MIKE TOMLIN | PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

After 19 seasons that included more than a dozen playoff appearances, longtime head coach Mike Tomlin is parting ways with the Pittsburgh Steelers. 

“During our meeting today, Coach Tomlin informed me that he has decided to step down as our head coach,” a statement from Steelers president Art Rooney II said. “Obviously, I am extremely grateful to Mike for all the hard work, dedication and success we have shared over the last 19 years.”

In his statement, Rooney also emphasized his respect and appreciation for Tomlin’s nearly two-decade tenure in Pittsburgh. 

“He guided the franchise to our sixth Super Bowl championship and made the playoffs 13 times during his tenure, including winning the AFC North eight times in his career. His track record of never having a losing season in 19 years will likely never be duplicated,” the statement said. 

While Tomlin’s record was 193-114-2 with the Steelers, the team has not won a playoff game since the end of the 2016 season. On Monday, the Steelers lost 30-6 to the Houston Texans in the AFC Wild Card round of the NFL playoffs. 

In his own statement, Tomlin called the Steelers organization a huge part of his life. He expressed his gratefulness to the Rooney family, Steelers coaches, staff and players for their trust and support during his time in Pittsburgh.

“I want to also thank Steelers Nation. Your passion, loyalty, and high expectations represent what makes this franchise truly special. Coaching in Pittsburgh is unlike anywhere else, and I will always take great pride in having been a steward of this team,” Tomlin said.

“While this chapter comes to a close, my respect and love for the Pittsburgh Steelers will never change. I am excited for what the future holds for this organization, and I will forever be grateful for my time coaching in Pittsburgh.”

Prior to his resignation, Tomlin — who had two years remaining on his contract after signing an extension in 2024 — was the longest-tenured head coach of a single North American professional sports franchise.

With Tomlin out, the  Steelers will now begin the search for just their fourth head coach since 1969. Preceding Tomlin in the role were Bill Cowher and Chuck Noll, whom Tomlin tied for ninth place on the NFL’s all-time career coaches wins list.

MIKE TOMLIN | PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

It’s open season on Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin all of a sudden, and everyone, it seems, is taking their shots.

Even Ben Roethlisberger.

“You don’t fire a guy like Coach Tomlin,” Roethlisberger opined this week on his “Footbahlin with Ben Roethlisberger” podcast. “What you do is come to an understanding and an agreement. It’s like, ‘Hey, listen, I think it’s probably best for both of us … for all parties involved, let’s start over.’

“Coach Tomlin’s been here a long time. You would give him a statue, do whatever you gotta do because he deserves it, he’s earned it. But it’s like, ‘OK, it’s time to find that next guy.’ I think he might say it’s time for a fresh start.”

That was a lot more passive — and a lot less aggressive — an approach than we ever saw from Roethlisberger in the pocket.

And it was clearly a much more subtle, and much more nuanced, message than the one sent by the fans at Acrisure Stadium who were booing “Renegade” and chanting “Fire Tomlin” last Sunday as the Steelers were in the process of being pummeled by the Buffalo Bills.

You’ll have that when your record is 6-6 and you have gone eight consecutive seasons without a playoff victory.

A significant and vocal percentage of the natives, unquestionably, are restless. To the degree that “Tomlin PTSD” is an actual thing, or so it seems. And those afflicted by it across Steeler Nation are convinced this season is destined to end as the previous eight have, without a playoff victory.

But what if it isn’t?

The Steelers are playing the Ravens on Sunday and — this just in — first place in the AFC North Division is at stake.

The Ravens, like the Steelers, are 6-6 and have been showing their warts at least as often as they’ve been inspiring confidence through their “Footbahlin” in 12 games. So the landscape regarding what the Steelers are facing, and the perception of what it is the Steelers are capable of, can change dramatically.

Even if it doesn’t, the Steelers get another shot at the Ravens in the regular-season finale being held at Acrisure. And there still remains a great deal of football to be played.

As for the football the Steelers have put on display previously, it includes beating New England at New England — and the Patriots are currently the No. 1 postseason seed in the AFC.

So making the playoffs again only to get blown out in the first round again isn’t necessarily a fait accompli. That remains on the table, as does the first losing season in Tomlin’s 19 years with the Steelers.

But so does a bounce back in Baltimore, similar to the one the Steelers were able to fashion against Indianapolis in the wake of collapsing in the second half against Green Bay at home.

What they’re after remains in front of them and available for the taking. So why not let the games play out before lashing out or freaking out?

The Steelers-Ravens rivalry is traditionally embraced as something special, and justifiably so. Usually, the games are anticipated like no other, at least until the next one.

But this time, consternation has replaced anticipation. And the debate that’s raging, from chanting fans to talking heads on ESPN to Big Ben, isn’t about whether the Steelers can beat the Ravens.

This time, it’s about whether the Steelers’ head coach has coached past his expiration date.

“Maybe it’s clean-house time, maybe it is,” Roethlisberger maintained. “Maybe it’s time.”

It may be eventually, but not yet.

PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

As the city woke up Wednesday to the news of Franco Harris’ death, Pittsburghers and notable names from the world of football and beyond offered remembrances and stunned reactions.

Statement from Steelers President Art Rooney II on the passing of Franco Harris: pic.twitter.com/5Ojd5Uatvr

— Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) December 21, 2022

We have lost an Icon in Franco Harris. He embodied Pgh in his Grace, Humility, & Sense of Pride. He was a Champion on the Field & Ambassador off it. Thank you Franco for setting the standard that we all strive to achieve as a Professional & as a Person. RIP & condolences to Dana. pic.twitter.com/3GtCgOpeOW

— Bill Cowher (@CowherCBS) December 21, 2022

CommUnity — Pittsburgh lost a legend today. I ask that you join me in praying for the family and friends of Franco Harris. Not only was he the greatest running back in the history of the @Steelers, but a great man off the field whose kindness and generosity was felt by many. pic.twitter.com/3aTht8G8ix

— Mayor Ed Gainey (@MayorEdGainey) December 21, 2022

In a statement, Pro Football Hall of Fame President Jim Porter reflected on Harris’ character, as well as that of his wife, Dana.

“We have lost an incredible football player, an incredible ambassador to the Hall and, most importantly, we have lost one of the finest gentlemen anyone will ever meet. Franco not only impacted the game of football, but he also affected the lives of many, many people in profoundly positive ways … My heart and prayers go out to his wife, Dana, an equally incredible person.”

Harris was set to attend several high-profile events this weekend, including the retirement of his jersey number — just the third such ceremony in Steelers history — and an event at the Heinz History Center marking the 50th anniversary of the Immaculate Reception.

Woke up this morning to the devastating news that my friend Franco Harris passed away during the night. One of the kindest, gentlest men I have ever known. He was a great person & great teammate. Hall of Fame player but so much more than that. A tremendous role model for me! pic.twitter.com/OswJ82x7I1

— Tony Dungy (@TonyDungy) December 21, 2022

Steeler Nation is going to be hurting this week. On the weekend of the 50th anniversary of the Immaculate Reception and the holidays too. pic.twitter.com/eXwQzh9JRB

— Ramon Foster (@RamonFoster) December 21, 2022

The Senator John Heinz History Center created a special exhibit to mark the anniversary of the “Immaculate Reception.”

“All of us at the Heinz History Center and Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum are shocked and devastated over the sudden passing of our friend Franco Harris,” said president and CEO Andy Masich. “To us, he was more than an iconic sports figure. Franco was family. It has been a gift to spend so much time with him over these past few months as we lead up to the 50th anniversary of the Immaculate Reception. If it’s possible, we came to admire and respect him even more, not just as an athlete, but as a man and a Pittsburgher. Franco touched all of our lives in some way. His story and ours are intertwined. We are all diminished by his loss. Our heartfelt condolences and thoughts are with Dana, Dok, his extended family, his teammates, and all who knew and loved Franco.”

Just yesterday, Mike Tomlin was asked about Harris in anticipation of this weekend’s anniversary.

“He’s just a special man,” Tomlin said in a press conference. “What an awesome representation of this organization and this community — a guy that embraces all the responsibility that comes with being him. I just admire his passion for Pittsburgh and young people … his passion for others, and this place, and the Steelers is unparalleled.”

Words can’t begin to describe the pain I am feeling. Franco will always be a brother, mentor and my definition of greatness. He was a legend on the field and the personification of excellence off of the field– A true class act to look up to and aspire to be like. RIP #32 🙏🏿 pic.twitter.com/WOYU4qCZDP

— Jerome Bettis (@JeromeBettis36) December 21, 2022

Just saw the news that Franco Harris has passed away. One of the true greats from my childhood-and one of the pillars of those dominant Steelers teams. Had the privilege to meet Franco a few times-and was taken back on how humble and kind he was each time. True gentleman. RIP 🙏🏼

— Kirk Herbstreit (@KirkHerbstreit) December 21, 2022

Franco Harris. I’ve said this before when Pittsburgh legends die, but it is especially true today: we’re lucky he was ours, and his legacy is safe here with us.

🖤💛

— Virginia Montanez (@JanePitt) December 21, 2022

From Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald:

“All of Pittsburgh and Steeler nation is saddened at the passing of a civic icon, Franco Harris. We adopted him a half a century ago, as he led the Steelers to greatness.  “He became a Pittsburgher, staying long after his Hall of Fame career ended. His contributions, along with his wife Dana, continued for decades. “We loved him, and he returned that love many times over. As we remember his many contributions to this community, on and off the field, I hope his family is comforted in the fact that his imprint on this town and his work will never be forgotten. “Our deepest condolences to Dana and Dok. Thanks for sharing him with us.”

Pittsburgh Magazine Publisher and Vice President Betsy Benson recalled a chance encounter with Harris.

“One of the last times I saw Franco was at a charity event some years ago. When a spontaneous passing of the “hat” occurred at some point, I happened to be standing next to him. Franco pulled a 100 dollar bill out of his wallet and dropped into a bowl filled with 5s and 10s. It was a small but significant thing and represented what was special about Franco — he was all about the community and was willing to show up and help — everywhere.”

Harris was 72. His death was confirmed by his son, former mayoral candidate Dok Harris. No cause of death was given.

CAM HEYWARD DURING A REGULAR SEASON GAME BETWEEN THE PITTSBURGH STEELERS AND THE TENNESSEE TITANS, DEC. 19, 2021 AT HEINZ FIELD. THE STEELERS BEAT THE TITANS 19-13. PHOTO BY KARL ROSER | PITTSBURGH STEELERS

The six seasons that NBC’s “This Is Us” spent chronicling the Pearsons, Pittsburgh and the Steelers may have come to an end, but for Cam Heyward, the emotion the show generated continues to resonate.

I swear my life is like @NBCThisisUs story. I can’t make this stuff up. pic.twitter.com/sukvsiB6jE

— Cam Heyward (@CamHeyward) May 1, 2022

“I swear my life is like @NBCThisisUs story,” Heyward tweeted in early May, as the show neared its series finale. “I can’t make this stuff up.”

He included a picture of himself with brothers Corey and Connor. Connor had been drafted days earlier by the Steelers.

Their parents didn’t refer to the Heyward brothers as the Big Three, as fictional siblings Kevin, Kate and Randall Pearson had been called in the show. But the Heywards, like the Pearsons, lost their father while growing up.

Cam was 17, Corey 12 and Connor 7 on May 27, 2006, when Craig “Ironhead” Heyward died at age 39 from inoperable brain cancer. “Ironhead” was an All-American running back at the University of Pittsburgh, a first-round pick of the New Orleans Saints in 1988 and an 11-year NFL veteran.

“I just think in my life and my family, we’ve been pretty blessed,” Cam says as he enters the second year of a four-year, $65.6 million contract extension with the Steelers. The defensive tackle has been on the team since 2011.

PHOTO BY KARL ROSER | PITTSBURGH STEELERS

“Things had a way of working out.

“Me getting drafted here where my dad played, where I had aspirations of just being part of the NFL and then to wind up back in Pittsburgh where my family is was huge. And then, almost 11 years later, watching my little brother get drafted to the same team is something you can’t really plan for.”

Heyward’s siblings include a half-brother, Craig Jr., and an adopted sister, Meagan.

The Pearsons “have an immediate family that wasn’t all biological, and I think we’re the same in that regard,” says Cam’s mother, Charlotte Heyward-Wesley, who lives in Atlanta. “I think we’re a loving family that loves everybody, the diversity.“

No one has crafted a TV series around the remarkable story of the Heywards. Perhaps somebody should.

PHOTO BY KARL ROSER | PITTSBURGH STEELERS

A Tough Beginning

Cam Heyward, 33, was born at West Penn Hospital and attended the Falk Laboratory School in Oakland.

As a child, he had such severe asthma that he didn’t know whether he would be able to play sports. He had seizures at a young age and bad allergies. He spent time at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh when it was located in Oakland.

“I wouldn’t be around today without them,” he has said about his doctors.

When his family moved away from Pittsburgh to follow his father’s NFL career, they never lost their allegiance to the Steel City.

“He might have had a Heyward jersey, but he was wearing Steelers stuff to school,” Charlotte says, recalling the family’s time in Atlanta while “Ironhead” played for the Falcons (1994-96).

“My parents sent Steelers stuff to the kids every holiday. Every Christmas they got something Steelers. They had Troy Polamalu posters up in their room. They had Steelers stuff since Day One.”

Mom, too.

“I bleed black and gold,” Charlotte says. “I always had a Steelers sweatshirt and my Terrible Towels. I was going to Steelers games when I was 10 at Three Rivers Stadium. My parents were going to training camp. Our whole family, we are die-hard Steelers fans.”

Charlotte, a native of Highland Park, remained loyal to the Black and Gold on Oct. 27, 1996, when the Falcons and her husband hosted her hometown team in Atlanta, with the Steelers winning 20-17. “I was cheering for the Steelers, I’m just going to be honest,” she says.

Despite his bouts with asthma, Cam seemed destined for the NFL.

“He was 6-foot-5 by the time he was in eighth grade,” Charlotte says. “In his pre-teens [his pediatrician] did some testing to make sure he didn’t have any hormonal imbalance.”

He lines up at defensive tackle for the Steelers these days at 6 feet, 5 inches tall and 295 pounds.

Cam’s triumphant return to his hometown might have occurred years prior to the Steelers selecting him with the 31st overall selection of the 2011 NFL draft. When he was being recruited out of Peachtree Ridge High School in Suwanee, Georgia, Pitt showed serious interest.

“That was my first visit and my first scholarship offer,” Cam says.

He ultimately signed with the Ohio State Buckeyes, where he stayed all four years.

He says his return to the city where his father became a college star was worth the wait.

“He passed away when I was 17, but I get to hear all the stories about him and how he had an impact on this city,” Cam says. “So it’s like dad is still around.”

HEYWARD DISTRIBUTES HOLIDAY MEALS DOWNTOWN IN AN EVENT THAT HE SPONSORED WITH THE GREATER PITTSBURGH COMMUNITY FOOD BANK IN NOVEMBER 2021. PHOTO BY CAITLYN EPES | PITTSBURGH STEELERS

Fierce Competitor, Tender Heart

Cam is as charitable as he is combative.

The former has garnered Cam four nominations from the Steelers for the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award, an honor that rivals the Most Valuable Player award in terms of prestige and recognizes volunteer and charity work along with on-the-field excellence.

The latter trait keeps earning him Associated Press First-Team All-Pro recognition (2017, 2019 and 2021).

Cam has come by both qualities naturally.

“When my kids were growing up there was always someone living in our house, a close family member, a friend, somebody who just needed a place to stay,” Charlotte says. “They grew up with that. And I was really intent on making them be involved in giving back as they were growing up.”

The family also gave back during the holidays. “For Thanksgiving or Christmas, I would have them create little bags of toiletries, and then we’d put cookies in there. Their teachers would also collect coats or blankets for me. And then on Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Day we’d find homeless people on the street who hadn’t made it into the missions or the shelters and the kids and I would hand them out.

“They were a little scared at first. I was like, ‘Cameron, you’re big, get out of the truck, these people need you.’ And then he’d step out and do it and then his brothers would follow.”

THE PITTSBURGH STEELERS FACE THE RAVENS IN BALTIMORE ON JAN. 9, 2022. PHOTO BY JARED WICKERHAM | PITTSBURGH STEELERS

A similar commitment to community awaited Cam upon his arrival with the Steelers. “I got to watch Troy [Polamalu], Brett [Keisel] and Aaron [Smith] give back in different ways,” Cam says. “I didn’t know how I was going to give back but I wanted to make sure I left an impact.”

The Cameron Heyward Foundation, or Heyward House, has been doing just that since 2015.

The nonprofit champions a number of causes in Pittsburgh and Atlanta: improving literacy; emphasizing the love of reading, learning and education; improving the quality of life for brain tumor patients and their families by providing post-secondary education opportunities; spreading acts of kindness by paying for a stranger’s groceries or a tank of gas; ensuring children’s birthdays are recognized and celebrated; providing dress clothes for high school boys for job or college interviews; and providing donations to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Western Pennsylvania for every Steelers sack.

It’s what Steelers players do, in part because it’s what they’ve been taught to do by veterans who greet them upon joining the team.

“We take guys under our wing, that’s kinda the Pittsburgh way,” says Keisel, the still-popular retired Steeler defensive end. Keisel says he learned the importance of community service from Alan Faneca, Jerome Bettis, Hines Ward, Kimo von Oelhoffen and Smith after being drafted by the Steelers in 2002.

“You teach them how to practice and how to prepare and how to work in the community. I’m proud to see Cam just be such a pinnacle in our community and a powerhouse on the field.

“Even 11 years in the league, you never see him getting pushed around. You always see him getting double-, triple-teamed. He still finds a way to be a game-wrecker. He’s just a beast,” Keisel says.

It took a while for Cam to achieve beast mode.

He didn’t start a game in either of his first two seasons with the Steelers. His rookie training camp in 2011 with the Steelers is memorable mostly for the number of fights he engaged in with offensive teammates.

