The Pittsburgh Steelers are one of the most accomplished franchises in the NFL. They’re tied for the most Super Bowl victories by a team. Much of that is due to their success in the 1970s. Those teams won four championships, being one of the most dominant teams in NFL history. However, before that, they weren’t very successful. The Steelers were more similar to the current-day Cleveland Browns. Their rise to glory was thanks in big part to Chuck Noll. Joe Greene recently explained how Noll changed the Steelers’ culture.
“My first meeting with the team, I had held out for two weeks, and when I came into the meeting room in training camp, Chuck Noll, our head coach, it was his first year, he said to the group, ‘I want you guys to meet our number one draft choice, Joe Greene,'” Greene said recently on Tony McGee Pro Football Plus TV Show. “I stood up and I said, ‘Hi, fellas.’ My voice cracked, everybody started laughing at me.
“Chuck said in that same meeting, ‘Our goal is to win the Super Bowl.’ There was some laughter in the back. I want you to know, he found the guy that was laughing, the number one guy, he wasn’t there much longer. What Chuck was talking about, he wasn’t talking about that season. He said, ‘Our goal is to win the Super Bowl.’ That was our goal every year, but when we get there, we’ll get there. We bought into that.”
The 1969 season was Noll’s first as head coach of the Steelers. That year, they finished with a record of 1-13. Their team was abysmal, but at the time, that wasn’t surprising. The season before, they went 2-11-1. Their last winning season came in 1963, where they went 7-4-3.
However, those miserable years didn’t last long under Noll. During his second season with the Steelers, they improved to a record of 5-9. The following year, they got slightly better again, going 6-8. Like Greene says, their goal was to win the Super Bowl, but they knew they needed to learn to walk before they ran. Slowly but surely, the Steelers were crawling out of the NFL’s gutter.
Then, in 1972, Pittsburgh started to show real promise. They went 11-3, winning a playoff game thanks to the heroic efforts of Franco Harris. While the Steelers didn’t win the Super Bowl that year, it was a sign that Noll’s message had stuck and resonated with his players.
Eventually, the dam burst and the Steelers built a dynasty. However, none of that would’ve happened without Noll. He helped transform the team from a bottom-feeder to the model of consistency.
His influence can still be seen on today’s Steelers. While they haven’t won a championship in over a decade, they’ve still lived by his standard. Every year, they want to win a Super Bowl. Mike Tomlin often makes that clear. His Steelers might be going through a drought when it comes to playoff wins, but he continues to have Pittsburgh in the playoff picture.
Like with Noll, the Steelers likely won’t become a Super Bowl contender again overnight. However, with the right leadership in place, they can gradually improve and get back to that level. Whether that’s Tomlin or someone else remains to be seen. Whoever eventually succeeds him will likely have to uphold Noll’s standard, though. That mindset has helped make the Steelers what they are today.
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