Dan Rooney’s fateful choice: The reason for the Steelers woeful playoff record in the 20-teens started during the last Super Bowl with his leaving Pittsburgh

Barack Obama and Dan Rooney in Pittsburgh in 2008: Getty Images

… President Obama sent him to Ireland and left his son solely in charge

To say that 2008 was a great year to the late Dan Rooney, owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and chairman of the board, would be an understatement. In February, his team won its sixth — and last — Super Bowl, and the future certainly looked rosy for second-year Coach Mike Tomlin. 

Rooney was able to fulfill an NFL directive to buy up all of his brothers’ shares of the team because they were involved in gambling, racetracks. He also helped orchestrate Barack Obama’s election as president of the United States even though he was a Republican. 

Then, in March of 2009, President Obama appointed him as ambassador to Ireland, and tremendous honor and great responsibility. 

However, in retrospect, it actually saw the start of the decline of the Steelers as a Super Bowl contender. They returned there two years later, and lost. 

Since then, in that decade, they have not made a serious run at a Super Bowl, and in the finale to the 2020 season, lost to the lowly Cleveland Browns in the first round of the NFL playoffs, making it four years since the team had won a playoff game. It did not even make the playoffs in 2018 and 2019, but then appeared poised to make a strong playoff run in 2020.

It has not happened, and the truth is that when Dan Rooney, leaving his post as Chairman of the board of the Steelers in 2009, and stepping down and becoming emeritus, he put his son, Art II, who had been CEO since 2003, foley in charge without his father's direction.

Newspaper issued a warning in 2009

The NFL said that losing Dan Rooney to Ireland was going to be difficult, but said that they thought that he had confidence in his son, which should work,

Dan Rooney’s absence may be felt more on National Football League matters. He is one of the league’s most influential and respected owners, acting as an adviser to commissioners dating to Pete Rozelle. 

The N.F.L. said Tuesday that it expected Rooney to continue in that capacity, time permitting.

“This is new ground for us in terms of an owner serving the country as a foreign ambassador,” the N.F.L. said in a statement. “But Dan would not be able to take on this type of responsibility if he did not have an accomplished club president in place like Art Rooney. 

Judy Battista, “Obama names Steelers’ owner Ambassador to Ireland,” New York Times, March 17, 2009

That last sentence may not have been accurate based on the fact that since his years for Ireland, the Steelers have played well in the regular season and have had great players, but have faltered in the playoffs,

But his son took over day-to-day control of the team in 2002, and with his father overseas he is likely to be an even more front-and-center presence. Still, every major piece of Steelers business goes through Dan Rooney, and that is unlikely to change.

On Tuesday, Art Rooney congratulated his father and assured the faithful that the Steelers would not be bereft of leadership.

“This is an exciting time for my father and for the Steelers,” Art Rooney said. “Our goal, as it is every year, is to win another Super Bowl championship.”

He added: “Our operations at the Steelers will continue as they have in the past. Right now our focus is on the upcoming N.F.L. draft, and Kevin Colbert and his staff are preparing for that. Our off-season program has begun, which means Mike Tomlin and his staff have already started to work with the players toward putting together the team that will represent the Steelers in 2009.”

Judy Battista, New York Times, March 17, 2009

Famous last words: “Our goal, as it is every year, is to win another Super Bowl championship.”

They are still waiting for that, and with the aging of the team and its salary cap problems, which come right back to the CEO, that will probably force them to let some very good players go, it may be decades before they see another Super Bowl.

To understand why Art II is not exactly a “chip off the block,” a little knowledge of Steeler history is essential. 

Dan Rooney made the Steelers a Super Bowl winner with some great choices

While “The Chief,” Art Rooney, Sr., is revered as the founder and patriarch of the team, the truth is that from 1933 until Art Sr. turned the team over to Dan in the mid-1960s, it was a patsy, a woeful aggregation of losers. 

Never a title. Never even competing for a title. 

Art made his money at the racetracks, and that was the focus of his business life. The Steelers were merely a hobby, my dad used to say. 