“That’s kinda my fault,” Keisel acknowledges. “Within the first couple of days in pads, one of the offensive linemen kind of shoved him when he was running to the ball. He came to the sideline and I just whispered in his ear, ‘You let them shove you around and they’re gonna shove you the rest of your NFL life.’ The next play he went out and got in a fight. He’s been fighting ever since.”

Cam’s parents had delivered a similar message while watching him play AAU boys basketball. “We’d be like, ‘Don’t help anybody up, no; you bang inside and you foul hard and don’t help anybody up,’” Charlotte recalls.

“I’m extremely competitive,” she adds. “His dad was extremely competitive. I still play basketball with my sons. Cameron has given me a black eye before from elbowing me in the nose and eye. He says I play like Dennis Rodman and he plays me like Dennis Rodman.

“We are a very competitive family. Basketball games at our house can get kind of nasty between all of us.”

That’s life for what Charlotte described as her “gentle giant,” now married to his college sweetheart, Allie Schwarzwalder, and a father of three.

“When you meet Cam you can feel his genuineness,” she says. “I can say he’s a better man, father, son, brother, friend than he is an athlete, and he’s an All-Pro athlete … That makes me more happy as a mom.”

HEYWARD AT A BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION AT DAVE & BUSTER’S WITH CHILDREN SERVED BY THE HEYWARD HOUSE. PHOTOS BY REBECCA MEHLING | PITTSBURGH STEELERS

Accolades Abound

Recognition earned by Cam in 2021, his 11th Steelers season, included The Chief Award, which is presented annually by the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Pro Football Writers of America to the Steelers player who best assists the writers in their duties; it was the third such honor for Cam.

In May, he was named the 18th recipient of the PFWA’s Good Guy Award (a national version of The Chief Award).

Also in May, Cam was commencement keynote speaker at Carlow University, where he received an honorary doctorate of science degree, acknowledging his philanthropy and dedication to mankind.

“They act like I’m Mr. Rogers around here, the way they treat me,” Cam says.

Head coach Mike Tomlin went further than that when Cam’s fourth Walter Payton nomination was announced in December.

“There’s not a box he doesn’t check,” Tomlin said. “He’s just a blueprint for young players.”

But he’s not a finished product.

Off the field, Cam has ambitions of wanting to take The Heyward House beyond Pittsburgh and Atlanta to help youth across the nation. Both Charlotte, the foundation’s executive director, and Allie are very active in the charity.

There’s also unfinished business on the field.

“He wants a chance to win a Super Bowl,” Charlotte says. “He wants it with every ounce of energy, everything that’s within him. He wants that, he’s striving for that for the organization, for the Rooney family and for the City of Pittsburgh, but for his own personal goals, as well.”

It would be the ultimate happy ending for the Heyward family’s “This Is Us” real-life sequel.

“‘These Heywards,’ or whatever we would call it, would end with me and my brother kissing the Super Bowl trophy,” Cam says. “And with my mom shedding a tear knowing my dad gets a chance to watch us win the big one.”

PHOTO BY KARL ROSER | PITTSBURGH STEELERS

Mike Prisuta is a veteran of Pittsburgh sports reporting since 1985. He writes a weekly column, Mike Prisuta’s Sports Section, for Pittsburgh Magazine. He can be heard Monday through Friday talking sports with Randy Baumann and the DVE Morning Show. His favorite sport is whatever’s in season.

ROETHLISBERGER AT HEINZ FIELD, JANUARY 3, 2022 | PHOTO BY PITTSBURGH STEELERS

It was the announcement everyone expected. Steelers Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger formally ended his long and storied football career with a video message posted on social media Thursday morning.

A message from Ben:@steelers #NFL #SteelersNation #ThankYou#HereWeGo #LoveAndHonor pic.twitter.com/pUbKGO1nUs

— BigBen7.com (@_BigBen7) January 27, 2022

The 11th overall pick in the 2004 draft, Roethlisberger led the Steelers to two Super Bowl titles, eight division titles and 165 regular-season victories. He finishes with the most victories of any quarterback who spent his entire career with one team.

They may have been wearing masks, but there was no hiding the grins on kids’ faces Tuesday as Pittsburgh Steelers safety Minkah Fitzpatrick hosted a bike giveaway at the Carnegie Science Center. 

The NFL player teamed up with national nonprofit Dreambuilders Foundation and Pittsburgh-based KidsVoice to distribute bikes to local foster children as a way of encouraging them to get outdoors. 

“It’s just something simple, something fun,” Fitzpatrick told steelers.com. “Hopefully these kids will go home, ride their bikes with their friends, pop some wheelies and just have fun.”

About 35 kids between the ages of 7 and 12 attended the drive-up giveaway, where Fitzpatrick handed out bikes, bike helmets, a pair of new shoes and signed Steelers items. He also took time to visit with the kids and pose for pictures — later, even helping load bikes into the recipient families’ cars. 

“Minkah is an extremely genuine person,” Scott Hollander, executive director of KidsVoice, told steelers.com. “To have him say this is a cause that is important to him, that he wants to help foster kids, means so much. He hasn’t even been in Pittsburgh that long, and for him to want to do something for foster kids, at-risk kids. He is interested in the kids. He relates to the kids. He relates to my staff. He is just a genuine person.”

While Dreambuilders works with professional athletes to help “financially, physically and mentally-challenged kids receive items, opportunities and equipment they need to achieve their dream,” according to the foundation website, KidsVoice is a local agency representing abused and neglected kids in foster care or group homes. 

In partnership with @Dreambuilders_1 and @KidsVoicePA, @minkfitz_21 distributed new bikes and shoes to some Pittsburgh-area children in foster care to celebrate spring and encourage them to spend more time outdoors! pic.twitter.com/qPB65shVeU

— Steelers Community Relations (@SteelersCR) May 4, 2021

Hollander adds the COVID-19 pandemic has been particularly tough on children serviced by KidsVoice because they faced isolation and remote learning without some of the resources other kids might have at their fingertips. Getting a new bike and gear — not to mention meeting a star Steelers player — was a welcome surprise, he says. 

“Everybody was happy at the bike giveaway. Our staff hadn’t been able to have an event for the kids yet, so they were radiant,” he says. “The kids had the biggest smiles of all, getting a new bike, new shoes, getting a picture taken with Minkah. They felt so lifted and it gave them a boost.”

PHOTO BY PITTSBURGH STEELERS | KARL ROSER

The Pittsburgh Steelers announced Tuesday that it had come to terms on a three-year contract extension with head coach Mike Tomlin.

“Mike is one of the most successful head coaches in the National Football League,” Steelers president Art Rooney II said in a statement released by the team, “and we are confident in his leadership to continue to lead our team as we work to win another championship.”

The upcoming season will be Tomlin’s 15th with the team, tying him with predecessor Bill Cower for the second-longest tenure as head coach behind Chuck Noll. Tomlin is currently the third longest-tenured head coach in the NFL. The extension continues his ties with the team through the 2024 season.

“I am extremely grateful for this contract extension and want to thank Art Rooney II and everyone in the organization for the support in my first 14 seasons,” Tomlin said in the team-issued statement. “We have a goal of winning the organization’s seventh Super Bowl championship, and I couldn’t be more enthusiastic about this upcoming season.”

PHOTO BY KARL ROSER | PITTSBURGH STEELERS

Sobering news from the Pittsburgh Steelers. The team now has five players on the Reserve/COVID-19 list, including its franchise quarterback.

The players include quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, offensive lineman Jerald Hawkins, running back Jaylen Samuels and linebacker Vince Williams, the team announced Tuesday morning. All will be isolated for five days and are not permitted in the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex. The team placed tight end Vance McDonald on the Reserve/COVID-19 list on Monday evening after testing positive for the virus.

According to NFL protocols, players deemed “high-risk” contacts of an individual that tests positive must isolate for five days. The players will need to pass COVID-19 tests throughout the week before they are allowed to play Sunday when the Steelers host the Cincinnati Bengals.

The news comes two days after the Steelers set a franchise record by opening the season at 8-0.

With gym doors closed across Pittsburgh, athletes are trying their hardest to stay in shape. As a result, Steelers running back James Conner is getting creative with a unique quarantine workout.

A video shared by Overtime shows Conner’s lumberjack inspired workout: tossing logs. Watch the 2018 Pro Bowler give the timber some air time.

https://twitter.com/overtime/status/1240821529405018118?s=21

Related:

• Finally Home: How Pittsburgh Won Over Troy Polamalu
• Troy Polamalu and his Hair Get Last Word in New Commercial
• The Mane Man
• Polamalu’s New Gig: Parking Lot Quarterback

PHOTOS BY PITTSBURGH STEELERS – KARL ROSER

Mike Tomlin was decisive again this week, anointing Devlin “Duck” Hodges as the quarterback who still represents the best chance to win for the Steelers even though he’s coming off a loss in which he threw four interceptions.

It’s been that kind of season.

Somehow, the Steelers have remained in the playoff chase, despite circumstances that easily could have and probably should have been deal-breaking.

At 8-6 heading into Sunday’s game against the Jets, they’re still threatening to make this a season to savor even though Le’Veon Bell and Antonio Brown are distant memories and Ben Roethlisberger hasn’t played since mid-September.

Tomlin deserves a lot of credit for that.

But it’s going to take much more than picking the right quarterback – Hodges is absolutely still that despite his struggles last Sunday against Buffalo – to finish the job.

The biggest problems remain experience and continuity on offense. Neither Hodges nor Mason Rudolph has the prerequisite reps under their belts. And they’ve both been throwing or handing off for the most part to wide receivers and running backs who lack the same, individually and collectively.

And that leaves the Steelers clinging to hopes that their defense can yet be their salvation.

It’s worked out that way more often than not in this almost unimaginable campaign.

But to make it to the playoffs the Steelers are going to need even more from their defense, not just more of the same.

PHOTOS BY PITTSBURGH STEELERS – KARL ROSER

All the sacks and turnovers and splash plays have been celebrated, and justifiable so.

But to reach the postseason, let alone have any reasonable chance if and when the Steelers get there, the defense is going to have to wake up the echoes of Blitzburgh or The Steel Curtain.

And that remains a long shot, yet also plausible.

The current defense has demonstrated characteristics similar to those of the Ghosts of Steelers Defenses Past, in particular, an intangible possessed by a group of recently legendary predecessors that goes beyond coverage schemes and blitz packages.

Take it from a guy who was paying attention then and is still paying attention now.

“That whole stand from ’05 to 2010 was really a terrific time to play defense for the Pittsburgh Steelers,” former defensive end Brett Keisel maintained this week during a visit to the DVE Morning Show Christmas Party. “We had a core group of men that believed in each other. We had a core group of men that held each other accountable. We were more worried about letting down our brothers than anything.

“That was a great time, and I think what I see with these guys now is just that joy we had. That joy of playing this game. That joy of competing at a really high level and doing it well, making people feel you when you’re out there playing, inflicting that heat on people. They’re starting to do that and they’re thirsty. They’re thirsty for those big plays, they’re hungry to be great and it’s fun to watch.”

It needs to be more than fun on Sunday.

It needs to be suffocating, against the Jets and beyond.

That might be a bridge too far, but it’s also the Steelers’ only option.

And for what it’s worth, the defense is committed to just such a cause.

“Our mentality has been crazy this whole season,” cornerback Mike Hilton insisted. “We have a lot of guys that really just embrace being in the moment, trying to be the leader of this team, the defensive leader, the play-maker. Everybody wants to be the guy to make the play to change the game.

“When you have a lot of guys with that mentality you can show how good of a defense you are.”

It’s been a dominating season for the Steelers’ defense. But to be remembered as truly great, a defense has to dominate in the playoffs, or at the very least get there.

It’s showtime for the Steelers’ defense.

No matter who’s playing running back, wide receiver or QB.

PHOTO BY DIAMOND IMAGES

Editor’s note: This article was first posted in August of 2019, weeks before Steelers Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger season was ended by surgery on his right elbow.

It took two championships for Ben Roethlisberger to see himself as that most precious of NFL commodities: The franchise quarterback.

“I think after the second Super Bowl, that touchdown to Santonio, that drive, that kinda made me feel like, ‘Man, I can do this,’” Roethlisberger says at the dawn of his 16th NFL season.

When he was young, he held one of the great quarterbacks as a model — both in terms of late-game heroics and in-huddle psychology.

“I remember growing up thinking about Joe Montana, right? ‘Hey, isn’t that John Candy in the front row?’ Or whatever his comment was. You just think, ‘Man, as a kid, he was winning Super Bowls on last-minute drives,’ and I got to do it.”
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Montana, the legendary quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, noticed Candy in the stands on Jan. 22, 1989, during Super Bowl XXIII at Joe Robbie Stadium in Miami. With 3:20 remaining in the game, the 49ers were pinned at their own 8-yard line with the Cincinnati Bengals leading, 16-13. To break the tension in the huddle, Montana pointed out Candy to his teammates.

The legendary quarterback then directed an 11-play, 92-yard drive that culminated in a 10-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver John Taylor for the game-winning score with 34 seconds left in regulation.

That’s what a franchise quarterback does. It’s what Ben Roethlisberger has done for the Steelers, like Terry Bradshaw before him. It’s what will be needed, perhaps more than in recent campaigns, over the next two seasons — Roethlisberger’s final years under contract.

After that — if history is any indication — it could be some time before the Steelers find another franchise quarterback.
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On Feb. 1, 2009, with 2:30 left in Super Bowl XLIII at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, the Steelers trailed the Arizona Cardinals, 23-20. Roethlisberger orchestrated an eight-play, 78-yard march that ended on a thread-the-needle pass and a miraculous, toe-tapping catch by wide receiver Santonio Holmes for the 6-yard, game-winning score with 35 seconds left in the fourth quarter. In that moment, Roethlisberger re-created all those last-minute miracles he’d imagined while imitating Montana as a kid in the backyard.
Welcome to the franchise quarterback club.

“That kinda does something for you,” Roethlisberger acknowledges.

He’d been in the NFL for five years by then. He’d even been to a Super Bowl — and won it (on Feb. 5, 2006 in Detroit, 21-10, over Seattle in Super Bowl XL).
But Roethlisberger has never done anything like he did that night in Tampa. Few NFL quarterbacks have. For the Steelers, only Terry Bradshaw had until that point — and the gap between Brad and Ben took more than 20 years to navigate.

Franchise quarterbacks can be agonizingly hard to find. That’s an absolute of life in the NFL, and one the Steelers might be reminded of sooner rather than later. As quickly, perhaps, as the conclusion of the 2021 season.

STEELERS GENERAL MANAGER KEVIN COLBERT | PHOTO BY PITTSBURGH STEELERS | KARL ROSER

Why can’t the best NFL quarterbacks be scouted and identified in advance? “I think guys distinguish themselves once they get in the league,” Steelers General Manager Kevin Colbert says. “We can identify skill sets. We can identify statistics. What you really can’t identify is who’s going to make those plays in critical moments.

“You can look at history, watch what they do at the collegiate level and hope that projects forward. But until they have to do it in this environment, you really don’t know.”

That’s one reason why the Steelers selected Tee Martin during the fifth round of the 2000 NFL Draft — the same year Tom Brady went to the New England Patriots in the sixth round (199th overall).

Brady won his NFL-record sixth Super Bowl in February — as many as Ben Roethlisberger and Terry Bradshaw have collected, combined.

PHOTO BY DIAMOND IMAGES

In between Bradshaw’s last pass on Dec. 10, 1983, against the Jets at Shea Stadium, and Roethlisberger’s first start on Sept. 26, 2004, at the Dolphins, the Steelers’ would-be solutions at QB wrote chapters wrought with flirtation, frustration and, ultimately, failure.

The team turned to 13 different starters in that interim, from Cliff Stoudt, in the 1983 season finale, to Tommy Maddox, who opened 2004 at the helm but was lost to injury during the season’s second week.

Only five times from 1984 through 2003 was a Steelers quarterback able to start all 16 games in a season (Bubby Brister in ’90, Kordell Stewart in ’97, ’98 and ’01, and Maddox in ’03). The tenures were often brief  — Jim Miller started but didn’t finish the 1996 opener at Jacksonville — and/or forgettable — Scott Campbell went 0-2 in 1985, Todd Blackledge 2-3 in 1988-89 and Kent Graham 2-3 in 2000.

The list includes Steve Bono, who went 2-1 in replacement games in 1987 as the NFL attempted to play on through a labor dispute, and Mike Tomczak (15-12 as a sometimes starter from ’93-’99), who shone occasionally but was never able to sustain.

Even when the Steelers thought they’d finally found their man, they hadn’t.

Neil O’Donnell (39-22 as a starter in the regular season from ’91-’95) got them to the 1994 AFC Championship Game as a heavy favorite against the San Diego Chargers. But a 13-3, third-quarter lead turned into a 17-13 deficit; O’Donnell’s fourth-and-goal pass from the San Diego 3-yard-line was batted away by linebacker Dennis Gibson.
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The loss was staggering for the Steelers. It was also an appropriate precursor to what awaited them the following season in Super Bowl XXX.

Trailing the Dallas Cowboys, 20-17, with 4:08 remaining in Tempe, Ariz., O’Donnell dropped back on second-and-10 from the Steelers’ 32 and fired for wide receiver Andre Hastings on an underneath route.

The ball was intercepted by Cowboys defensive back Larry Brown, one of three interceptions O’Donnell suffered in what turned out to be his last game with the Steelers.

Stewart, 46-29 as a regular-season starter with the Steelers, reached the AFC Championship Game in 1997 and again in 2001. On each occasion he threw three interceptions and lost a fumble.

The quarterbacking wasn’t consistently awful between Brad and Ben. More often than not it was good enough to win.

But it was never good enough.

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Roethlisberger, drafted 11th overall in 2004, wasn’t immediately good enough, either. He also lost his first AFC Championship Game.

