Only a handful of NFL teams date back to the league’s earliest days, and even fewer have remained under the same family ownership since their inception. The Pittsburgh Steelers are one of those rare franchises, with a direct line of succession from Art Rooney Sr. to Dan Rooney and now to current president Art Rooney II. Like any long-standing family business, they have a distinct way of doing things. With a clear history of success—for better or for worse—they have remained committed to their core philosophies.
Former Steelers GM Kevin Colbert discussed some of those Rooney philosophies via the [Off Set podcast with Rob King and Jay Caufield](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCaodqTHDLQ&ab_channel=OffSetwithKingerandTheBigMan).
“They have one goal. It’s very simplistic. We want to win a National Football League championship, period. And we’re gonna try to do it this way,” Colbert said. “It’s not that you don’t have ideas that you can bring from the outside, but you quickly understand that, look, they’ve been successful. Sure, they want some different ideas, but those ideas are always going to be under the understanding that we’ve been successful. We wanna get back there, what else can we do? But in the meantime, we’re probably gonna do it this way.”
None of this comes as a major surprise to those who have followed the team for any length of time. It manifests itself in small ways like the lack of large signing bonuses for undrafted free agents and the hard negotiating cutoff once the season begins. But this overall philosophy is a guiding hand that influences every major decision they make at 3400 South Water Street.
There is a reason why they have only had three head coaches since Chuck Noll was hired in 1969, and why they value things like going to St. Vincent College for training camp every year. It’s all part of respecting the traditions of the franchise and trying to recreate the success they have enjoyed since the early 1970s.
While many would argue the need for the Steelers to modernize certain aspects of their operation, that just isn’t how they tick. Though, to be fair, Omar Khan seems to have brought forth some positive change in regard to contracts and making bigger free agent signings and splashier trades through the first few years of his tenure.
Mike Tomlin has said that his teams work too hard for him to focus on anything other than winning in the present season. That isn’t just a saying, the Steelers legitimately believe, right or wrong, that they can compete in any given year and they position themselves as best as they possibly can to do so.
There have been lulls. The Steelers only made the playoffs four times in the 1980s, and they have obviously failed to win a playoff game since the 2016 season. Colbert says the Rooney family understands that is part of the process.
“The Chief understood it, Mr. Dan Rooney understands it, Art Rooney (II) now, who’s our president, understands — look, you’re going to have a lull in a given season, in a given era,” Colbert said. “We can’t have too many lulls, but they understand the expectation of themselves and also the people working for them accept that.”
In the salary cap era, the most consistent way to build a strong team is hitting on draft picks and developing a pipeline from within the organization. Colbert did an excellent job at that throughout his tenure as the GM with the exception of the last handful of seasons. Part of that can likely be attributed to an aging Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers’ desire to win while they still had a window with him.
“It’s a hard thing to balance. We wanna win now,” Colbert said. “But we never lost sight or tried to never lose sight of the future. So we never would mortgage draft picks or whatever just to win in a given season. Our challenge was to know we’re gonna win now, but we’re never gonna lose sight of what’s down the road.”
It’s a difficult balancing act when championship windows can open and close in the blink of an eye. We will see how this philosophy comes into play for the 2026 offseason when the Steelers are expected to utilize their stockpile of draft capital to make a move for a franchise quarterback in the first round.
Will they make the rare deal to mortgage the future to take the big swing? The years since Roethlisberger retired make that seem necessary but never forget the guiding philosophies of the Rooney family and how they come into play with virtually every decision the Steelers make.
Even when Art Rooney II eventually passes the baton, [presumably to Daniel Martin Rooney](https://steelersdepot.com/2024/04/presumed-steelers-successor-daniel-martin-rooney-more-and-more-visible-in-recent-years-batko/), you can probably expect many of the same guiding principles to be at play behind the scenes.