no way the Raiders were going to beat us. It all came from Chuck’s consistency, because it was very unlike him to say that. That’s why it had so much power. It’s almost like it happened yesterday. So during the course of that game we were thinking, “These Raiders don’t have a chance.”

  Just before halftime in the game, John Stallworth caught a touchdown pass in the corner of the end zone with his left hand and the cornerback was holding his other arm. Stallworth somehow crossed over with his feet and stayed in bounds. The officials called him out. At that time we were trailing, but the amazing thing was that none of us complained about it. We could all see that it was a touchdown, but we didn’t complain. And when we walked off the field and through the tunnel where all the Raiders fans were lined up, we ran off with the confidence that we’re going to beat you. You have no chance. We’re going to give you that touchdown.

  I had never felt that way—ever. It all stemmed from Chuck: the quiet, steady confidence that he had in us. And that was because he had built it and he knew what was happening. It was all about him.

  I’ve been in locker rooms since then where you get all kinds of speeches and platitudes, and 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.

  Talk about presenting Dan Rooney for induction at the Hall of Fame?

  Greene: When he called me, he said, “I want you to present me.” I said, “You don’t want Ch
uck?”

  I was almost speechless. After it all sank in, I had a better feeling about being asked to do that than I had about being inducted myself. I think Dan wanted someone from that era to present him, someone he thought could represent the team. I never asked him. I’m definitely assuming. That’s one of the greatest honors I’ve ever had.

  What is Dan Rooney like as a boss?

  Greene: A great boss. I’ll never forget him saying that when you have a big decision to make, let it soak. Think about it. He said that when a team loses it’s not always the head coach’s fault, and good head coaches are hard to come by. Give them time.

  After my rookie year, I made some All-Pro team. In my contract, I had a clause that said if I made a specific All-Pro team—the NEA [Newspaper Enterprise Association] team—I’d get $10,000. I made some All-Pro teams, but not the one spelled out in my contract. Dan wrote me the check anyway.

  That’s the way he’s always been. Starting way back, he always made sure that his players were respected by the organization. We never had issues when we traveled to Super Bowls. And Dan made sure, through the people who worked for him, that we never had issues with travel or hotels or tickets.

  Dan was a tough businessman, but he was always fair. He always said that as an owner you may have the upper hand, but that doesn’t mean you have to beat the guy down. Give in a little. He’s lived that way.

  I did things many times—I probably couldn’t have played for a lot of teams. But the simple fact is that Chuck and Dan and Mr. Rooney knew they were dealing with kids. They had a way of giving us a helping hand and letting us know it was going to get better. When I had a tantrum and kicked in the door of the equipment room at training camp, all Chuck ever did was come up to my room and say, “That’ll be $500.” That was it. But I understood, because you can’t do that. Through all of my antics, Dan and Chuck felt that my only interest was in winning.

  CHUCK NOLL

  What made you eventually decide on the Steelers?

  Noll: I thought that this probably was the place to come. I talked to Dan Rooney and got a feeling for what he wanted to do. And he liked the thoughts I had, so it worked out well.

  Did you talk to anybody from outside the Steelers organization—about the Rooneys, about the Steelers?

  Noll: Not really, no. It was just a meeting with Dan, getting his ideas and what they wanted to do, and our ideas meshed.

  What we wanted to do was build through the draft. The Steelers had a history of trading away a lot of people before that. My experience, coming up through the American Football League, was in drafting people and teaching the skills to play professional football. That’s the way that I knew how to do it, and that’s the way Dan wanted to go, so it meshed well.

  Did you also talk to Art Rooney Jr.?

  Noll: Yes, he was head of scouting. That was something that I was very interested in, because there were a lot of teams that wanted to segregate coaching and talent. I don’t think you can do that. I think it has to work together. It has to be a team, completely, not only on the field but off the field as well. I was very comfortable that the Steelers would go in that direction.

  Was being on the same page with Dan and Art Jr. what gave you the opportunity to succeed?

  Noll: Yeah, no question about it. They were looking for the right way to do things. I came in with some experience of winning, of being with organizations that were successful. They thought, “Hey, this is what made them successful. Why won’t it make us successful?” They bought into it, and they were looking for that way to do it.