But in the 2005 playoffs, Roethlisberger threw for a combined 680 yards, with seven touchdowns and just one interception, in successive road victories at Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Denver before surviving Seattle at Ford Field. His storied career has to date included two more trips to the Super Bowl, including the personally transformative ending of the tilt with Arizona.

Now, 15 years after he was drafted, the Steelers might find themselves leaning on Roethlisberger more than ever.

The team he inherited from Maddox in 2004 had a defense led by the likes of Aaron Smith, James Farrior, Joey Porter and Troy Polamalu. Roethlisberger had Jerome Bettis and Hines Ward to get the ball to on offense.

The Super Bowl Steelers of 2008 had Ward, Holmes and Heath Miller on the receiving end of Roethlisberger’s passes and a defense that had added James Harrison, LaMarr Woodley and Brett Keisel.

PHOTOS BY PITTSBURGH STEELERS | KARL ROSER

This season’s Steelers don’t have the been-there, done-that street cred of their predecessors.

On offense, the line is rock solid. Running back James Conner and wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster are exciting, developing stars. But Conner and Smith-Schuster aren’t Le’Veon Bell and Antonio Brown — at least not yet.

On defense, end Cam Heyward was a first-team AP All-Pro in 2017, and outside linebacker T.J. Watt appears on the verge of earning such a distinction. But the rest of the defense will be trying to figure it out as they go along.

The 2019 Steelers appear to be Roethlisberger’s team — more than ever before.

It’s almost, he says, as if all he’s achieved and experienced over the years “has been set up for this? I hope so.”

“I have a lot of guys that come onto this team, into this locker room like, ‘Man, I’ve been watching you since I was in elementary school,’” Roethlisberger says. “‘Thanks, I appreciate that; don’t ever talk about that again.’”

Roethlisberger, who turned 37 in March, is now the only player on the roster to have won a Super Bowl in a Steelers uniform.

“When you’ve been here as long as I have and you’ve been through so much, I think guys look at you and lean on you,” he says.

“It’s my responsibility as a guy that’s been [to the Super Bowl] to speak to them and let them know what it’s like.”

Roethlisberger’s plan is to be that guy for three more seasons and “try to win at least one more [Super Bowl],” he says. “I’m never gonna predict anything moving forward past that, but I’m gonna honor the three years [on my contract] and give it everything I have.”

Colbert knows the end is coming — and understands the urgency that imparts.

“There have been periods where we haven’t had Ben and we’ve survived it,” he added. “But it’s critical that he’s with us for the time he is and it’s critical for us to make the most of it.”

PM columnist Mike Prisuta is a veteran of Pittsburgh sports reporting since 1985. Mike can be heard Monday through Friday talking sports with Randy Baumann and the DVE Morning Show. Read more in his weekly blog, Mike Prisuta’s sports section.

PHOTOS COURTESY PITTSBURGH STEELERS

Editor’s Note: Legally blind and suffering from dementia, Davis was found dead Sept. 10 near his home at an adult day care center in McKeesport. Police report that his death is not suspicious. The following article was published a year before his death.

The broad smile that was his signature is seen only in the shadows of Sam Davis’ private world now.

When the Pittsburgh Steelers were at the apex of their 1970s glory, when they were the mightiest assemblage of football talent in the history of the game, they were held together by Davis, the one they called Tight Man, the nickname given him for his role in keeping the team close. Tight Man befriended rookies, teased fellow veterans and flashed that smile.

But history, or some crueler force, left him behind.

In the circular, plastic confines of Three Rivers Stadium, Davis once was celebrated, starting 10 seasons alongside left tackle Jon Kolb for the only franchise in National Football League history to win back-to-back Super Bowls twice. He blocked for Terry Bradshaw in 1972 when the Blonde Bomber launched the throw for what came to be known as the Immaculate Reception, the miracle play that beat the Oakland Raiders in the Steelers’ first playoff game. He appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1976, escorting Rocky Bleier on a run in the snow in Cincinnati.

In Super Bowl XIII against the Dallas Cowboys, in what some observers consider the greatest collection of players to compete in a single NFL contest, Davis manhandled the Manster, Randy White, who was the big game’s co-most valuable player a year earlier.

Serious fans know that the offensive captain of those great Steelers teams was not Bradshaw, not running back Franco Harris, nor even center Mike Webster, all of them Hall of Famers.

It was Davis, the one who reminded young linemen to study their playbooks and offered to help when the schemes seemed too complicated.

A 6-foot-1, 255-pound trapping machine, Davis was one of many discoveries of legendary scout Bill Nunn, who turned finding talent at obscure black colleges into the marrow of a dynasty. Davis not only could move, he had a trait Coach Chuck Noll valued almost as much: smarts. Davis parlayed that into an offseason job in sales at Heinz, which prompted him to don No. 57 on Sundays. He became a proven performer on the field and off, seizing the starting job at left guard in Noll’s second season and ascending at the iconic company known best for its ketchup.

Few Steelers from those days appeared more set than Davis for what Noll referred to as “their life’s work,” meaning careers after football. Davis was a relentless entrepreneur, constantly conjuring up and pursuing new ideas. He started a construction business and other ventures. He dazzled clients and prospects with his trademark smile, good humor and love of people. He looked the part of one on his way to greater success, driving his shiny black Mercedes, clad in pinstripe three-piece suits and brandishing one of those four gleaming Super Bowl rings.

But somewhere in Davis’ world, in a place many of those closest to him never noticed, a storm was building. It was powerful enough to snatch it all away, to take from the man not his existence but the very man himself, to leave only a faint outline — with the rest ripped from his memory like pages torn from a book.

Three of his Super Steelers linemates — Mike Webster, Ray Mansfield and Jim Clack — are dead. So, too, are three of the four members of the Steel Curtain — L.C. Greenwood, Ernie Holmes and Dwight White — who lined up opposite him in practice. Davis survived them all but was gone before them.

The man his teammates knew vanished 27 years ago, on a weekend in September.

Set against a hazy Beaver County sky, the deteriorating farmhouse in Marion Township reflects the life of the Steeler who once dwelled there. Its wood façade is cracked and rotting. A glass block corner flashes the grandeur Davis sought to infuse into the structure when he made renovations in the 1980s.

Here is where it all came crashing down, where the dreams and a life basking in past triumphs — the right of any Steeler from the 1970s — died.

Only a few people, if any, know precisely what happened. Whether Davis is among them is part of the mystery. Even if the effects of the fall did not erase his recollection of the event, fear’s grip might be too strong for him to talk about it, and, if not that, there’s the hold of dementia and Parkinson’s. Tamara Davis, his wife, says those diseases have ravaged her husband’s mind. She wonders whether he’s also affected by chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. That’s the silent killer that claimed Webster, a condition that results from blows to the head while playing football but can’t yet be reliably detected until after death.

After returning from a weekend at her parents’ home outside Pittsburgh, Tamara Davis found her husband motionless on the basement floor at 10 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 8, 1991. Some who saw Davis then thought death would take him. Investigators eventually declared they’d found no proof of foul play.

“The circumstances were not suspicious,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. That’s the conclusion Tamara Davis heard, too, and it’s the one she says she believes and prefers. Her husband simply fell.

“I’d rather that be the case,” she says, “than other things I’ve heard.”

Teammates and others who saw Davis afterward insist there’s more to the story.

“That was no accident,” Kolb says. He describes seeing burn or rub marks on Davis’ neck, arms, hands and feet. Others who saw him offer similar descriptions. A 1998 column by late Post-Gazette sports editor Bruce Keidan described Davis as having been “beaten and tortured nearly to death.” Jim Wexell repeated that depiction in his 2012 book “Tales from Behind the Steel Curtain.”

Tamara Davis knows that account, too — anyone close to Davis in those days has heard it — but she says she does not believe it.

Roy Raida, a Marion Township municipal worker who later moved into the farmhouse where Davis was discovered, says the local police chief at the time told him members of a motorcycle gang beat Davis, then tied him to the back of a truck and dragged him before hurling him down the basement stairs. Davis himself provided a different account to investigators, Raida says.

The former township police chief to whom Raida referred is dead.

“We have nothing on the case in our records,” current Marion Township Police Chief Frank Evanson says. “That could be because of all the time that has passed, or it could be because we didn’t handle the investigation. I really don’t know.”

When information was requested for this article, state police initially sought more time to search their files, then said they also have no records.

Whether it was an accident or something nefarious related to his business ventures and the debt he would accumulate, there’s no one alive today who is willing to say.

Tamara Davis expresses concern about her husband being asked about that night, or anything else, for that matter. He resides in an assisted living facility in McKeesport, according to court records. His wife declined a request to interview him. “He’s not the person he was,” she says.

“If you described it honestly, it wouldn’t be flattering,” she says.

Her husband’s ex-teammates see him rarely, although he made an appearance at training camp in 2009, following the Steelers’ Super Bowl victory earlier that year.

Tamara Davis says he remembers bits of his old life. For some time, she says, he seemed to think and talk of little else but his days as a Steeler.

A fog remains in his once-keen mind. The injury rendered Sam Davis a ghost of himself.

“I’ve seen him at card shows” in recent years, says Gerry “Moon” Mullins, the starter at right guard on the opposite side of the line from Davis. “And for a minute, you kind of forget. He still has that same bubbly smile. But he doesn’t know who you are. He’s just not there anymore.”

Sam Davis was born July 5, 1944, a month after the D-Day invasion, when America was fighting to save the world from Nazi tyranny while at home blacks still rode in the backs of buses and drank from separate water fountains.

Like future Steelers teammate Hall of Famer Mel Blount, Davis spent part of his childhood on a farm in the deep south of Georgia. Years later, after fur coats and pinstripe suits became part of his wardrobe, Davis occasionally returned to the life of Southern farmboy, showing up in overalls at his spread in Beaver County, where he would saw down trees and mend fences.

“He used to say all the time that he was just a country boy,” Tamara Davis says.

He rarely spoke of his childhood, she says. He came of age in a time and place radically different from the one where he one day would make his name.

On a 100-yard patch of grass, Davis found a way to another place, as did so many of his future Steelers teammates, like him, playing the game in relative obscurity but discovering in it release — and a future. In high school, before a Steelers teammate hung the Tight Man nickname on him, Davis was known simply as Rock. That moniker, he explained on an information form he completed for the NFL, was given by a coach “because of my solid hitting power.”

At Northwestern High School in Jacksonville, Fla., he was a defensive terror, recording in his sophomore season 10 unassisted tackles in the backfield. But pro defensive linemen were taller, like Mean Joe Greene, who stood 6 feet 4 inches tall, or Greenwood, the sinewy, 6-foot-6-inch sack master. So Davis moved to offense.

Despite his devastating hitting and defensive prowess, he struggled to get noticed when black athletes still labored against discrimination. As late as 1970 — the season Davis broke into the starting lineup with the Steelers — University of Alabama coaching legend Paul “Bear” Bryant fielded an all-white team against a Southern California squad with an all-black backfield, including the quarterback in an era when men of color largely were excluded from that position.

Only after SC running back Sam “Bam” Cunningham gashed Bama’s defense in the Birmingham heat did the football-crazed state give the Bear leave to make haste on his desire to integrate. That was too late for Davis and many of his contemporaries. He landed at tiny Allen University in Columbia, S.C., a historically black school with an enrollment of 900 students.

Davis starred at Allen beyond the notice of much of the remaining world, football or otherwise. But he did not escape the watchful eye of the man who largely revolutionized the Steelers and pro football with them.

William Goldwyn “Bill” Nunn, managing editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, the city’s deeply influential black newspaper, had captured the attention of the moribund pro football franchise with his annual Black College All-America teams, featuring an array of talented but unheralded players. In 1967, Nunn accepted a job with the Steelers as a part-time scout.

That same year, he found Davis, among the first of many discoveries that helped transform the Steelers.

Two careers were off and running.

In America’s troubled summer of 1967, Davis reported as a rookie to training camp in Latrobe. It was the first full camp the team spent at St. Vincent College. The Steelers have been training there since.

Race riots were rippling across the country, first in New Jersey, then in Minneapolis and finally there was the 12th Street Riot in Detroit that left 43 people dead, 342 hurt and 1,400 buildings burned to the ground. Tensions simmered across western Pennsylvania, too.

At the time, no one thought of Pittsburgh as a city of champions. The town had three World Series titles from the Pirates — just one in the four decades before ’67 — and nothing else. The Penguins had yet to play their first season in the National Hockey League. The Steelers had never qualified for the playoffs and were in the middle of eight consecutive losing seasons.

Known for his footwork and explosive power firing out of his three-point stance, Davis — Nunn’s free-agent find — sat for three seasons behind 6-foot-3-inch, 240-pound Larry Gagner, a 1966 second-round draft pick who quickly became entrenched as the starter at left guard, was named a team captain and widely regarded as the Steelers’ most consistent lineman.

Like Davis, Gagner stuck around even after rookie coach Chuck Noll took over for Bill Austin in 1969. Before his first training camp practice, a young Noll explained to his players that he’d reviewed film all summer and found their effort sufficient but their abilities lacking. Most simply weren’t good enough to play for him and eventually would lose their jobs. Gagner lasted but savored the high life, which nearly got him killed and brought his burgeoning NFL career to an abrupt halt: He dislocated his hip in a crash driving his Porsche 911, drunk, near his offseason Florida home. He was never the same player and, by 1973, just as the Steelers were hitting their stride, Gagner was out of pro football.

In his absence, Davis emerged as the new starter at left guard in 1970, the year Three Rivers Stadium opened. He remained a fixture at that position for the rest of the decade, through eight straight playoff appearances, seven division titles and those magnificent four Super Bowl wins, including the performance of a lifetime in the Steelers’ second big-game triumph over Dallas in January 1979.

Like his team, Davis reached his zenith that Sunday night in Miami, where Pittsburgh topped the Cowboys 35-31. Davis locked down the great Randy White, an effort linemates would recall for years. Another Super Bowl followed the next season, and then age did what the rest of the league could not, beating down the mighty Steelers and Davis with them.

He performed so well past age 30 that teammates called Davis “Riggy,” short for “Rigor Mortis.” Even as Davis’ career began to fade, his influence loomed.

“Sam was just a great teammate,” Wolfley says. “The mental acuity he had to be able to run our traps was amazing. He showed me what it meant to be a Steeler, helping a young guy like me learn the game.”

After Super Bowl XIV, Davis never played again, spending two seasons on injured reserve with knee injuries before retiring in January 1982. He’d played in 168 games.

With a job at Heinz as manager of sales planning and food service sales, work that took him on calls across the country, Davis appeared ready for his life’s work.

Three months after retiring, he tapped into his entrepreneurial spirit and launched Sam Davis Construction, which took off as he picked up contracts to supply cement on major road and building projects.

He capitalized on benefits accorded minority-owned businesses. Federal, state and city dictates seek to direct public money to companies owned by minorities or women through various incentives, including grants and loans. Sometimes, large portions of that money are obtained unscrupulously by white-owned businesses using minority- or women-owned companies as fronts.

Investigators in 1986 claimed such a case involved Davis’ construction company, which they described as a front for a South Side cement contractor. His photograph appeared on the front page of the Post-Gazette on June 10, 1986; the headline read, “Puppet concrete firms subvert minority system.”

That year, Pittsburgh’s Urban Redevelopment Authority disqualified Sam Davis Construction as minority-owned for $842,000 in contracts to supply cement for the city’s CNG Tower-Benedum Center for the Performing Arts project.

Meanwhile, Davis’ finances were crumbling, according to court documents.

By the end of 1989, he owed almost $250,000 in federal taxes. Before suffering his brain injury, Davis and his wife were forced to liquidate all their assets to cover debts, according to records in divorce proceedings Tamara initiated in 2005. The couple also started pursuing a bankruptcy declaration. Tamara Davis, his second wife whom he married in 1985, stated in divorce records that her husband made “a series of poor business and investment decisions which had a disastrous impact on” the couple’s finances. Neither the divorce nor the bankruptcy was finalized.

A friend who asked not to be named says that in the weeks leading up to Davis’ tumble down the basement stairs, Davis approached him, desperate for money. Davis got it once, but the friend was forced to turn him away when he came back for more. The friend says he relayed this account to investigators but heard nothing more about it.

The fall’s effects were immediate. Friends wondered how Davis survived. The “mental acuity” Wolfley cited never returned. Memories of his life as a Steeler, however, remained vivid. Tamara Davis recalls her husband sitting in their home imagining that he was in the team locker room, talking to Kolb. Troubled, she called her husband’s longtime linemate.

“When Jon came in, Sam just smiled and started talking to him like they were in the locker room again,” Tamara says.

Forced to sell many of their belongings and with an incapacitated husband and three children to raise, Tamara Davis landed in a modest Mount Washington home. She relied on his NFL pension of $2,707 a month plus another $1,384 in Social Security benefits to cover the cost of his care at an assisted-living facility, according to court records.
Flashes of the man Davis once was appeared occasionally. Forty-two years after he strode onto the practice fields at St. Vincent College as Nunn’s gem of a free-agent find, Davis returned to Latrobe in August 2009 following the Steelers’ sixth Super Bowl victory. He savored recollections of Sunday afternoons and the coach who guided the dynasty.

“The best part about those days was Chuck Noll,” Davis said then. “He changed it. If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t have gotten to where we are. He loved the game. He loved his players. He was an excellent coach, the best coach.”

Public appearances by Davis largely had been limited to card shows, where ex-teammates see the Tight Man as they never expected to find him.

“It’s very sad,” Mullins says. “Sam was such an outgoing guy.”

Though she says she knows little about his playing career, Tamara Davis prefers people see Davis as he was, a leader on professional football’s greatest team.

It’s the image to which Tamara Davis clings, the affection apparent as she reflects on the man she knew on the other side of the line dividing their life, the time before it all went wrong.

