Terry Bradshaw and Chuck Noll: A rocky personal alliance

... but they won four Super Bowls in six years

They will forever be aligned by a special accomplishment that no coach and quarterback will probably be ever able to duplicate: Four Super Bowl wins in six years.

For Terry Bradshaw, that included two MVP trophies, something that no other Steeler QB has ever been able to duplicate over the past 30 years.

For Chuck Noll, the accomplishment puts him in the upper echelon of NFL football coaches, with the likes of Vince Lombardi.

However, perhaps no successful coach and player ever had as rocky a personal relationship as did Chuck and Terry. The problems were caused by their prickly personalities, but Chuck, as the coach, knew that he did not handle Bradshaw well despite the Super Bowls.

In fact, in a largely positive extensive Sports Illustrated profile of Noll in 1980 after winning the fourth Super Bowl, Paul Zimmerman wrote this about that relationship: "The dark side of the picture is Bradshaw."

No real quarterback coach or OC

Noll hired his former Browns teammate and 18-year QB Babe Parilli as quarterback coach for Bradshaw in 1972. After two years, Parilli either quit or was fired. That story is not clear.

The effect of Parelli's leaving on Bradshaw was devastating. "Babe Parilli was my one and only quarterback coach," Bradshaw told Steelers.com earlier this year. "I didn’t have an offensive coordinator or quarterback coach. One year I had Babe Pirelli [sic] and he did to me what they did to me in college. He picked me up and encouraged me. I flourished under his knowledge because he played so many years in the NFL and shared it. Babe Parilli is someone whose name is never mentioned."

Chuck became the quarterbacks coach

As Zimmerman noted, "Two years later Parilli was gone, and Noll took over the job himself."

That was not a very bright move for the future Super Bowl coach. First, Chuck knew nothing about offense. Second, he knew even less about coaching quarterbacks.

Noll played some offense as a guard with the Cleveland Browns, but he knew little about offense itself. His entire time as an assistant coach was on the defensive side of the ball. He was Don Shula's defensive coordinator for the Baltimore Colts when the Steelers hired him in 1969.

Why did he do that? Why not hire a good offensive coordinator who was also a QB coach? It was devastating not just on Bradshaw but on the other quarterbacks, Terry Hanratty and Joe Gilliam, who had been drafted in 1974.

Bradshaw explained to Zimmerman what it was like having Noll as his QB coach and head coach, with things being so bad that he asked to be traded. “I don’t think he handled me properly, but he didn’t know me. I wanted to be handled very personally, like I’d been in college. He could have made it a lot easier. There were times he dressed me down in front of the team; once he fined me $25 for missing a pregame meal, and I was there three minutes late. I was outside talking to one of the Steeler scouts," Bradshaw recalled.

“It was a rough road, a testing ground. But I think he felt I could handle it, that I was going to be the kind of championship quarterback he needed. He wasn’t going to baby-sit. I remember once going in and asking to be traded, and he said, `You’re going to be a great quarterback someday. It takes time.’ "

Was Noll's approach best?

Perhaps Noll's approach worked. After all, four Super Bowl wins in six years, with Terry winning the MVP in the final two, means that something was working.

However, it left Bradshaw embittered toward Noll and eventually toward the Steelers.

Bradshaw, however, eventually revealed later that he suffered from clinical depression during this time. He was also a very sensitive person to criticism. Some athletes respond favorably to intense criticism, to in-your-face blasting.

Terry Bradshaw was not one of them. "Chuck Noll was tough. He was tough on me. He had various impacts," Bradshaw told Steelers.com. "He had an impact in the sense that I could have very easily quit. He pushed so hard and demanded of me what people didn’t know. I didn’t really like him because I was a guy that is a mama’s boy. I went to Louisiana Tech and they loved me and loved on me. I flourish under love, not under an iron fist. Chuck was an iron fist and we butted heads over that."

But Terry would not stand up to Noll and give back what he was receiving. That was also problematic for him.

A former Steeler teammate during those years, Tom Keating, recalled this for Zimmerman. "It was funny watching the three quarterbacks come out of the quarterback meetings. Bradshaw would look whipped, Gilliam would look mad, and Hanratty would just be smiling and shaking his head. I’d come from Oakland, and when John Madden would yell at Lamonica or Blanda, they’d yell right back. But with Noll—never.”