  During that first draft, there was a lot of pressure to draft Terry Hanratty because he was a local guy from Notre Dame. You ultimately, of course, drafted Joe Greene. How were you familiar with Joe?

  Noll: Well, I had worked him out specifically. I had known of him, and that was an important thing. He was a young man who had a great desire to be the best. That’s what we needed. We needed those kinds of people. He fit the whole profile. Attitude-wise, talent-wise, he could be a dominating player. We needed help in our defensive line. Some people didn’t think so, but that’s what we needed to be able to rush the passer and control the line of scrimmage.

  Was it your philosophy to build the defense first, to focus on the defense?

  Noll: Well, before you can win the game, you have to not lose it. That’s the premise. So it begins with defense, and defense can set up offense. You can go out there and score lots of points, but end up losing the game because you have no defense. You’re running up and down the field, you know, and that may be exciting to the fans. But it’s not very exciting when you lose.

  With Joe, were there any negatives from a discipline standpoint, where he was kind of a loose cannon?

  Noll: No. You know, the thing that he wanted so very badly was to win. And to do what you had to do to win. He went out and played very hard, and expected everybody else to as well. Also, he didn’t want anybody holding him. If someone was going to hold him, and the officials didn’t call it, well, he lost his temper. That was something that we talked about: that you have to really let the officials call the game. You can complain about being held, but you can’t physically take on the other people.

  From the standpoint of when he was at his peak, was he the best defensive player you had ever coached?

  Noll: He was right there, yes. From an attitude standpoint, there was desire; he’d do whatever you had to do to win. And he was special from a leadership standpoint. Everybody thinks leadership comes from how you talk, but it really doesn’t. Leadership on the field from a football player comes from how you perform. If you are a performer, you can be a leader. Joe was an outstanding performer, and led that way.

  After that first year, the 1-13, were you convinced the Steelers were still going in the right direction?

  Noll: Yeah, I thought we were. It was just a question of upgrading at some different positions. We needed skill positions on offense, which we didn’t have the first year. We started off trying to get some defense together, and that picked up a little bit, but not good enough. We still had to get better people.

  The next year came the drafting of Terry Bradshaw. The St. Louis Cardinals were offering something like eight players for that draft choice. Talk about that.

  Noll: You know, the number of players you’re going to get is not going to help your football team. You have to have quality people. So if you trade away quality for less than quality, you’re going to be a less-than-quality football team. And what we were after were top-notch players. Terry fell into that category, and that’s what we were trying to get via the draft—top-quality people.

  Did you figure initially that the learning process would be long with Terry?

  Noll: You know, I really had no way of knowing. I knew he had a great deal of talent. He had the ability to throw the football. He had the ability to run with it when he had to. He had all kinds of physical abilities, and it was just a question of being able to use that on the field.

  Did he have as strong a commitment to success as Joe Greene?

  Noll: Very much so. Terry, without a question, had a great desire to be the best. He worked very hard, physically and mentally. He spent time in the classroom, and watching film, and prepared himself very well.

  Lynn Swann and John Stallworth are both Hall of Fame receivers. What were the differences between them?

  Noll: John Stallworth probably was a little more physical than Lynn. Lynn was a little more athletic and had the ability to run very well after the catch by making people miss. John Stallworth would break tackles, then run well after the catch. They complemented each other. Both helped the running game, also. In order to have the running game go—to make people respect your running game so you could throw the football—they had to block. They blocked downfield, both of them, very well.

  Was there actual competition between them—trying to outdo each other, and each one wanting the ball all the time?

  Noll: There’s no question abo
ut it. If we had thrown the ball to them every time, they would’ve been happy. The ball had to be spread around, but in order to do it properly we had to make people respect the run. We had to throw it when we were able to slow down the pass rush, so that we would have time to throw it and get open.

  What about Franco Harris?

  Noll: The first day he came to camp, you could see his ability to make people miss his quickness. His ability to run with the football was something very special. Franco really had great vision. Every good runner I know has that kind of vision, and he had it right from the start. Not only seeing the holes, but seeing the people. You know, a lot of people come in there and they close their eyes when they’re running into the line, but Franco had his eyes wide open. He could pick the holes and knew the cuts to make.