“No one can imagine what it’s been like,” she says. “We had our lives ripped from us. It’s still hard to believe. But you just have to go on. That’s all we can do.”

Unlike the end of last season when he openly discussed retirement, Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger confirms he will play next year. But that doesn't mean he's not making plans for when his football days are done.

Roethlisberger has announced his next move — similar to former teammate Jerome Bettis, he plans to open a restaurant on the North Shore. Roethlisberger closed a deal to open the restaurant with Scott Kier, his longtime business partner; the pair are partners on four other restaurants in South Carolina and Georgia.

The eatery, to be named North Shore Seven, is slated to open in a 7,100-square-foot space in an office building across from the Hyatt Place Hotel on North Shore Drive. The restaurant will be sports-themed and will contain a section featuring Steelers and Roethlisberger memorabilia, Kier says.

“This is Ben’s little baby right now, other than the Steelers, of course,” Kier told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

North Shore Seven aims to be family-friendly with a tasty menu.

“The food has always been the difference maker for us,” Kier says.

 Kier and Roethlisberger hope to open in spring 2019 before the Pirates season begins.
 

Roger Wood's “Here We Go” fight song debut in 1994 and has been updated multiple times throughout the Steelers playoff runs. This edition includes rookies JuJu Smith-Schuster and TJ Watt and former Cleveland Browns cornerback Joe Haden.
 

It took one spring practice, the first of 10 such sessions — Organized Team Activities, the Steelers call them — for ninth-year safety Mike Mitchell to recognize the defining characteristic of the team’s defense.

“A lotta young guys,” Mitchell acknowledged.

Among them were seven players under the age of 25 who, before the Steelers had completed the Saint Vincent College portion of their preseason, were already being projected as starters. Five of those seven had started fewer than 16 NFL regular-season games when the 2017 campaign commenced with a 21-18 win on Sept. 10 at Cleveland.

The plan this season: Unleash a defense the Steelers have been retooling, rearranging and rebuilding for three-plus years.
 

Vince Williams, who had taken over Lawrence Timmons’ spot at inside linebacker, has a bit more experience than some of his teammates. But at 27 and with 17 NFL starts in four NFL seasons on his resume, Williams didn’t constitute a known commodity at the season’s outset.

Mitchell arrived through free agency in 2014, the same year inside linebacker Ryan Shazier was drafted in the first round (15th overall) and defensive end Stephon Tuitt was gobbled up on the second. Outside linebacker Bud Dupree was the Steelers’ first-round pick in 2015 (22nd overall), the same year cornerback Ross Cockrell signed after being released by Buffalo.

Last year’s top three draft choices — cornerback Artie Burns in the first round (25th overall), second-round safety Sean Davis and third-round nose tackle Javon Hargrave — were selected to invest in the defense.

T.J. Watt was gobbled up with this year’s No. 1 pick (30th overall), a 22-year-old outside linebacker from Wisconsin who was immediately installed as the successor to 39-year-old James Harrison (Harrison and Timmons were the only defensive starters over 30 when last season ended).

Cornerback Joe Haden, a seven-year veteran and former first-round draft pick of the Browns, was on Aug. 30 signed as a free agent after he had been unceremoniously released by Cleveland. 

The Steelers quickly traded Cockrell following Haden’s arrival. They also promoted 23-year-old first-year pro Mike Hilton over 11-year veteran William Gay as the first-team nickel cornerback.
 

​
Shazier, who turned 25 on Sept. 6, is adamant the Steelers had the right defensive pieces in place even before they had acquired Haden. 

“I definitely feel like we do,” he says. “Last year you saw toward the end of the year, we were playing some great defense.”

They were — until they got shredded by the Patriots’ Tom Brady the AFC Championship Game.

The Steelers had also improved on defense as the 2015 season progressed. But they ultimately coughed up a 13-play, 65-yard drive for the eventual game-winning touchdown late in the fourth quarter of what became a 23-16 playoff loss in Denver.

The last three trips to the postseason, including a 30-17 elimination by the Ravens in 2014, have ended in frustratingly similar fashion. An offense depleted by injury has failed to score at least 20 points — and the defense hasn’t been able to work around that limitation.

That’s the narrative the Steelers are trying to change.

When they opened the season against the Browns, six players were no longer considered starters in the spots they’d occupied on Jan. 17, 2016 in Denver (seven including the nickel cornerback position).

But the Steelers also returned seven of the top 12 defensive players (including the nickel) who had learned the hard way last January against Brady.
And they had defensive end — and defensive captain — Cam Heyward healthy again. 

“There are guys in the league with my years of experience that don’t have as much playoff experience as those guys have in one year,” Mitchell says, referencing the Steelers’ youngsters in general and last year’s triumvirate of rookie starters — Hargrave, Burns and Davis — in particular. “There’s only one more game you can get to that they haven’t experienced.”
 

“It feels like we’ve all kind of been growing up with each other,” Tuitt says. “Every great defense, people had to grow with each other and that’s what we’re doing.

“We’re going to be that mean, nasty defense I know we can be.”

The Steelers’ Dec. 17 rematch with New England will be revealing toward that end. How the defense performs in the playoffs, assuming the Steelers get there, looms as defining.

“We’re going to be a great defense,” Tuitt says. “A team with a great offense and a great defense, it’s going to be frickin’ scary.”

“Obviously, we have a lot of work to do,” Mitchell adds. But I feel good about the group and where we can be.”  
 

He belonged to Pittsburgh in general and the North Side in particular. He belonged to Irish America and Ireland. He belonged to the NFL and to the Steelers Nation. Dan Rooney — builder of two stadiums, a billion-dollar football business, NFL labor harmony and racial sensitivity, and bridges between constituencies — was an everywhere man whose soft, steady hand indeed was felt everywhere. Whereas his gregarious, cigar-chomping founding father’s passing shook Pittsburgh, the death of business-minded Dan on April 13, at age 84, left a rift across a far-broader landscape.

First came the Chief, then he gave way to Dan, as both were known to princes and paupers alike, even though they ambled down divergent paths. Art Rooney Sr. gave Pittsburgh the Pirates-come-Steelers, but Dan imbued the team with greatness. The father placed his firstborn in control of the business, the decision-making, the first new stadium by the time the football club embarked on its record six Lombardis. Dan personally brought in three leaders through nearly four decades, each of whom achieved their industry’s ultimate by winning the Super Bowl: Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin. Does anyone else on Earth possess such a hiring record? There were horse-racing tracks, casinos and other Rooney holdings over which Dan held final purview, so when the brothers Rooney and their McGinley cousins gathered for board meetings it essentially involved Dan telling everybody else what was what. Except for the time he excused himself to oversee the installation of a goalpost.

“Like they weren’t going to put it up straight or put it in the right spot,” brother Tim Rooney Sr. would confide in an interview for “The Steelers Encyclopedia.”

Dan ruled with such precision and dispassion at times that he fired brother Art Rooney Jr. and established a mandatory retirement that forced out some of his closest friends and family. Yet he was affable and accessible at the same time. Dan came to the office every day, drove his Buick, shuffled around the hallways and greeted all — no matter the pain from back surgery, a kidney-stone procedure (without anesthetic) or other afflictions in advanced age. “No one is as tough as Dan Rooney,” brother Pat once offered. Tough, but fair and giving.

You could call him on a Sunday, the holy day, and he’d oblige. His counsel was sought by many. “A very honest and straightforward man,” says Roy McHugh, 101 and longtime sports editor and writer extraordinaire at The Pittsburgh Press. Chuckling, McHugh adds: “I don’t think he was geared to tell a falsehood.”

Personal memories? At a book fair a couple of years ago, the former Ambassador signed his book, “Allegheny City: A History of the North Side,” for a sprawling line of fans, then surprised his fellow authors by walking across the aisle to shake their hands and congratulate them — never mind that he was, by far, the best-known guy in the room.

Further back, there was a visit to the cozy, shuttered sitting room packed with photos in the Rooney family homestead on North Lincoln Avenue, where Dan and his wife, Patricia, took turns reading aloud to each other in the evenings. For years, he’d dreamed and pondered in that room about a replacement for Three Rivers Stadium; then came Feb. 3, 1999, when the state legislature approved funding to keep the Steelers and Pirates in Pittsburgh and build Heinz Field and PNC Park. No champagne celebration for Dan Rooney, though. He went home to the dinner he’d requested: pork chops, mashed potatoes and wieners and ’kraut, cooked the way he liked them by Patricia.

Professional accomplishments? The Rooney Rule. The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. The Ambassadorship to Ireland, which he took seriously despite often flying across the pond with his surgically repaired back for Steelers games. The mediator over NFL labor disputes. The co-organizer of the salary-cap era. The confidante of committees, commissioners, prime ministers and an American president. The historian and preservationist who retraced the footsteps of Lewis and Clark and Civil War generals, and in 2016 worked with his family and the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation to create a new plaza for displaying historic sculptures saved from the former Manchester bridge. The co-founder of The Ireland Funds, which in 40 years raised more than $500 million for causes of peace, culture, education and community development.

Yet this also was the man who finished second to Johnny Unitas as all-Catholic League high school quarterback, who coached future general and CIA chief Michael Hayden in grade-school football, who was such a front-office troubleshooter that he drove the team’s battered station wagon backward up hills because reverse was its strongest gear.

An everyman whose absence will resonate everywhere. A statue alongside his father’s would be warranted. Something with him standing simply, hands in pockets, gazing over his North Side, his Pittsburgh, his everywhere. Chuid eile i síocháin.  

photo courtesy pittsburgh steelers

Former U.S. President Barack Obama, who appointed Rooney as ambassador to Ireland in 2009 

Pittsburgh History & Landmarks President and Co-founder Arthur P. Ziegler Jr. • 

Roy McHugh, author and longtime sports editor at The Pittsburgh Press

Former Pittsburgh Steelers Director of Communications Joe Gordon

Former Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy, who during his tenure from 1994 to 2006 pushed for North Shore development that included construction of the two sports stadiums. 

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto
 

He took the long way to the NFL and to the Pittsburgh Steelers. It took time for him to carve out a role on an offense boasting three All-Pros — and one that opened the season with designs on scoring 30 points a game.

Eli Rogers was confident enough in his eventual destination that he didn’t mind the wait.

Nor did Rogers consider the initial steps he took early this season — steps that included a touchdown reception in his first NFL game on Sept. 11 at Washington — as symbolic of his NFL arrival.

He may not have been drafted. He may have had to wait a season to be healthy enough to make the team. To Rogers, his story is much more about where he’s going than where he’s been.

“I already knew this was going to happen,” he maintained in early September in a Charlotte locker room, after the preseason finale but before Rogers’ spot on the Steelers’ 53-man roster had been officially secured. “For it to happen right now, to come to fruition, it’s a blessing. But at the end of the day I knew.

“The past, I don’t even think about it. I did want to get drafted — but I don’t even think about it because I know what I’m about to do.”

Rogers, a native of Miami, played his college ball at the University of Louisville with quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, a first-round pick in the 2014 draft, and receiver DeVante Parker, a first-rounder in 2015.

Surrounded by such sought-after talent, it was easy for evaluators to overlook the 5-foot-10, 180-pound slot receiver who averaged 44 catches and 505 receiving yards in four collegiate seasons. But it was the Steelers’ initial interest in Parker that eventually got them to notice Rogers.

“I was going to DeVante Parker’s (pre-draft) workout at Louisville and in preparation for that, I’m watching tape,” Steelers offensive coordinator Todd Haley says. “I kept seeing this guy in the slot making plays.”

From there, Rogers had the Steelers’ attention. And when Louisville held its Pro Day for draft-eligible players on March 11, 2015, the Steelers’ interest was piqued.

“I remember I bench-pressed 225 pounds 18 times and Coach [Mike] Tomlin was sitting on the next bench. He clapped me up and said, ‘Great job,’” Rogers recalls. “And then after the field work in the indoor [practice] facility, Coach Tomlin said he wanted to see me catch some punts, so we went inside the stadium.

“I returned some punts and I was like, ‘Coach Todd, I’m the steal of the offense in the whole draft.’ I told Coach Tomlin, too.”

The Steelers didn’t draft Rogers. Neither did any other team in a process that included the drafting of 35 wide receivers, including the Steelers’ third-round selection of Auburn’s Sammie Coates.

But when the draft ended, the Steelers were quick to offer Rogers an opportunity as an undrafted free agent. Rogers was quick to accept.

NFL-ready slot receivers — players who line up between the wide receivers and the offensive line and work the middle of the field more than the sidelines — are tough to come by, Haley says, because most NFL slot receivers don’t play in the slot in college.

“Whether they’re high picks, late-round picks, sometimes even free agents, they’re usually the big dogs at their schools,” Haley says. “The big dogs are always outside the numbers.

“Finding a guy that played the slot in college, it’s very rare these days. The guys we’re getting now we’re training for two years, trying to get them to understand how to play in there — because it’s a totally different game.”

It was a game Rogers had grown to appreciate.

“I love the slot,” he says. “I feel like I’m able to navigate through traffic well. I get to read the coverages a lot better because I’m in the mix … I get to see the visual of the defense and the whole structure of everything.”

Rogers likely would have made the team last season had he not suffered a broken foot in training camp. Many college free agents are waived-injured under such circumstances.
Rogers was placed on the injured reserve list, which signified the Steelers’ long-term interest. “I knew he’d be way ahead of the curve,” Haley says. “He’s a tough guy, which means he can block, and has very good hands. He has the skill set to be effective.”

By training camp this summer, Rogers was showing up as one of quarterback Ben Roethlisberger’s sought-after targets in two-minute drills. Roethlisberger, perhaps more than anyone, appreciates Rogers’ ability to come hard out of breaks and make contested catches in a crowd. And when the regular season opened against the Redskins, Rogers started in a three-receivers set.

His first NFL game. His first NFL start. And, 27 seconds prior to halftime, his first NFL touchdown catch. Rogers was finally off and running — and then, again, he wasn’t. A toe injury sustained on Sept. 25 at Philadelphia was the latest delay Rogers had to work around.

But between exiting the Eagles game and his return to the lineup on Oct. 16 at Miami, Rogers refused to succumb to frustration.

“I wasn’t getting trapped in the moment,” he says. “I kind of just looked forward.”  
 

Two years before the death of the intensely private Noll in 2014, Pittsburgh Steelers Chairman Dan Rooney and the Noll family embraced award-winning author Michael MacCambridge to share his story. MacCambridge draws on access to family albums and footage, team highlights, extensive interviews and peeks behind curtains heretofore drawn tight to craft “Chuck Noll: His Life’s Work,” the definitive, full-length biography of the man recognized by many, known by few.

Pittsburgh Magazine is proud to offer this exclusive excerpt of MacCambridge’s upcoming book, scheduled for release in October by University of Pittsburgh Press. This snapshot relates the pivotal 1974 season, in which the detailed, complex Noll pushed the precise buttons amid considerable turbulence — a players’ strike, three different starting quarterbacks and more. Steelers players remember the one time Noll delivered anything close to a rousing speech — a motivational rarity — and it spurred them to greatness. Noll left a legacy in Pittsburgh that endures still, teaching his team, a flagging steel region and a burgeoning Steelers Nation how to win after generations of abject organizational failure.

In a conversation with Pittsburgh Magazine’s Mike Prisuta, MacCambridge provides a glimpse of how this long-awaited biography came to be. If you seek true knowledge, the depth of detail that the educator in Noll so appreciated and the full fans’ appreciation of coach and team — well, here we go.

All photos provided by University of Pittsburgh Press, from the forthcoming book "Chuck Noll: His Life's Work," by Michael McCambridge.

Excerpt from the chapter titled “Whatever It Takes” from Chuck Noll: His Life’s Work, by Michael MacCambridge. Copyright © 2016. From the forthcoming book by University of Pittsburgh Press.

Noll looks on during a 1969 preseason game against the Cincinnati Bengals, with his former coach Paul Brown on the opposing sideline.

photos via University of Pittsburgh Press, courtesy of the Pittsburgh Steelers
 

The playoffs began in Pittsburgh on Sunday, December 23, 1974, when the Steelers played host to O. J. Simpson and the Buffalo Bills. Simpson was a year past his electrifying 2,003-yard season. But he was still the engine of the Bills’ run-dominated offense.

What Pittsburgh unveiled on the day was a slight wrinkle that would play an increasingly large role as the playoffs wore on. It was a variation on the 4–3 defense which the team called the “Stunt 4–3,” an alignment in which Joe Greene took a different stance, cocked diagonally on the nose of the center from his left tackle position. In the geometric jujitsu of line play, a force like Greene at that point in the line play could wreak havoc. Ernie Holmes was lined up shaded inside the other guard. If the Bills’ center moved to block Holmes, Greene had a clear path to the quarterback. If the center double-teamed Greene with the right guard, Holmes was in perfect position to demolish the play. Simpson was held to 49 yards rushing. “It started out as a pass technique,” Chuck later explained, “but we found it really screws up the offensive blocking. It’s an aggressive defensive play because our front four isn’t sitting and reading the offense. Instead, they’re the ones making things happen.”

From one perspective, installing a new base defensive alignment at the start of the playoffs was folly. But then, so was changing your starting quarterback three times during the regular season. It was that kind of season.

Pittsburgh scored 26 points in the second quarter en route to a 32–14 win. It was Bradshaw’s best performance of the season (12 of 19 passing for 203 yards and no interceptions, plus 48 yards rushing on 5 carries).

With the Raiders knocking off the two-time defending champion Dolphins the day before, Pittsburgh would go on the road, back to Oakland, for the 1974 AFC title game.

“We’re happy to have the opportunity to play them again,” said Chuck. He also announced that the team wouldn’t spend the week in Palm Springs, as they had before the playoff game in 1973. Bradshaw, for one, was happy: “It’s too warm out there,” he said. “We get too soft.”