Keaing also explained what Hanratty said about the experience. " 'I think Chuck so badly wanted Terry to be great—he wanted him to just win the job flat-out and end all the turmoil—that he lost his head. Have you ever seen Shula going toe to toe with Griese like that? Or Landry with Staubach? And Terry’s better than all of them. When I made a mistake, Chuck never chewed me out: maybe he didn’t feel I’d been around that long. I told Terry 100 times, `Tell him to go to hell. You’re the quarterback.’ But Terry would shake his head and say, `No, no, I can’t do that.’ To this day I don’t think it’s settled.”

Shula and Landry did not treat their QBs that way, but then again, they never won four Super Bowls.

Noll's explanation

Noll had always been reticent about discussing his relationship with his QB and why he treated Bradshaw like that. "I always wanted Terry to be a leader. but you can’t just tell someone to go out and lead. You become a leader by doing," Noll told SI. "The trouble is, in our society many political leaders lead by talk, by air. That’s why football’s so different. You can talk all you want, but whatever you say means nothing until you’ve done something.”

Noll was from a different generation, the Depression and WWII period when people were tougher, not as concerned about feelings as Baby Boomers like Bradshaw are. Noll grew up in a lower class neighborhood of Cleveland, and his father was distant emotionally, which may help explain why the coach had problems with Terry and with his son, Chris, who tried to run away from his father's shadow.

Chris Noll and his dad

Chris Noll noted this to Zimmerman about his relationship with his father, which was not close, "When I was little, I’d resent his coming home late every night. I’d eat at six o’clock. I wouldn’t wait for him. It used to bug me that during games David Shula would stand next to his father on the sidelines with a clipboard, while I’d be down with the ball boys. I asked my father about it, and he said, `Because David has an interest in football.’ "

That was why Chris decided to attend college at Rhose Island U instead of Penn State, he told SI.

Terry resents being called "dumb" despite calling his own plays

When asked by Steelers.com about his greatest regret of his Steeler years, he pointed to something that still hurts today at the age of 68. "Of all of the things, I wish I would have never been labeled dumb. I am 67 years old and still to this day it really burns me good. Nobody else called their own plays. I called my own plays. Then when you defend yourself, it’s arrogance. You don’t want to do that. The dumb thing is the one thing that really chaps me. That is one huge regret. You can’t undo it. I have had fun with it. I played with it. I played off of it."

Why did Chuck allow Terry to call his own plays?

That leads to a great question for Noll. If Terry was that dumb, why allow him to call his own plays? Noll played in Cleveland for Paul Brown, an offensive genius of the 50s and 60s, who use messaged guards, the first in the NFl to do so according to legend.

Why not call the plays from the sideline and take some of the pressure off his QB? First, he had no OC, so who was bright enough to call the offense?

In addition, Noll's offense was lousy as far as the passing game went. It was a good trapping run game, probably somewhat like that of the Browns a la Paul Brown, and it fit well with Rocky Bleier and Franco Harris.

However, with two premier receivers in Lynn Swann and John Stallworth, Noll needed a 70s style offense that would fit their superb skills. Chuck was not a Bill Walsh, but imagine what Terry could have done with the West-Coast Offense.

Well, maybe not.

Unfortunately, Noll never put together anything like that. He could probably have won a few more games with a better offense, but who can argue with four Super Bowl victories in six years.

Conclusion

Relationships are often difficult, and though both Bradshaw the QB and Noll the coach are members of the NFL Hall of Fame, they had a very rocky personal relationship. Bradshaw harbored that animus for many years. He even had Verne Lundquist, his broadcasting partner, give his induction speech at the Canton ceremony instead of anyone from the Steelers.

In addition, he did not attend the funeral of the Steelers founder, Art Rooney, Sr., who treated him like a son, and that of Noll. He took heat for missing Noll's funeral, but said that he had a conflict in his schedule. He now admits that he was wrong to miss both of those.

The truth is that when a person has such an acerbic relationship, going to the person's funeral can often dredge up memories that you may want to remain hidden.

Bradshaw has taken antidepressants for decades, and if that had been diagnosed earlier -- though medical personnel knew little about clinical depression when he was a player -- perhaps he could have handled some of this better.

Terry has done well in life, playing that "dumb guy" schtick to success in many fields. However, personal relationships have not been part of that success for a variety of reasons. He is in his fourth marriage.

Chuck Noll was an equally complicated man, and while he treated his coaches and colleagues well enough, he never really had many close personal friends and confidantes. He was a very private person despite having such a public persona.

Nevertheless, together they helped build Steeler Nation into what it is today, albeit nothing like it was in the 70s.