Steeler players believe that Chuck Noll’s treating them as adults was a key factor in winning Super Bowl IX — and all the subsequent ones

Mean Joe Greene

Photo: Getty Images

The way Chuck approached it, I think, made all the difference in the world. The time he gave us, the responsibility he gave us, to me was a wonderful was to approach it.

Running back Franco Harris, “America’s Game, 1974 Pittsburgh Steelers,” YouTube

All football coaches should learn from the pain of defeat. Chuck Noll, the winner of four Super Bowls with the Pittsburgh Steelers, certainly did, and he used it to his advantage in the first Super Bowl in which he was head coach.

Before Noll was hired as Steelers coach in 1969, he was the defensive coordinator for the Baltimore Colts. In his final game with the Colts, the team suffered one of the most humiliating defeats and upsets in Super Bowl history.

The New York Jets were prohibitive underdogs in the game, but they used the leadership and play of quarterback Broadway Joe Namath to upset the Colts.

It was the worst defeat of Noll’s life, according to his biography “Chuck Noll: His Life’s Work,” by Michael MacCambridge.

What the players said

The NFL’s presentation of “America’s Game” substantiated the situation with interviews with former players on that 1974 team,

Narrator: Chuck Noll was an assistant coach for the Baltimore Colts when they lost to the New York Jets in Super Bowl III. Noll believed that the Colts were too tight before that game. So, he took no chances when his Steelers went to New Orleans.

Linebacker Andy Russell: Early in the week he said, “Go out. No bed-check. Get this town out of your system. So, we took him up on that challenge.

Defensive tackle Joe Greene: We had a good time in New Orleans. Dwight [White’ didn’t. Me and Dwight, L.C. [Greenwood], and Ernie [Holmes] threw our bags in the room and went right down to Bourbon Street and ordered all the shrimp they ever had. Then, at the end of that, Dwight was ill and he ended up going to the hospital. We thought he’d been sabotaged.

Andy Russell: By Wednesday, we were begging for a bed-check. We were tired.

“America’s Game, 1974 Pittsburgh Steelers,” YouTube

The Steeler players believed that Noll treated them like adults, while Bud Grant, the Vikings coach, did not do the same with his players,

Narrator: Noll’s approach was in direct contrast to that of Vikings coach Bud Grant, whose team had lost two previous Super Bowls.

Andy Russell: The Vikings were stuck out at the airport. They had a bed-check early; they did have the fun, they didn’t have the relaxed atmosphere for the first three or four nights. So, I think that was important because we went into that game far more relaxed than the Vikings.

“America’s Game, 1974 Pittsburgh Steelers,” YouTube

The quote that I used above from Franco Harris was indicative of that feeling, saying that Noll gave them the responsibility to act as adults and allowed the veteran players to monitor the others.

Did this make a difference in the game?

Whether or not this was a factor in the win is difficult to tell. All I know is that when you win four Super Bowls in six years, you are doing something right.

And, Noll did not change his approach for the other three trips to the big game. 

You can argue that the Steelers had better personnel in those games, but nevertheless, winning four Super Bowls is an impressive feat, and never losing one is also amazing.

Grant was classless in defeat

I had never read this quote, and while it was understandable to be upset losing your third Super Bowl, you should never demean another team … and should not blame the officials for the loss when your offensive unit was unable to even score one point in the loss.

This is what Grant said in the post-game press gaggle,

"There were three bad teams out there - us, Pittsburgh and the officials.”

Dan Jenkins, “Pittsburgh Punches It Out,” Sports Illustrated, Jan. 20, 1975

This is disappointing to me because I always respected Bud Grant.

However, why do you denigrate the team that just shut you down despite having a number of future Hall of Famers on the roster, and then you nail the officials and blame them for the loss.

That is classless — and I imagine that Grant may later have regretted saying that. He was alluding to a call on a possible Steeler fumble in which the runner was ruled down, but he ignored the fact that the biggest offensive play of the night was a 42-yard pass interference call against the Steelers — one that QB Fran Tarkenton could not convert into any points.

Conclusion

This is an interesting analysis of different coaching philosophies, using the opinions of the players who were involved.

In his Noll biography, MacCambridge goes into more detail about this approach, and his analysis pretty much substantiates that this was the case. Chuck Noll learned from the mistake made by Don Shula in 1968 that led to that devastating defeat, at least it did in Noll’s eyes, and that made a major difference in how he approached his own Super Bowls.