By Monday morning, Chuck was well aware of Raider coach John Madden’s quote, amid the postgame jubilation after Oakland knocked off the two-time defending champion Dolphins, “When the two best teams in football get together, anything can happen.”

The two best teams. Chuck cared very little about pregame talks, but the assumption grated. He said nothing to his assistant coaches that day, nor to Dan, nor to the PR man Joe Gordon.

But Tuesday morning, Chuck strode in to the team meeting — held at the large conference room in the Three Rivers Stadium — and did something he had rarely done before. He quoted Madden again, in full, and raised his voice slightly for the first part of the quote —When the two best teams in football get together — before slowing down, an octave lower, to complete it. Anything can happen.

Chuck’s jaw was set, and he’d clenched his fists at his side, the telltale sign that he was agitated. “I’ll tell you what anything is,” Chuck said. “Anything is that Oakland isn’t getting to the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is three weeks from now. And the best team in football is right here in this room.”

It was the closest thing to a full-fledged inspirational speech that Chuck’s team would ever receive, and it was greeted with more than the usual affirmations. Greene launched out of his college desk chair, and several other players whooped in affirmation.

“It wasn’t long,” said Jack Ham of the talk. “It wasn’t one of these running speeches kind of thing and, to a man, I’ve got to admit, this one hit a nerve. It hit a nerve for me, and whether we were going to play that way no matter what, maybe we would have, but that did set a tone for the intensity of the week. Not that you needed much. You are playing an AFC Championship Game. You are playing the Raiders. But Chuck set the tone of what this was going to be about.”

On Christmas Day, the Tuesday prior to the game, Marianne and Chris joined Chuck in the basement. She had decorated Chuck’s film projector with a wreath and a red ribbon and surrounded the area with red and green candles. With holiday decorations in place, Chris and Marianne sat down with Chuck while he watched game films of the Raiders.

In the build-up to the game, Chuck was asked about the spotty weather forecast for the game, and how it might affect the Raiders’ often-sloppy field. He said the league office had promised to put a tarpaulin on the field. “I can’t do anything about it,” he added. “Al Davis is in charge of the weather.” 

He was even more deadpan when a reporter for the New York Times mentioned the Raiders’ Davis-coined motto, “Pride and Poise,” and asked if the Steelers had pride and poise as well. Chuck’s answer: “Not on our stationery.”
 

That Sunday afternoon, in Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, the Steelers played the game in an angry state. Before the Raiders’ first play from scrimmage, Ernie Holmes was bellowing to the Raiders’ Gene Upshaw that Pittsburgh was “going to kick your ass!” In football terms, that’s what they did. The stunt 4–3 proved particularly lethal as it matched up Greene and Holmes on Oakland’s aging, bruised, undersized veteran center Jim Otto. After the first series — which Greene concluded by beating a double-team block to sack Ken Stabler — the Raiders’ offensive line was on the sidelines with a chalkboard, trying to draw up a suitable response. It never came; the Raiders ran for just 29 yards on the day.

Oakland went ahead in the third quarter, when Cliff Branch beat Mel Blount on a 38-yard touchdown pass from Stabler. The Steelers still trailed 10–3 heading into the fourth quarter, when Harris ran for the game-tying touchdown. From there, the Steelers took over. Two interceptions in the fourth quarter — one by Ham and another by J. T. Thomas — helped put the game away, and Pittsburgh won, 24–13.

“They beat our butts,” said Madden after the game.

The reception at the Pittsburgh International Airport was unprecedented and chaotic, even for the Steelers faithful. As the plane touched down, at 12:56 a.m., more than 10,000 Steelers supporters had crowded into the terminal to greet the team.
 

The foundation: Noll during his first training camp in 1969, with the first draft pick of the Noll era, Joe Greene of North Texas State.

PHOTOS VIA UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS, COURTESY OF THE PITTSBURGH STEELERS
 

The challenge awaiting Chuck the next morning was what, if anything, he wanted to do differently than the Colts had done after the 1968 season. When the team gathered Tuesday, he did not tell any cautionary tales about Super Bowl III or the nightmare of recriminations that followed it. But he did warn his players to not invest the game with more importance than it already carried. It was another football game, and the Steelers would treat it as such.

When the Steelers flew to chilly New Orleans on Sunday a week before the game, Chuck brought the players into a banquet room at the Fontainebleu Hotel.

“So the meeting goes, ‘Here is the schedule for the week,’” said Bleier. “There is no curfew tonight or tomorrow night, and Tuesday is media day. We will go to our normal week’s practice as we have done all season long, then we will have Wednesday offense, Thursday defense, combination on Friday as we have done. Nothing will be different. This game isn’t any more important than last week’s game or the game before that. It is just another game.’”

The team reveled in the lack of a curfew that Sunday and Monday night — Andy Russell somehow managed to lose a rental car somewhere in Fat City. Joe Greene didn’t even unpack, just dropped his luggage in the room and headed out with his line mates, L. C. Greenwood, Dwight White, and Fats Holmes. They wound up sitting by the sidewalk in an open-air restaurant along Bourbon Street. “We had you-peel-it shrimp,” said Greene. “And we drank Heineken until they had no more.”

The night left Dwight White with a case of food poisoning and, eventually, admitted to the hospital with pneumonia, which seemed certain to rule him out of the game. Everyone but White reported for meetings Tuesday morning and prepared as usual.

There was a sense that freedom on the first nights in New Orleans, along with the innate confidence that the team had gained, left them looser for the game itself.

That week, Radakovich showed the offensive line old game footage of him playing for Penn State against Jim Brown and Syracuse in the ’50s. Chuck even allowed the players’ wives to stay with them the night before the game.

On the eve of the Super Bowl, Chuck and Marianne and Dan and Pat Rooney dined at a Mexican restaurant in the French Quarter. That Saturday-night meal was marked by an impassioned conversation, Chuck evincing annoyance with all the league-mandated activities that took him, the staff, and the Steelers out of their weekly routines. “Chuck and I got into this big discussion, ‘What’s more important: the package or the product?’” said Pat Rooney. “The league handled everything. You didn’t have much say about it. But you know, just back and forth.” 

Bud Grant’s Vikings had been mauled twice — in Super Bowl IV against Kansas City and in Super Bowl VIII against Miami — but they returned to New Orleans intent on running the football against as formidable a defense as they’d ever faced.

It poured down rain in the gray New Orleans morning, and the wind chill made it feel like it was in the low 20s. Prior to the game, equipment manager Tony Parisi was fitting the players for new shoes that he’d gotten from Canada, with spiral cleats. When Dwight White barged into the door of the locker room, his Steelers teammates let out a rousing cheer. He’d lost nearly 20 pounds in the hospital, but he was determined to play.

The players weren’t expecting a rousing speech from their coach, and they didn’t get one. “Play the way you’ve been coached,” Chuck said. “You’re going to have a good time.” After the buildup and the preparation, he had the team’s attention and could have said more. But there was nothing left to say, so he turned and the Steelers headed out for the field.

In the tunnel, before pregame introductions — starters on the Vikings offense and the Steelers defense were being introduced individually — Glen Edwards spied his old Florida A&M teammate, Vikings’ tackle Charles Goodrum, and shouted a greeting. Goodrum looked nervously over to Edwards and didn’t respond. Finally Edwards went over to slap hands and wish Goodrum good luck. But Vikings coach Bud Grant had forbade his players to even speak to the Steelers. Agitated and emboldened, Edwards said, loud enough for everyone in the tunnel to hear, “Okay, I’ll tell you what. Y’all better strap it on, m————–, ’cause you’re about to get your asses whipped!” Once again, the Steelers’ defense would deliver on a guarantee from a member of their defense.

The Vikings had gained 164 yards on the ground against the Rams in the NFC Championship Game, and they’d seen the film of the Steelers using the Stunt 4–3 against Oakland. But as in the earlier Super Bowls, they never adapted. Aging center Mick Tinglehoff was overmatched against Greene to begin with, but he had no chance with Greene tilted at an angle, knifing forward at the snap. “The way [Greene] played, he basically charged into the ‘V’ in the neck of the center in such manner so the center could not reach him if it was a strong-side play,” said Bud Carson. “If you weren’t prepared for it, it made the guard totally ineffective.”

The first half had a stultifying feel, to match the cold. The Steelers drove across the 50 twice, close enough for two field-goal attempts, but the elfin Gerela pulled one field goal wide, and then Walden, his holder, bobbled the snap on another attempt. When Fran Tarkenton mishandled a handoff to the Vikings Dave Osborn, the ball squirted free, was accidentally kicked back toward the end zone, where the Vikings’ quarterback scrambled on top of it, just in time to be touched down for a safety.

In the final two minutes of the half, Pittsburgh leading 2–0, Edwards’ pregame words would prove prophetic. The Vikings were driving, nearing the end zone, when Tarkenton threw to John Gilliam, coming across the middle. Edwards hit Gilliam high with a nasty shot — a pair of forearms to Gilliam’s facemask — sending the Vikings’ receiver backward and the football squirting back into the air, where Blount made the interception. The teams got to halftime with the score still 2–0.
Bradshaw was unabashed at halftime. “We’re whipping their asses off and still ain’t got but two points!” he said. Mansfield allowed that two points just might be enough. Chuck spoke to Bradshaw about finding tight end Larry Brown more often.

The second half began with more special teams calamities, Gerela slipping on the wet turf during the kickoff, which squibbed in and out of the hands of the Vikings fullback Bill Brown, before the Steelers’ Marv Kellum recovered. Harris’s outside run to the left, behind a stellar block from pulling right guard Gerry Mullins, put the Steelers up 9–0.

The Vikings were completely toothless, their vanilla offensive schemes easily stifled by the defense. Russell had studied their tendencies so well — and could see that they were stubbornly sticking with them — that he would yell up to Holmes and White, “Hey, it’s gonna be 17 straight! Play it . . . left hand, left shoulder, Fats.”
That’s where the score stayed until another special teams miscue, Minnesota’s Matt Blair breaking free to block Walden’s punt, resulting in the Vikings’ Terry Brown recovering in the end zone to make the score 9–6 (though the Vikings then failed to convert the extra point). With 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter, and the entire season on the line, the ball was in the hands of the Steelers and Terry Bradshaw.

He’d grown a bristly playoff beard, and the facial hair gave him an aspect of maturity. Five years of playing under Chuck had given him a toughness; if he was not quite assured, he possessed a deeper understanding of his role. Now, he expertly mixed the runs to Harris and Bleier with key passes — including third-down throws to Larry Brown for 30 yards and a 6-yard toss to Bleier on third and five. On third and goal from the 4, the Steelers called time out. A touchdown would nearly seal the game. Being held to a field goal would leave Pittsburgh vulnerable to a late Vikings drive.

On the sidelines, Bradshaw deferred to his coach. “What do you want to run?” he asked.

“Goal line three thirty-three,” said Chuck. It was a run-pass option, meant to give Bradshaw time to make his decision and punish the Vikings if they bunched up for another inside run.

Chuck watched quietly as Bradshaw returned to the field, called the play, rolled out to elude the rush, and found Larry Brown open in the end zone. The pass was sharp and accurate and gave the Steelers a 10-point lead that, with the way the defense was playing, seemed insurmountable. Wagner intercepted Fran Tarkenton on the Vikings’ next play, and the celebration on the sidelines soon began.

Joe Greene had dominated the game, made an interception and recovered a fumble, but Franco Harris won the MVP for his then-record 158 rushing yards. Now Greene and Harris lifted Chuck up in their arms — not quite to their shoulders — and carried him off the field. Roy Blount Jr. had returned to spend time with the Steelers for the game and later wrote about “the winning smile on Noll’s face. I had never seen Noll’s mouth so wide open. It was as though the Dragon Lady had gone all soft around the eyes and said, ‘Oh, baby.’”

In the commotion of the locker room after the game, the team and the commissioner celebrated Art Rooney, as the Chief — his ever-present cigar lodged firmly in his jaw — accepted the Super Bowl trophy. Chuck mostly stayed out of camera range. “Chuck never wanted to be in the front row,” said Jack Ham.

Then came the congratulations, the press interviews, the return to the hotel room, and the handshake with Marianne.

All through the scenes of celebration, Chuck’s smile was genuine. Only the words were forced. Even that night, at the Steelers’ victory party, he was still not able to articulate the emotional weight of the accomplishment. “I remember going into his room that night,” said Andy Russell. “I don’t know if a number of us decided to congratulate him. And he was like, ‘Okay, guys. This is why we work. This is why we pay the price, blah, blah, blah.’ He wasn’t one of those guys who was gonna run around the hallways, all excited.”

“It was one of my early lessons,” said Chris Noll. “My father liked a good party, a small one, at home. But Super Bowls, he was always kind of . . . he cares about the doing and once the doing is over it is a huge letdown. Even though you won.”

Chuck wasn’t totally oblivious to the emotion. Of the last drive, he said of his team, “You could see it in their eyes; we were going to be number one.”

On NBC’s Super Bowl postgame broadcast, Curt Gowdy was attempting to put the win in perspective. “They’re still a very young team,” said Gowdy. “I would say their best years are still ahead of them. A team that may not have reached its peak, and their future opponents are going to have some trouble.”
 

Throughout the 1974 season, Noll vacillated between starting quarterbacks Joe Gilliam and Terry Bradshaw (above).

PHOTOS VIA UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS, COURTESY OF THE PITTSBURGH STEELERS
 

With several decades of hindsight, the chaotic circumstances in which the Steelers won the Super Bowl in the 1974 season remain unprecedented. There have been a scattered few instances in which a future Super Bowl champ changed quarterbacks during the season (Washington in 1987; Baltimore in 2000). For the state of constant flux, the closest analog may have been the 1969 Kansas City Chiefs, who began the year with Len Dawson, replaced him with Jacky Lee when he was injured, replaced him with Mike Livingston when Lee was injured, then went back to Dawson — then Livingston again after Dawson was re-injured — then back to Dawson for the end of the regular season and the playoffs. But that shuffling was all based on the future Hall of Famer Dawson’s gimpy knee. The ’74 Steelers were in a different realm with three different quarterbacks starting, and all three being benched for poor performance at one time or another during the season. The tinkering, if it had ended in anything other than a Super Bowl title, would have left Chuck exposed to charges of indecisiveness or over-coaching.

Perhaps the re-jiggering really did scar Bradshaw for the rest of his career, as he would argue in later years. But it’s equally likely that the insistence on accountability — that no quarterback would keep the job if he didn’t perform — revealed the true character of each quarterback. Hanratty, though well-liked by his teammates, didn’t have the arm for the job. Gilliam, brilliant, mercurial, in a difficult role with unseen pressures, ultimately buckled (and may have started to buckle before he lost the starting job). Bradshaw — the eternal insecure child, the headstrong, naive country boy who’d spent too many Sundays after awful performances with his head on the steering wheel of his car in the parking lot, sobbing in frustration — kept with it, kept trying, kept studying. He worked to become the quarterback Chuck wanted him to be. Eventually, in 1974, he found the form to lead the Steelers to the title.

The day after the game, back in Pittsburgh, 120,000 revelers gathered in the Golden Triangle despite 26-degree temperatures and 12-mph winds — to toast the champions. In the glow of their victory, it was the team leader Greene who made the definitive statement about the Steelers’ collective mind-set going into the game. “The Man handled it so perfectly, just like he always does,” he said of Chuck. “He told us to stay cool and enjoy it. Almost everybody took the whole week in just that mood, and we had a great time.”
 

Noll in the parade during his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

PHOTOS VIA UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS, COURTESY OF THE PITTSBURGH STEELERS
 

A few weeks after the Super Bowl, the phone rang at the Noll home. After Marianne answered, Chuck said, “Hi!” Rather than his usual businesslike tone on the phone, he sounded playful, mischievous.

She knew instantly something was afoot.

“Lord . . . what have you done?”
“If I buy this plane, this man says he’ll teach me how to fly it.”

It was a Beechcraft Bonanza, known colloquially in the flying community as “The Doctor-Killer,” due to its unusual controls (doctors had the means to afford the plane but often not the time to learn how to handle its peculiar flying style).

Chuck loved it. He started building up hours in the midst of the miserable winter weather of 1975. (“Some people fly only when it’s nice,” said Marianne. “But then you never learn how to deal with difficulties.”) Soon he was taking Marianne and Chris out for touch-and-goes and practiced stalls. Others were more circumspect. Lionel Taylor soon refused to ride with Chuck (“No small planes for me,” he said; “if I’m going down, I want it to be on TWA”). Red Manning brought his boys out to the airstrip and let them go up with Chuck. He chose to stay on the ground.

Chuck had rewarded himself and spent that off-season — and several to follow — lost in his new passion. Flying was both a practical and an artistic pursuit. But on a more pragmatic level, it was one of the dwindling few places where he could truly get away.

The month of June became the getaway, the re-set. At the condo on Sanibel Island, the Nolls would unwind, usually with one or more of the Deininger nephews and members of the Manning family.

It was also when Chuck spent the most time with Chris. They would snorkel off the coast of Sanibel, but soon Chuck took Chris and Kenny down to the Florida Keys for scuba diving, going 80 feet down to augment Chris’s seashell collection.

“He did a lot of scuba diving when I was in high school, but that was my passion and he just did it to be with us,” said Chris. “We all learned and became certified.
He would fly me down in his plane just because I loved it. He got excited by it, too. Diving, birds, those were all kind of family things that weren’t his passion, but was a way for the family to do things.”

That summer, on vacation in Florida, the Nolls were walking into a morning Mass when a stranger walked up and said, “Chuck, you look great, you lost some weight!”

Marianne’s thin smile matched Chuck’s, while the 17-year-old Chris stood in shock.

“I was just kind of like, Oh, God,” Chris said. “I remember thinking, ‘We are public now.’ I was offended, but at the same time stunned. And then you started seeing how people recognized him all the time. It was harder to go to the store. But in terms of him and what we did — it didn’t change anything.”

