Chuck Noll dies at 82
PITTSBURGH — Chuck Noll, the Hall of Fame coach who won a record four Super Bowl titles with the Steelers, died Friday night at his home of natural causes. He was 82.
Noll transformed the Steelers from a long-standing joke into one of the NFL’s pre-eminent powers, becoming the only coach to win four Super Bowls. He was a demanding figure who did not make close friends with his players, yet was a successful and motivating leader.
The Steelers won the four Super Bowls over six seasons (1974, 1975, 1978 and 1979), an unprecedented run that made Pittsburgh one of the NFL’s marquee franchises, one that breathed life into a struggling, blue-collar city.
“He was one of the great coaches of the game,” Steelers owner Dan Rooney once said.
Noll’s 16-8 record in postseason play remains one of the best in league history. He retired in 1991 with a 209-156-1 record in 23 seasons, after inheriting a team that had never won a postseason game. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1993.
Noll worked so well with Steelers President Rooney that the team never felt the need to have a general manager. When he retired, and was replaced by Bill Cowher, only four other coaches or managers in modern U.S. pro sports history had run their teams longer than Noll had.
A former messenger guard for his hometown Cleveland Browns, Noll was an assistant with the San Diego Chargers and Baltimore Colts for nine seasons. Then he accepted what seemed a dead-end job in January 1969 as coach of the NFL’s least-successful organization.
Noll, hired only after Penn State’s Joe Paterno turned down a $350,000, five-year offer, was different from any Steelers coach before him. He immediately brought intelligence, toughness, stability, confidence, character and a can-do mindset to a franchise accustomed to upheaval.
The day after Noll was hired, the Steelers drafted defensive lineman Joe Greene. He was the first of the nine Hall of Famers selected during the Noll era. Four of the others were drafted within Noll’s first four seasons: Terry Bradshaw, Mel Blount, Jack Ham and Franco Harris.
Four more arrived in the first five rounds of the 1974 draft: Lynn Swann, Jack Lambert, John Stallworth and Mike Webster. And the 1971 draft, though it produced only one Hall of Famer (Ham), generated seven starters.
While the Steelers surprisingly won their opener under Noll in 1969, beating Detroit, they lost their final 13 games that season, and their first three in 1970. By then, some were questioning Noll’s hiring.
The turnaround began in earnest in 1970, the year they moved into the AFC after the NFL and AFL merged. They drafted Bradshaw, moved into Three Rivers Stadium after years of being a secondhand tenant of Pitt Stadium and Forbes Field.
By 1972, the year Harris arrived to give them the ground game Noll sought, they were championship contenders.
The first traditional playoff game in Steelers history on Dec. 23, 1972, also signaled what was to come. With the Steelers down to fourth-and-10 on their side of the field, Bradshaw lofted a pass downfield intended for Frenchy Fuqua. It bounded high in the air. Harris caught the ball and ran for a touchdown in what became known as the “Immaculate Reception.”
Noll’s Steelers did not win the Super Bowl that season — they lost to unbeaten Miami on a fake punt in the AFC title game.
But, with their roster completed by their remarkable 1974 draft, they finally became NFL champions and did it three more times by January 1980.