But, my dad, like everyone else, loved Art Rooney because he was a great guy. He just did not take the Steelers seriously. 

Dan Rooney did, and in 1969, he finally made his first imprint on the team. He hired the defensive coordinator for the Baltimore Colts, Chuck Noll, as head coach, and what a choice that was. 

Dan stuck with Chuck when he went against the Steelers scouts and drafted an unknown lineman from an obscure college in Texas as its number one draft pick in 1969. 

The Foundation

His name was “Mean” Joe Greene, and he became the cornerstone of the most successful six-year NFL accomplishment in history in the 1970s. 

The Steelers won four Super Bowls in six years from 1974 until 1979. Dan and Chuck Noll became great partners, and they are the reason that Steeler Nation exists. 

Dan Rooney foresaw what the Steelers could become, and he became a leader in the NFL as well as with the Steelers. 

However, Art II is not a chip off the block. Granted, together they hired Mike Tomlin as coach to succeed Bill Cowher in 2007, and it paid immediate dividends with a Super Bowl win in his second year. 

Tomlin, however, has not been able to continue that early start, and Dan could have sat him down and could have given him direction that Art cannot. 

Now, the Steelers are facing the possibility of having a dry stretch of Super Bowls like they faced from 1979 until 2006, and some of that could be traced to Dan’s mistakes. 

As good as he was, Dan made some major mistakes in the 1980s — but that occurred after he had become an NFL genius for engineering the construction of Steeler Nation with four Super Bowl wins. 

The failure of the 80s

If you want to understand why the Steelers started failing in the 1980s, you need to look not at the aging of the superstars. Instead, look at some of their first-round picks that failed dismally. 

Instead of names like Joe Greene, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, and Lynn Swann, all first-rounders in the 60s and 70s who made the NFL Hall of Fame, you have names like Greg Hawthorne, Mark Malone, Keith Gary, Walter Abercrombie, Darryl Sims, John Rienstra, Aaron Jones, Tim Worley, and Tom Ricketts. 

Only one 1980 first rounder made the NFL Hall, Rod Woodson. 

Dan fired his brother, Art, Jr., who had engineered the wonderful drafts of the 1970s — four in 1974 alone are members of the Hall of Fame — because of the poor selections. 

However, he could not fire Chuck Noll, whose record from 1985 until 1991, even though he had his first losing season in 14 years in 1985 and was just 5-11 in 1988, going 51-60 in his final seven years. 

Noll was a legend, a future hall of fame, but Rooney convinced him to retire. Then he reworked the scouting department, brought in some top-notch talent, and rebuilt the team that way so that Bill Cowher could succeed.

And when Cowher struggled through a couple of losing seasons, Dan stuck with him, and that led to the two Super Bowl wins in the 21st Century, though in truth, Cowher had some other teams that should have won titles. 

The point, though, is that Dan rebuilt the franchise is a way that his son cannot if the team falls on hard times in the 2020s. Dan had tremendous cache in a way that Art II never has and never will. 

Conclusion

So, leaving the team for three years in the hands of his son by going to Ireland and giving up the chair of the franchise led to many of the problems that the team faced. Dan was aging and was 80 when he retired from his job in Ireland and returned to Pittsburgh. 

His health was failing, and he could no longer exert the control that he once did, through thick and thin. 

Fortunately, Dan was key in hiring Kevin Colbert as his GM, even though Art was the CEO at that time, and that kept Tomlin stocked with quality players during those years. 

Now, however, the Steelers have gone away from relying as much on the draft, trying to sign free agents and trade for talent. They appear to be foundering in the wind with as many as 21 free agents on the horizon. They have offensive line and running back problems, along with a shaky QB situation without a long-range solution in that area.

In short, many of the problems that the Steelers are facing right now can be laid directly on management, and not all on coaching. 

Consequently, I see the Steelers having a down period like Cowher did, but without the long-term solutions that resulted from it.

So, Steeler Nation, while many praise The Chief, the success of the Steelers was due to Dan over the years.