Or perhaps it did. Even the most rudimentary errands — trips to the barbershop and to fill the car with gas — were now obstacle courses of adoring fans. People remained polite, but they were more invasive, more insistent, and there were a lot more of them.

For his part, Chuck strived to stay out of the public eye. He hadn’t done a TV show in years, and for the most part avoided any endorsement offers. “He did one, for Pittsburgh National Bank,” said Chris. “He did it as a personal favor for a guy. The ad said, ‘Save $500, get this free shirt, and you’ll look good, too.’ It showed him wearing the shirt, smiling, with his arms folded in front of a blackboard that had C-15T diagramed on it, a tackle trap. He thought it was going to be a one-shot deal, a newspaper ad, but they put it on billboards all over town, one of them just as you enter the Fort Pitt tunnel. He had to see it every day when he drove to work, and every time he passed it he groaned.”

Even going out became a problem. “In the first couple of years, there wasn’t an issue there,” said Marianne. “People weren’t that interested in the Steelers. And then it got crazy. But the funny thing is, everybody will know he is in the room or at the airport or something. But nobody comes over until one person does. Then you are descended upon.” Chuck was unvaryingly gracious, but uncomfortable, with the constant public attention. 

“Pittsburgh has this mentality of ownership,” said Patricia Rooney. “You’re the head coach and you won and now you’re ours. I think they enjoyed it but I think they were a very reserved, very quiet couple. I think up to a point it was okay. But they sure were not prepared for it.”
 

Read how this long-awaited biography came to be here

Photo provided by university of pittsburgh press, courtesy of the pittsburgh steelers.

The challenge, as author Michael MacCambridge came to understand, was to chronicle not just Chuck Noll the football coach but also Chuck Noll the man.
“In the telling of the story, I was trying to find some way to balance the personal life — and Chuck’s own experience with his wife and his family — with the professional stuff,” MacCambridge explains of “Chuck Noll: His Life’s Work.”

What resulted from a project MacCambridge started to contemplate seriously in summer 2012 is thoroughly researched and remarkably detailed. It’s a fascinating portrayal that ultimately became, in MacCambridge’s estimation, “a love story” most of all. It’s one that goes far beyond the love that came to be shared by a town and its football team. 
 

Noll’s senior portrait from Benedictine High School in Cleveland, Class of 1949.

photo via University of Pittsburgh Press, courtesy of family of chuck noll

Some 25 years after he retired from the Pittsburgh Steelers following the 1991 season, and a little more than two years after his death on June 13, 2014, Noll for the most part remains a mystery to many, even to the most loyal and enthusiastic members of Steelers Nation.

As MacCambridge observes, the only head coach in NFL history with a perfect 4-for-4 record in Super Bowls “was not forgotten, exactly. But neither was he celebrated.

“He never found the place in the public imagination that (Vince) Lombardi and others did.”

Noll was as responsible for that as anyone, shunning the limelight even while building and maintaining a dynasty.

And upon his retirement after 23 seasons at the Steelers’ helm, Noll subsequently “disappeared like Johnny Carson,” says MacCambridge.
 

A high point of his years at the University of Dayton: Football co-captains Noll, left, and Ed Clemens accept the trophy after Dayton won the Governor’s Cup near the end of the 1952 season.

photo via university of pittsburgh press, courtesy of the university of dayton.

The coach didn’t embark upon a second career in media or team management. He didn’t open a chain of steakhouses bearing his name or enlist anyone to write his autobiography.

He was just gone.

“Because of this, Noll remains an elusive enigma,” MacCambridge concludes.

Eventually, Steelers Chairman Dan Rooney became determined to do something about that.

“Dan Rooney would go to the league offices in New York, and he’d come back and say, ‘All they ever talk about is Bill Walsh,’” says Joe Gordon, the Steelers’ public relations director during Noll’s tenure. “[He’d say,] ‘There’s only one coach who won four Super Bowls, and that’s Chuck Noll, the greatest coach in NFL history.’

“So he got this bug that somebody’s gotta do a biography of Chuck Noll.”
 

Noll impressed the Cleveland Browns with discipline and technique, earning a job as a “messenger guard” as a rookie in 1953.

photo via university of pittsburgh press courtesy of cleveland browns

Bill Belichick since has won a fourth Super Bowl, but only Noll has four wins and zero losses in games after which a Lombardi Trophy is awarded.

Walsh, for the record, won three as coach of the San Francisco 49ers, a detail that apparently was never lost on Rooney.

“This festered for a couple of years, and he finally called me and said, ‘We gotta get this thing done,’” Gordon says.

The search for an appropriate author went through longtime NFL executive Joe Browne and eventually led to MacCambridge.

“His credentials are unbelievable,” Gordon says of the Austin, Texas-based author whose work includes “America’s Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation,” (2004), “Lamar Hunt: A Life in Sports” (2012) and “The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated” (1997).
 

Noll beside Browns coach Paul Brown. In seven years in Cleveland, Noll absorbed the philosophy of a leader who expected players “to run on their own gas.”

PHOTO VIA UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS COURTESY OF CLEVELAND BROWNS
 

“He’s a brilliant writer, a skilled interviewer and a relentless researcher,” Gordon says.

​MacCambridge came to Pittsburgh in summer 2012 “just to decide if there was enough critical mass to justify a book,” he says.

“At that point I don’t think I knew more than the average fan knew about Chuck Noll. But I certainly knew how successful he was and how reticent he was.”
MacCambridge explored his potential subject with Joe Greene, Rocky Bleier, Jack Ham, Dick Hoak, George Perles and Tony Dungy. Visits with Chuck and Marianne Noll, their son Chris and their niece Joanne also provided “a sense of how private he was and how protective the family was of him,” MacCambridge says.

“But clearly they had agreed the time had come to tell his story.”
 

Noll, his wife Marianne and son Chris, who was born Dec. 22, 1957.

photos via university of pittsburgh press courtesy of family of chuck noll.

Noll by then was battling Alzheimer’s disease, but he still retained specific memories and details of his childhood, MacCambridge says.

In more than 300 interviews MacCambridge conducted, others filled in the blanks and eventually shed light where it rarely, if ever, had been shown in a public forum.
So did his study of the massive scrapbooks kept by the Steelers, containing much of the coverage written about the team during Noll’s tenure.

So did the viewing of each Steelers highlight film produced annually by NFL Films, beginning with 1968, the season prior to Noll’s arrival, and running through 1992, the first year after his departure.
 

Dan Rooney, left, prepares to introduce Noll at the 1969 news conference announcing his hiring as the new head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

photo via university of pittsburgh press, courtesy of pittsburgh steelers

Access granted by the Noll family included the discovery of a bulletin from Noll’s grammar-school commencement ceremony among the papers he’d saved (integral to MacCambridge’s efforts to contact childhood friends) and the chance to watch the video of Joanne’s wedding reception, held at the Noll home.

“The Nolls are private people, and I’m grateful they agreed to go outside their comfort zone and cooperate for the book,” MacCambridge says. “They may even share some of the frustration that Chuck’s players and assistants felt: It has to be maddening to work in close quarters with one of the greatest coaches ever, see him accomplish so much over the years — but then when you turn on the TV on Sundays and people are discussing the great coaches, his name rarely comes up.”
Noll’s life, if not his life’s work, included attending the Cleveland Indians’ parade after that team won the 1948 World Series and working as, among other things, a pin-setter and a grave-digger to earn the $125 needed for a year’s tuition at Benedictine High School in Cleveland.

On the way to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he first had to overcome being sent home from Notre Dame before freshmen classes had started by then-head coach Frank Leahy after suffering an epileptic seizure on the practice field, and being passed over for the head coaching position at the University of Dayton as his career as a messenger guard and linebacker for Paul Brown and the Cleveland Browns was ending.

“Chuck Noll: His Life’s Work” digs deep enough into the Super Steelers to include the play called that resulted in “The Immaculate Reception” (“half-right, split-opposite, 66 out-and-in”).
 

Noll and his sister Rita, with whom he shared a deep bond, during their final visit in spring 2010 in Pittsburgh.

photo via university of pittsburgh press, courtesy family of chuck noll

But it is much more than just another celebration of the Team of the 1970s.

“The thing that struck me when I was going back over it: When he started coaching in 1969, the cult of personality among coaches was at an all-time high,” MacCambridge says. “It was about Lombardi of course, but also Tom Landry and George Allen. Everybody had a mystique.

“Chuck attempted to demystify all that and distill the job to its most basic, salient elements, which can be summarized as, ‘coaching is teaching.’”

Noll’s story is one of a man who came to embrace a philosophy that maintained “success was not a fixed point, but an ongoing state of mind, a series of habits and commitments,” on and off the field.

In the end, no commitment would ever mean more to him than the one he had made to Marianne.

“He remained engaged with her and who she was to the very end; that’s the most touching thing for me,” MacCambridge says.

“Somehow, through the connection they had and the constant presence that Marianne kept and [his] Herculean efforts to remain mentally active … they kept that connection.

“That was heroic in its own way, as well.” 

Print and broadcast journalist Mike Prisuta is the host of the Steelers Radio Network pregame show and has covered sports in Pittsburgh since 1985. He writes “Mike Prisuta’s Sports Section” each week for pittsburghmagazine.com and is the sports director for WDVE-FM.
 

Read the book excerpt here

It’s never easy to replace a living legend. Which is why the Pittsburgh Steelers’ succession plan for defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau was more than a year in the making — and why longtime linebackers coach Keith Butler was the guy all along.

“I probably worked more and spent more time with him in football than anybody in my professional life,” head coach Mike Tomlin says.

That type of familiarity and trust can mean everything when you’re trying to rebuild a defense that recently had become most identifiable by what it was no longer able to achieve — by past-their-prime veterans playing a once-revolutionary scheme.

Upon finally arriving at that coaching crossroads, Tomlin put his faith in his professional admiration for Butler, 59, that predated Tomlin establishing himself as a professional.

“I had his football card when I was a kid,” Tomlin says. “And one of the first times we met, when I first got hired at Memphis as a [graduate assistant], I said, ‘Man, you’re No. 53 from Seattle with the beard.’”

Butler had never intended to become the Steelers’ defensive coordinator, or any NFL team’s defensive coordinator, when his 10-year career as a linebacker for the Seahawks ended in 1987. 

He eventually returned to the University of Memphis to complete his undergraduate degree and got into coaching.

“I wanted to keep my kids in the same area,” Butler says. “My plan was to coach at Memphis the rest of my life, go in as an assistant, become the coordinator, maybe one day be the head coach. In the meantime, along came Mike (Tomlin) and Randy Fichtner.”

Tomlin had coached receivers at the Virginia Military Institute for one season before he became a graduate assistant at Memphis in 1996. He absolutely remembered No. 53 from the Seahawks.
 

“He was full of questions,” recalls Butler, then the defensive ends, linebackers and special teams coach at his alma mater. “He wanted to know all about the NFL, how we did this, how we did that. He wanted to know everything about it.

“He took a personal stake in my growth and development,” Tomlin says. “It’s something our friendship was based on.”

Tomlin left in 1997 to become the wide receivers coach at Arkansas State, where he worked with Fichtner, who had worked as an assistant with Butler at Memphis from 1990-93 (Fichtner has been a Steelers’ assistant since 2007 and the team’s quarterbacks coach since 2010).

Those two convinced Butler to fill the defensive coordinator opening at Arkansas State in 1998, which commenced the type of nomadic coaching journey Butler had never wanted.
By 1999 Butler was coaching linebackers in Cleveland. Before he left for the same position with the Steelers in 2003, an enthusiastic coaching intern from the University of Cincinnati showed up at Browns training camp in 2000: Mike Tomlin.

“Mike was gung-ho about it,” Butler says. “And word got around that this young guy was up and coming.”

That eventually got Tomlin a job as defensive backs coach in Tampa Bay, which led to the defensive coordinator position in Minnesota and finally an interview with the Steelers when Bill Cowher retired following the 2006 season.

“Mike calls me up and says, ‘I think I’m just a token [candidate],’” Butler says. “I said, ‘Don’t act like you’re a token — because all the guys they’ve hired have been about your age.’”

At 34, Tomlin became the 16th head coach in Steelers’ history on Jan. 22, 2007.

​LeBeau, the defensive coordinator upon Tomlin’s arrival, is a Hall-of-Fame cornerback, but he’s more recognizable for the “Zone-Blitz” defensive scheme he devised as an assistant in Cincinnati in the mid-to-late 1980s. 

His Steelers’ defenses used what he had concocted to establish yearly standards of excellence.

​LeBeau also might be the most beloved coach in Steelers’ history (his players called him “Coach Dad”). 

But nothing lasts forever. After the 2013 season, the organization came to the decision that after 13 seasons (including the last 11 in succession), the 2014 campaign would be LeBeau’s last as defensive coordinator. LeBeau was 76 at the time; the Steelers were already paying Butler a defensive coordinator’s salary to coach linebackers, as a hedge against him eventually accepting an offer to coordinate someone else’s defense. The plan was in place and would have included LeBeau remaining with the organization in some capacity had he so desired.

Instead, LeBeau is coordinating the defense in Tennessee this season.

“It was great working with him, great being his roommate, great playing golf with him,” Butler says. “It wasn’t so great when he got mad at me because I wouldn’t give him putts, but man, Dick LeBeau is great people.
 

“I called him after everything went down with him and Mike; that was hard. I felt very awkward talking to him and I told him that. He said, ‘It’s the business we’re in, Keith.’”
Butler hasn’t scrapped LeBeau’s scheme, but instead has altered it with the help of Tomlin and the defensive staff.

There isn’t a name associated with what the Steelers now are doing defensively, particularly on passing downs, and nothing has been attributed directly to Butler. But a unit that couldn’t get 11 players on the field for every defensive snap at the outset of this season prepared to host Cleveland on Nov. 15 as the No. 8 scoring defense in the NFL (20.2 points per game) nine regular-season weeks into the Butler era.

“Everybody says, ‘What’s your stamp on the defense?’” Butler says. “I just wanna win.”

He has a new plan befitting his latest new position.

“Win a Super Bowl the next three years,” Butler says. “I have a three-year contract with the Rooneys. I aim to fulfill my contract.

“I have three sons, and I have two Super Bowl rings. I have to get one more. One of them’s gonna be pissed if I don’t.” 
 

Pittsburgh Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell is chasing NFL history — and he’s spotted history a two-game head start. He intends to accomplish what only Roger Craig and Marshall Faulk have previously done.

“I’m confident I can,” Bell insists.

The goal: 1,000 yards rushing and 1,000 yards receiving in the same season.

This season.

It’s something Bell would have to do despite sitting out the 2015 opener on Sept. 10 at New England and the Steelers’ Heinz Field debut on Sept. 20 against San Francisco, his penance for running afoul of the NFL Policy and Program for Substances of Abuse in August 2014.

Last season, Bell went on to rush for 1,361 yards and catch 83 passes for an additional 854 yards after that much-publicized lapse of judgment with former Steelers running back LeGarrette Blount while the two were on their way to catch the team plane for a preseason trip to Philadelphia.

Bell ended up being named Steelers MVP and earned first-team All-Pro honors in what became a record-setting second NFL campaign. But he’s convinced he didn’t accomplish all that he might have.

“I go out there and make a couple more plays here and there, those stats can go through the roof,” Bell maintains.

Craig produced 1,050 yards rushing and 1,016 receiving for San Francisco in 1985. Faulk amassed 1,381 rushing and 1,048 receiving for St. Louis in 1999.
 

Nobody has done it since.

“Those are big numbers,” Steelers offensive coordinator Todd Haley concedes. “But [Bell’s] attitude from the day he got here has been that of somebody [who] wants to be great.

“It’s not something I’d ever say is out of the realm of possibility.”Faulk thinks such numbers are within Bell’s reach.

“I believe he can accomplish the feat,” Faulk reported during NFL Network coverage of the NFL Scouting Combine. The former player for the Indianapolis Colts and St. Louis Rams even told Bell as much prior to Super Bowl XLIX last February in Glendale, Ariz.

“Before an interview, we were talking on the set a little bit about how good [of] a back he thought I was and how he sees himself in me a little bit,” Bell recalls. “We just kind of chopped it up a little bit, and that’s when he challenged me and said, ‘I think you’re one of the backs who can get 1,000 [rushing] and 1,000 [receiving] like I did.’"

An encounter on Sept. 29, 2013, with an NFL great in London likewise resonated with Bell.

After an injury-plagued rookie training camp, the Ohio native finally was ready to play in his first NFL regular-season game.

Waiting for him that day at Wembley Stadium were Adrian Peterson and the Minnesota Vikings.

“I saw the way he was hitting the hole, how quick he was,” Bell says of Peterson. “I looked up his weight after the game; he was 217 [pounds]. His first carry he got like 6 yards, and he was like little-guy fast. He looked lean, kind of like a wideout but bigger.
 

“So I’m watching him and I’m like, ‘I gotta get like that. He’s the best back in the league. He’s breaking long runs against us, doing whatever he wants. I gotta get on that level.’”

Bell has been maniacally committed to getting there ever since. The Steelers initially had wanted him weighing significantly less than the roughly 240 pounds he carried on his 6-foot-2-inch frame during his junior and final season at Michigan State University.

They envisioned in Bell what has become something of a dying breed in the NFL, a three-down back. They imagined a back who wouldn’t tip to the defense whether the offense was about to run or pass based on his presence in the game. They anticipated a back with the power to run over defenders for the tough yards inside and the wiggle and speed to make them miss in space.

And they visualized a back capable not just of catching check-downs in the backfield but also one with the ability to line up like a wide receiver, run routes like a wide receiver and catch passes like a wide receiver — and still provide protection for quarterback Ben Roethlisberger against blitzes when necessary.

The Steelers were relying on their projections as much as Bell’s on-tape resume when they selected him in the second round (48th overall) of the 2013 NFL Draft.

“That first night when we flew him in, that was the talk that we all gave him, starting with [Mike Tomlin]: ‘You need to drop 20-plus pounds,’” Haley remembers. “He’s taken it to another level the last two years. All you have to do is look at him, 2.9 percent body fat, that’s legit. He’s serious about what he’s doing.”

Bell sculpted and conditioned his way down to a sleek, chiseled 225 pounds by exhibiting a relentless dedication that’s referred to in NFL strength and conditioning circles as “working like a mine mule.”

It’s made Bell the missing link for a Steelers offense that already had Roethlisberger, wide receiver Antonio Brown and tight end Heath Miller. One that, like Bell, set multiple records last season and expects to do so again.

“I think he’s the best back in the NFL,” NFL Network analyst and former Baltimore Ravens head coach Brian Billick told WDVE-FM in the preseason.

About the only thing capable of stopping Bell and the Steelers short of injury is another suspension. Bell is resolute in his determination to steer clear of subsequent discipline.

“I learned from my mistake,” he says of his arrest last year for driving under the influence and possession of marijuana. “I know how much it hurt my family, my teammates, the whole Steeler Nation.

“My mom raised me great; she didn’t raise a bonehead kid. I know right from wrong, and I’ll learn from it and I’ll move forward from it.”

The intent is to get to a place where only Roger Craig and Marshall Faulk have gone before. 

Troy Polamalu’s first trip to Pittsburgh didn’t reveal a city that resembled “hell with the lid taken off,” as James Parton put it in 1868. Still, the California-born safety did not immediately perceive western Pennsylvania to be the kind of place he wanted to stay for long.

“I think I arrived at 11 at night,” Polamalu says, recalling his pre-draft visit in March 2003 to be checked out by the Pittsburgh Steelers. “I get to the Hilton and I call my agent and I [say], ‘I don’t want to play here in Pittsburgh, I already know.’ It was dark, and it was rainy, and it was cold. It just seemed like a miserable Northwestern — Seattle or Oregon — kind of day. [So] I call [my agent] and I tell him, ‘There’s no way I want to come to Pittsburgh.’”

On draft day, Polamalu says, “I got this phone call from the 412 area code. And I was a little disappointed — because I was like, ‘This is not a California area code.’”

Years later, the town — occasionally as dark, cold and rainy as Polamalu portrayed it — now is home for him, for his wife Theodora (another transplanted Californian) and especially for their sons, Paisios and Ephraim — and the boys’ father wouldn’t have it any other way.

“They’re native-born yinzers, and they’re gonna be raised [that way],” Polamalu declares. “It’s going to be something that I’m very proud to say will always be in their blood.”

For Polamalu, 33, what once was unimaginable has become the inevitable. He’s come a long way since that initial visit to Pittsburgh — far enough that he now envisions hanging around the town he once wanted no part of long after his playing days with the Steelers have ended. While many have speculated that 2014 may be his final season, at this writing Polamalu hasn’t disclosed his plans for next season. Still, with the possibility of a final snap drawing near, the soft-spoken athlete is ready to impart wisdom to a new generation of players and reflect on his position as part of the fabric of Pittsburgh.

“It’s just funny for me and for us how, I don’t know, maybe how my outlook has changed or how little I knew then and how much I actually thought I knew then,” he says. “It’s just ironic the way everything has worked out.

“Pittsburgh’s grown on us because I’ve played here for so long. We’ve been living in California for pretty much most of the offseasons. And the funny thing is, as soon as we get back to Pittsburgh it’s like, ‘Oh, man, we’re finally home.’”

Polamalu, who is of American Samoan heritage, was born in Garden Grove, Calif. He moved to Oregon as a child — but not before he had been “scandalized by sunshine,” as he puts it.

He returned to Southern California to play college football for the University of Southern California, and he would have much preferred to join Jerry Rice, Rod Woodson and Bill Romanowski of the Oakland Raiders upon turning pro.

But that was before Polamalu knew Pittsburgh — which he did not upon being summoned by the Steelers for that first memorable visit. At that time, he wasn’t even up on regional geography.

“When I came here to Pittsburgh on my visit,” he says, “I was like, ‘I have to have a Philly cheesesteak sandwich because I’m practically in Philadelphia.’”

In 2003, Polamalu was drafted 16th overall by the Steelers, who traded to improve their placement in the first round and gave away their third- and sixth-round picks to the Kansas City Chiefs to grab him.

“So I get drafted here, and my wife loves Pittsburgh — [but] I don’t. She’s into history and the architecture, seeing all these brick houses. It was just a really tough adjustment because I knew it was going to be tough for me to go from LA to the exact opposite of LA.

“I remember telling my wife, ‘If I ever tell you that I want to live here forever, you can slap me in my face.’ And here we are settling down in Pittsburgh, raising our children here. Because it’s our home now.”

PHOTOS: CHAZ PALLA

Success with the Steelers helped to ease Polamalu’s transition. He was a situational player as a rookie — an extra defensive back deployed when the Steelers anticipated their opponent would pass, and he wasn’t a very good one.

“My first year was so horrible, I should have been league MVP for the [opposing] offense,” Polamalu jokes.

Instead, in subsequent seasons Polamalu was selected eight times for the Pro Bowl, chosen first-time All-Pro four times and named the Most Valuable Player in the league — for the defense — in 2010. This run of individual on-field brilliance also included being voted the Steelers’ MVP in 2010 by his teammates.

With Polamalu, the Steelers won Super Bowls in 2005 and 2008 and an AFC Championship in 2010, before losing Super Bowl XLV to the Green Bay Packers.

When Polamalu was at his best, “I don’t think there was anybody better,” says linebacker James Harrison, a longtime teammate whom Polamalu regards as one of his best friends. “I don’t think there are too many people [who] would disagree with that.”

Defensive Coordinator Dick LeBeau has been in the NFL as a player or coach for 56 seasons, yet he considers Polamalu elite in at least one respect and unique in at least one other.

“He’s like a [Dick] ‘Night Train’ Lane or Lem Barney,” LeBeau says, recalling a couple of former teammates in Detroit’s secondary and a couple of fellow enshrinees in the Pro Football Hall of Fame — a likely destination for Polamalu eventually. “The splash plays that those guys made, you never know when one’s going to hit.

“I haven’t seen anybody [who] can play up near the line of scrimmage the way Troy can and then make the plays in space that he’s made.”  

As he found his way with the Steelers, Polamalu found out how much his new team means to the people of his new city. That, too, took a little while to sink in.

“I had an interview coming out of college and I said I was excited to play at Three Rivers Stadium — but it was already Heinz Field by then,” Polamalu says. “So I really didn’t know too much about Pittsburgh. My friends were like, ‘Man, you get to play with [wide receiver] Hines Ward.’ I didn’t even know who Hines was. I didn’t know who the Rooney family was.

“I really didn’t know how much this city identified with the team or how much the team identified itself as a part of the city. This organization really identifies itself as a Pittsburgh team and embodies everything that history has taught us about what it means to be a person born and raised in Pittsburgh.”

Polamalu now respects and appreciates what that means well enough to want the same for his sons.

“I really didn’t see the value in Pittsburgh in terms of wanting to settle down here until we had children,” he explains. “There’s nowhere in the world that I can imagine raising our children other than Pittsburgh.

“I like the culture here,” he continues. “I love the blue collar-ness of Pittsburgh. Maybe it’s lost a little bit of that identity; you have more of the medical industry, which is more attached with the white-collar workers. But I still think it’s in the gut of this city.

“The identity of this city will always be that this country was built on the back of the mentality of people in Pittsburgh, and that’s the blue-collar worker. When everybody talks about a blue-collar worker, Pittsburgh’s gotta be the first city they talk about.

“And it has an identity, you know what I mean? People are proud to be from Pittsburgh. People aren’t necessarily proud to say they’re from LA or Orange County, or whatever it is. Pittsburgh carries a certain sentiment with it when you talk to people about it outside of Pittsburgh.”

Illustration by scott spillman

There is a price to pay for being an iconic member of a team with which a region so intensely identifies — especially for someone whose flowing hair makes him nearly impossible not to recognize. Polamalu insists he’s been able to live his life in Pittsburgh. In addition to all the adulation bestowed upon Steelers players by Steelers Nation, he’s also been given his space, even by those who would be most appreciative of a signature or a selfie with a Steelers player.

“People recognize that I’m an extremely private person, and I appreciate that about them,” he says. “There’s a time and a place, for example, when people know it’s OK to approach somebody.

“When I’m with my children, absolutely [I’m left alone]. If I’m alone, it’s a different story, which is great because people understand that. If you’re a celebrity in LA or Hollywood, they don’t care about your family. They’ll eat you up as well as your children. Here, that’s one thing I’ve really appreciated — they let me be a family man to my children.

“It’s definitely been a blessing.”

Polamalu is a man who counts such things, who takes his blessings neither lightly nor for granted. As such, he and his wife have devoted and dedicated themselves to charitable endeavors that provide for others the blessings the Polamalus hold dear.  

The Troy & Theodora Polamalu Foundation is identified at Troy43.com as the family’s primary philanthropic initiative, established to “achieve all their various charitable goals while retaining the flexibility to react to acute needs as they arise.”

Providing permanent shelter to those in American Samoa displaced by the 2009 tsunami is an example of the latter.

The Harry Panos Fund for Veterans, a separate initiative from the foundation, is “dedicated to helping those who bravely served our country in foreign wars.” Theodora Polamalu’s maternal grandfather, Harry Panos, served as an artilleryman in battles on Okinawa and Saipan during World War II.

Troy Polamalu regularly is among the group of Steelers who visit the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington, D.C., whenever the team plays a road game in Baltimore or Washington. He’s also one of the most often-requested players whenever the Steelers hear from Make-a-Wish America.

But his weekly visits to Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC are the stuff of local legend.

“There are no cameras, no pomp and circumstance,” says Michael Shulock, a child life specialist in the Oncology Clinic at Children’s. “When he comes in, he says, ‘Who can I chat with today? Who can I play video games with today? Who can I draw with today?’

“Even though he can see they’re excited and happy to be around him and take pictures and have him sign stuff, he affects these kids probably more than he can ever imagine. It’s something he can’t know, the impact he has on these kids and their families.”

During Shulock’s eight years at Children’s, Polamalu’s visits have been a Friday ritual. Of late, they’ve been wrapping up at about 3 p.m., in time for Polamalu to leave and pick up his own kids.

Before his children got a little older, “He would be here for hours,” Shulock says.

“Up on the ninth floor we’ve become very comfortable with the fact [that] he’s here. I wouldn’t say it’s old hat; when we have newer staff, they can be a little awestruck. But for the older staff, it’s, ‘Oh, there’s Troy.’ He’s very natural with his ability to interact with everybody — and he’s so genuine. He spends time with the kids that makes them think they’re special to him.

“I can’t say enough that I don’t think he realizes what he does for the floor and for these kids.”

Polamalu is as passionate about the hospital as he is devoutly immersed in the Greek Orthodox Church.

That’s yet another aspect of Pittsburgh life he’s come to embrace: a concentration of Greek Orthodox churches that’s “for sure a part of our attachment” to the area, Polamalu says. It’s a commitment that turned out to be years in the making — for Polamalu, who had been raised a Protestant, and for Theodora.

“We both kind of went through a spiritual revival/revolution when we were deeply searching for religion — me personally, especially,” Polamalu explains. “I started asking questions in my own life. If I was born in Saudi Arabia, would I be a Muslim? If I was born in Utah, would I be a Mormon? If I was born in the Bible Belt, would I be a Baptist? I started questioning a lot about different religions and I did a lot of research, years of research. And I talked with Buddhist monks, Roman Catholic monks, with Greek Orthodox monks and priests and preachers, just trying to figure it out for myself.

“I not only studied the [Jewish] faith, I studied the Hebrew language. I read the Book of Mormon. I was just so thirsty for knowledge.

“But I always came back to Christianity. And I started studying a lot about the Christian Church, Christian history. I started studying about the New Testament and the Old Testament, which made me learn a lot about the historical church, that being the Orthodox Church.

“I started talking with Orthodox monks and a priest, and my wife and I decided to join the Orthodox Church, particularly the Greek Orthodox Church, my wife being Greek. We studied under a priest for almost a year before we were baptized into the faith.”

Third-year pro Shamarko Thomas is the heir apparent, or so it appears, to Polamalu’s strong safety position. As such, Thomas sent a text message to Polamalu last offseason, asking him how to be great.

“He didn’t reply immediately,” remembers Thomas, a former fourth-round pick from Syracuse.

The eventual response: “Define greatness.”

Thomas’ education on that subject was about to commence.

“[Polamalu] was like, ‘Greatness isn’t only about being a football player or winning championships or being the best in your sport. It’s about being a great father, about putting God first and just doing the right things in your life,’” Thomas recalls. “That made me realize there’s more to life than just playing football, man. That’s how you become successful, when you put God first.

“We started talking and I just asked him, ‘Can I come down there and work out with you?’ He invited me and right after [spring organized team activities] I went out there, out to San Diego. It was an amazing experience — just the routine and the way he lives his life.

“I’ll say nobody’s perfect — but he’s close to perfect. I can say that from the bottom of my heart. Not just because he’s Troy, just because that’s who he is. He’s one of the most humble men I’ve ever met in my life. He does everything right with his kids, his family and his sport. And he works really hard. He’s one of the hardest workers I’ve ever met in my life.”

Upon arriving at the Polamalu family’s house in San Diego, Thomas acknowledges he was nervous.

“Troy and I have been cool, but going to his house is a different thing. But they made me feel like I was at home,” he says. “His wife, she’s amazing. She talked with me all the time. She laughed and giggled with me. His kids are just fun to be around. They’re so excited, so playful. They’re all humble and you can just see where it all comes from. He’s the leader of the house.”

It was more than Thomas had anticipated or bargained for upon seeking Polamalu’s counsel. For a young player long on potential and short on experience, it was life-changing.

“It definitely surprised me,” Thomas says. “You ask a player like that, you expect him to say, ‘Workouts. Do this, do that.’ He turned it to a different level. He started talking about idolizing God and putting your family first. It was just an amazing experience, what he taught me. It made me understand how I had to mature and become a man.

“I was a little immature. You feel like you’re a young guy in the NFL, you’re around a lot of things. He just brought me to myself. He made me realize what’s more important than football at the end of the day. Coach [Mike] Tomlin tells us, ‘You’re football players, but you’re more than that.’ Troy just broke it down for me. I had an amazing talk with him. He helped me in my situation in life.”

Thomas isn’t sure when he’ll get a chance to assume Polamalu’s position, and he seems to be in no rush to take over.

“I’ll definitely learn everything I can while he’s here — and hopefully replace him someday,” Thomas says.

As of this writing, Polamalu has not confirmed that he will be playing next season. And while his appreciation for Pittsburgh indicates a strong likelihood that his family will continue to call the city home after he leaves the field, he hesitates to predict his own future.

“In terms of my life, I honestly live it day-to-day,” he says. “If you ask me to do something next week my reply is, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen next week.’”

So it’s no surprise that when asked how much longer he intends to play, “I don’t know,” is as far as Polamalu is willing to go. That leaves open the possibility that 2014 will be Polamalu’s last season with the Steelers.

He already has contemplated life after football, suggesting out loud that “it might be tough just to be so close to everything and not be a part of everything.”

In the meantime, there remains unfinished business deep into his 12th NFL season.

“I miss being one of the younger guys,” he says. “[It was a] beautiful thing that we were able to help the older guys [win]. [Cornerback] Ike [Taylor] and I were just coming [into] ourselves when we started winning legitimate big games, Super Bowls, AFC Championship games.

“And now that I’m one of the older guys, I couldn’t imagine that feeling that those guys had later in their careers, [of not yet having won a championship.] It’s something that I’ve maybe taken for granted, I don’t know. I not only want that feeling [again] now, but I want the young guys to feel the way I did when I was younger.

“There are guys on this team [who] haven’t won a playoff game or even been to the playoffs in their third year. My second year, we were in the AFC Championship Game. My third year, we won the Super Bowl. I want them to experience that — because I also see a lot of young guys with potential. I want for them to be able to just taste what it takes. If we can win young, that can really set the table for the future of this organization.”   

How can you accurately define a man such as that?

“Troy’s a good human being,” Harrison says.

And after a reluctant introduction, he’s one of us.

Pittsburgh Steelers first-round draft pick Ryan Shazier’s story is one of athleticism and adversity, of competition and compassion, of selflessness and self-discovery, of achievement — and alopecia.

“I got it when I was about 5 years old,” Shazier explained of his experience with the condition that causes bald spots and the disappearance of body hair. The condition explained why the 22-year-old from The Ohio State University had no hair and no eyebrows in his first local public appearance.

“I was probably the only little kid walking around with a bald head,” he says. “And it was kind of tough because kids are mean. Most kids aren’t bald-headed or have patches in their hair when they’re 4 or 5. I was getting picked on.

“We went to the doctor and found out what I had, and everything was fine after that. Sometimes I wore hats, but my mom didn’t want me to. She wanted me to feel good about myself so I didn’t have to try to shy away from everybody else. I told people, ‘If you’re not going to accept me for who I am, then I don’t feel like we can be friends.’”

More challenges for Shazier and his family awaited after Shazier’s mother, Shawn, developed Crohn’s disease.

“It’s kind of simmered down now, but it was pretty bad,” Shazier says. “It really flared out a lot when she was stressing out. [Shazier] and my little brother used to argue a lot and stress her out. A few times my mom had to stay in the hospital for birthdays, Christmases, things like that.

“We kind of figured out [that if] we were [better] to her and . . . we controlled ourselves for her, she would be better. We had to figure out how to make sure we could keep her less stressed out so we could spend more time with her.”

While neither his condition nor his mother’s disease was an ideal situation, dealing with both was life-changing for Shazier.
“It really helped me out a lot,” he says. “[For] a lot of kids, especially growing up, things are smooth. I feel like that really helped me out when it came to solving problems.”

After that, it was a matter of beating the odds in Broward County, Fla.

“Down here in Florida we have almost 60 percent of African-American males not making it out of high school,” Shazier’s father, Vernon, told The Columbus Dispatch newspaper in 2012.

In response, Vernon provided an example as a coach, as a pastor, as a motivational speaker, as the team chaplain for the Miami Dolphins and as a parent.

“I wanted to make sure [Ryan] did what he needed to do so that he wouldn’t become part of that statistic,” Vernon Shazier said.

Shawn Shazier did, too.

“I feel like my dad and my mom are my two best friends,” Shazier says.

Eventually, he became an All-State and then an All-Big Ten linebacker. He also grew into the type of person willing to change his college number for a game to honor a friend from Plantation High School who died of muscular dystrophy and again to recognize a teammate lost for the season to injury. At Ohio State, he once sought permission to return home with a teammate for the funeral of that player’s father.

“Pure ideas and caring in its pure form,” is how OSU Head Coach Urban Meyer once summed up Shazier to Cleveland.com.
The Steelers recognized commitment and character — intangible qualities they seek out — in repeated interviews with Shazier after he declared himself eligible for the NFL Draft following his junior season at Ohio State.

“Everybody liked him,” General Manager Kevin Colbert says.

They’d already seen much of what they needed to see in Shazier’s game two years previously, while evaluating Ohio State prospects for the 2012 draft.

“He used to jump off the film when he was a freshman, honestly,” Colbert says.

At 6-foot-1 and 237 pounds, Shazier is lighter than a traditional NFL inside linebacker. But his 4.36 speed in the 40-yard dash makes him the type of player NFL teams covet. He can cover pass receivers as well as tackle running backs — and thus doesn’t have to come off the field in passing situations.

“Football has become a very lateral, speed-based game offensively,” Colbert explains. “It’s a perimeter game, a down-field game, so we need people [who] can defend that. That was one thing Ryan did very well in college.”

Upon drafting Shazier, the Steelers immediately installed him at inside linebacker next to veteran Lawrence Timmons on the first-team defense. That high-pressure outpost is where he lined up for the first snap of the off-season’s first Organized Team Activity — a testament to the impressive skill set of Shazier, and a rare nod for a rookie trying to find his way in coordinator Dick LeBeau’s defense.

It’s almost unprecedented for Game 1 — and almost unimaginable from day one. But Shazier, when healthy, has been there ever since.

“I like his demeanor more than anything,” Mike Tomlin assesses. “We put him in some competitive situations and just from a demeanor standpoint he’s wired in, he’s dialed in.

“It looks like he’s wired right for the job.”

NFL locker rooms being what they are, Shazier still is taking heat occasionally for what he doesn’t have on top of his head. As he did when he was 5, Shazier is taking it all in stride.

“You know guys crack around,” he says. “I tell ’em, ‘The only thing you can crack on me is I’m bald ’cause I look better than all [of you].’” 

Back in 1970, when I was working my way through college at The Morning Herald newspaper in Uniontown, Pa., my first out-of-town assignment was to cover Chuck Noll’s news conferences on Mondays after games.

He was asked once, following a particularly galling loss: How did he feel?

“The same way I always do,” Noll deadpanned. “With my fingers.”

When he retired after the 1991 season, Noll pretty much dropped off the radar — which means a whole generation hardly knew him. If it’s any consolation, many of those who came of age with him as the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers hardly knew him either. But we remember Noll, who died June 13 at the age of 82, as the architect of a football dynasty and the man who gave us reason to be proud of hailing from Pittsburgh.

Noll never sought the limelight. He had his own personal Steel Curtain to guard his privacy. If he said it once, he said it a thousand times — a person is defined by deeds, not words. He is the first and only NFL coach to win four Super Bowls, a feat he accomplished in the span of six glorious years in the Super Seventies.

During one of those appearances, someone in the national media tacked up a sheet with the highlights of a Chuck Noll news conference. The paper was blank.

We remember him differently. He was a Renaissance man in a Renaissance city — a nonpareil football coach who piloted airplanes, skippered sailboats, loved classical music and Stan Getz jazz, explored coral reefs in scuba gear, was a wine connoisseur and cultivated rose bushes. The latter was something he learned from his mother, who worked for a florist in the family’s home neighborhood on Cleveland’s East Side.

Once, when he had to cut an aging player, Noll said philosophically, “Sometimes you have to prune a rose bush to allow for growth.”

Noll never ingratiated himself with the media or called attention to himself because he didn’t think it would help him win football games. Don’t misunderstand — the man had a supersized ego. He just didn’t have any vanity. Deeds, not words.

It takes a big ego to take the reins of a franchise that endured nothing but losing for 38 years before he arrived. In Steeler lore, those years were B.C. — Before Chuck. Yet he transformed a football team and in the process changed the way a city felt about itself.

He won his first game with the Steelers and then lost 13 straight to finish the season. The team lost the first three games the next season, marking the worst start by a coach in the Steelers history. Noll never flinched. He never flinched in 1989 either, when the Steelers lost their first two games by a combined score of 92-10. They rebounded to make the playoffs.

Noll could have made millions in endorsements but instead steered such rewards to his players. One time, he did an ad as a favor for a friend with a Pittsburgh bank. Under Noll’s smiling visage were the words: “Save $500, get this free shirt, and you’ll look good too.” He was embarrassed when he saw it on a billboard outside the Fort Pitt Tunnels coming into the city.

During his playing days at the University of Dayton, teammates called him “The Pope” because he was never wrong. He majored in education, focusing on math and science, and he would have been a teacher if he hadn’t been offered a contract by the Cleveland Browns.

Once, he used physics to explain the Immaculate Reception: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, which proved that the ball hit off Oakland defender Jack Tatum before it bounced to Franco Harris. Then Noll turned to his silent audience of sports writers and said, “I forgot. I’m talking to a bunch of English majors.”

In his final years, the after-effects of back injuries meant he could walk only with the help of two canes. He called them Cain and Abel. Alzheimer’s disease robbed him of that magnificent mind and a wit as dry and full as Chablis Grand Cru.

When asked once what advice he would give to anyone exiting the stage, Noll said, “Don’t leave anything on the beach but your footprints.”

He left a lot more than footprints. There’s a street named for him on the North Side, and his name graces the football field at St. Vincent College, where the Steelers train. Dan Rooney said at Noll’s retirement that if anything had happened to him, he would have wanted Noll to raise his children. What more do you need to know about a man?

Noll’s passing on Friday the 13th, on the night of a full moon, created a void — yet this native of Cleveland gave so much to Pittsburgh. If we know how to listen, Charles Henry Noll will be speaking to us and teaching us for a long, long time.
With deeds, not words.

On a hazy July morning  in Latrobe, Pa., a black-and-yellow dump truck rumbles down the street and onto the campus of Saint Vincent College. In a line of tricked-out pickups and Cadillacs, the piece of heavy machinery stands out — but not as much as its equally intimidating driver, a bearded giant sporting a hard hat painted to match the truck.

The Hydrema brand machine winds down the narrow streets, bound for dorm rooms that teem with Pittsburgh Steelers each summer. The campus is always at its busiest during training camp, but even amid a flurry of activity, the truck turns heads. As it approaches Rooney Hall, it begins to pick up followers, who jog in its wake until it comes to a noisy stop. The mechanical arms behind the cab lurch to life, depositing a large piece of luggage onto the grass.

Into a vortex of amused reporters, Brett Keisel climbs out of his vehicle and launches into an impromptu press conference. He explains that the truck is somewhat of a visual metaphor for the work to be done.

“We’re constructing our team. We’re excited about this year,” Keisel tells the group, knowing that roster changes and a mediocre 2012 season have left the media and some fans skeptical. “I think everyone’s written us off, but we feel like we can construct a championship team. And that’s why I brought the big bad boy here today.”

Arrival day at Saint Vincent College, training camp home of the Pittsburgh Steelers since 1966, always features a parade of impressive cars, trucks and SUVs. But Brett Keisel is pretty sure no one has ever rolled up in a dump truck — or a tractor, as he did in 2012, or a Kubota rough-terrain vehicle, as he did in 2011. It’s different. It’s an attention-getter.

That’s what Keisel is going for. It’s what the Steelers need from him.

People on social media got in touch with me months before training camp — like, ‘What are you going to come to camp in this year?’ I have levels of expectation now,” Keisel explains. Clearly, it’s a show for fans and the media; it’s not just to make his fellow Steelers chuckle (“They wish their rides were as cool as mine”), and it’s not about self-promotion.

When Keisel, 35, pulls off this kind of stunt, it’s never about building a personal brand. Over his 12 years in the league, he’s emerged as a player who puts himself forward — in the locker room, at events, to the media — in service of a greater goal. Why put himself out there at all? No one demanded this of him; no one insisted that he be a beast on the field, a jester in front of crowds and a saint for a good cause. He’s put that together himself, piece by piece. Even as Steelers fans and Keisel’s teammates have traced that development, though, he hasn’t necessarily stopped to explain: Here’s why I’m doing this.

He’s not the kind of guy to talk about himself unsolicited.

If he has assumed the role of the proverbial locker-room leader during a season that by its midpoint would contain a slew of losses and frustrations for the Steelers, it’s because — on some unspoken level — the team wants him there. He never pictured himself as the star that he is today.

The 35-year-old defensive end, through his career, has worn only black and gold, having been drafted with the Steelers’ final pick — seventh round, 242nd overall — in 2002; that makes him one of seven remaining Steelers who played in all three of the team’s recent Super Bowl appearances. The Steelers’ defense has seen plenty of turnover since the last time the team played for a championship — and even more this season.

“We lost guys [who] were great leaders for this team,” Keisel says. “Guys I looked up to. Guys I followed.” The changing of the guard in the Steelers locker room has been well-documented, as retirement, injury and free agency have pushed Keisel into that leadership role this year. It’s a job he’s embraced, if quietly, in his second year as defensive captain; the other defensive captain this season is the Steelers’ other active 12-year veteran, Ryan Clark.

“I wanted to do the same things I’ve always done, as far as encouraging players,” Keisel says. “If you tell them they need to do this or do that, and then you go out and get beat, it’s irrelevant.”

Former Steelers guard and current team sideline reporter Craig Wolfley is quick to affirm Keisel’s status. “He’s the commander of the defense,” Wolfley says. “He’s the guy who has been there, done that — and done so at such a high level that he has carte blanche to lead.”

To Keisel, the message he needs to convey is essential. “I want them to know that I care about this team and I care about winning,” he says.

That’s evident to anyone who has watched him go through a post-loss interview — and this season, there have been too many of those as the defense and the entire team have struggled.

“It’s been frustrating, it really has,” he says. “Especially with as successful as we’ve been [in past years]. Going from the top toward the bottom is a dramatic change.”

So when a microphone appears in Keisel’s face after a losing effort, he doesn’t glumly deliver tomorrow-is-another-day aphorisms; his frustration and disappointment are unfiltered. This is not a player who’s simply happy to get paid, win or lose.

But how do you reconcile that intensity — that dedication and devotion to the game — with the dump trucks and tractors?

Or, for that matter, with the outlandish facial hair that’s developed a fan base of its own?

It’s midway through the 2010 season, and the expansion of Brett Keisel’s beard is approaching Biblical proportions. Inspired by playoff beards displayed by the Pittsburgh Penguins en route to the 2009 Stanley Cup, Keisel has decided to let his facial hair grow free. If the Steelers lose a few, he’ll shave in a heartbeat — but they haven’t lost a few. They’re winning, and it’s starting to seem like they could make a run.

Nevertheless, it’s a strange sight, this giant with the beard of an 1800s gold rusher. As Keisel walks down the hallway at the Steelers facility on the South Side, he sees the diminutive frame of Steelers Chairman Dan Rooney approaching. The then-U.S. ambassador is back from his post in Ireland for a few days, and right now, he’s staring at the beard.

After a moment, Rooney speaks. “I don’t understand what you’re doing,” he says, eyeing the tangled mass.

“Mr. Rooney, I don’t want the Steelers to look down on me,” Keisel replies, caught off guard by the ambassador’s opening statement. “Or you, especially. If you don’t like this thing, I’ll go in the locker room right now and cut it off.”

Rooney pauses, evaluating Keisel. “No, you keep it,” he finally says.

“I’m just going to start calling you Santa Claus.”

With that, Rooney walks away. For the remainder of the season, whenever the chairman appears on the South Side or at Heinz Field and spots Brett Keisel, he yells, “How ya doin’, Santa?”

“I just wanted to do something different,” Keisel says. “I watched our hockey team go through the playoffs, and they grew these giant beards. I couldn’t remember a football player with a giant beard, so I decided to try it.”

“Da Beard,” as it has come to be called, is now a star of its own. It’s on T-shirts. Fans cheer for it at games. It has been touched by thousands of curious young Steelers fans. It has its own theme song, thanks to Randy Baumann, host of the “DVE Morning Show” on WDVE-FM.

And when it’s time for a trim, hundreds turn out.

“I wanted to do something for our fans,” Keisel says. “Something that Pittsburghers could be proud of and enjoy,” regardless of the outcome of Super Bowl XLV — which served as the beard’s national coming-out party.

“The beard had become a big media magnet,” says Baumann, who was with the WDVE team at the Super Bowl that year. “It had taken on a life of its own — [so] the Steelers let me know that Brett didn’t want to waste an opportunity to get more good out of the beard.”

Baumann, Keisel and Steelers Community Relations Manager Michele Rosenthal tossed around ideas for a beard-focused charity event to be held after the Super Bowl. “They settled on having his teammates shear it off; Steelers fans could pay to see him shave,” Baumann says. “Which is a uniquely Pittsburgh thing — paying to see a person shave.”

In front of a crowd at Diesel Club Lounge on the South Side, Keisel’s teammates took turns snipping. Hines Ward, Aaron Smith — even Art Rooney II grabbed the clippers.

The beneficiary of all three Shear Da Beard events (held in 2011 and 2012 at Diesel and in 2013 at Jergel’s Rhythm Grille in Warrendale) has been the oncology department at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC. Over three years, the shavings have raised approximately $120,000.

“Brett and his wife Sarah — who is very key as well — are some of the best friends that Children’s Hospital has,” says Children’s President Christopher A. Gessner. “We have many, but they stand out.”

The Keisels’ relationship with the hospital has grown and expanded well beyond the Shear Da Beard events. “[They] are involved with other charities [that benefit children]; it is a real passion for both of them,” Gessner says. “As he’s gotten to know Children’s Hospital, he sees more and more opportunities where philanthropy and fundraising can make that difference for kids.

“We have many, many athletes [who] come and visit, and we’re very appreciative of their time. But [there are] not too many [who] actively look for ways to help us benefit children. I’ve been here for 12 years, and he certainly stands out as that kind of very special person [who] actually generates the ideas for us.”

The Keisels are on the board of advisors for the Homeless Children’s Education Fund and have worked with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Advocating for children in bad situations is the connection between much of the couple’s charity work.

“Because I’m a child, really,” Keisel says. “I’m a big kid. I’ve always loved being around children. There’s something so sweet and exuberant [about children] that fills me with joy.”

The source of his dedication to these causes — and to Children’s in particular — goes beyond that explanation. As have many Pittsburgh parents, Keisel has put his family’s health in the hands of that facility. On that trip to Children’s five years ago, he wasn’t the only Steelers star in the building.

Brett Keisel is standing in the lobby of Children’s Hospital with Aaron Smith.

It’s autumn 2008. Smith’s son, Elijah, has been diagnosed with leukemia. Smith has been missing from team activities and practices for a few days. His first absence is noticed immediately; Smith is always first to arrive and last to leave. When Keisel walks into the locker room and doesn’t see Smith, he asks a trainer where the big man is.

The reply is simple: “He’s going through some family things.” The scope of the problem is revealed a few days later, and it hits Keisel hard. Smith is a friend, a mentor, and Keisel is worried about him.

Then a staffer approaches Keisel on the practice field, delivering a troublingly vague command — come to the phone. Your wife needs you.

“Meet me at Children’s Hospital,” Sarah says. “Jacob is going in there.” Their first-born son, still an infant, has a kidney infection. Keisel rushes to Oakland. After a few hours, Jacob is recovering; Children’s has treated the patient and calmed the parents.

That’s when Keisel heads for the front door to find some food — and runs into Smith. Keisel is stunned by the terror in the eyes of the man he has described as his hero. As the men stand in the lobby, words don’t come.

Keisel knows that Smith’s family is going through a trial that dwarfs his own. After a torturous pause, Smith is the one to speak. “I believe things happen for a reason. And I believe that Elijah is going to beat this.”

Elijah did recover. After going through his own experience at the hospital and watching its staff save his mentor’s son, Keisel resolved to help the facility any way he could.

“It’s hard for me to describe how I feel about it. Unless you’re really in those situations, you don’t know what those kids — or those family members — are going through,” he says. “To be able to go in there and maybe take their mind off of it for a short time … that’s really all I’m trying to do. Trying to make them think about something else — even if it’s a big, bushy-bearded mountain man dancing around or acting silly. Just to have them feel a little bit of normalcy for a minute.”

Additional fundraisers have spun off from the Shear Da Beard events. Da Beard Campaign, in partnership with Northwest Savings Bank, raised another $35,000. Four Children’s patients joined Keisel and contest winners on the Fishing With Brett outing. Keisel’s devotion to the hospital isn’t only evident in public; he also stops by to visit patients and parents with no fanfare and no press.

“Last year, I went down there [and] ran into a family that had twin daughters. Both had leukemia. The parents couldn’t go back and forth — one of them had to stay with one daughter, and the other had to stay with the other. They hadn’t seen each other in weeks.” Telling the story, Keisel chokes up. “That was hard. Being a parent, I can’t imagine going through that. I feel very lucky that they have a place to go like Children’s Hospital that can take care of them and give them everything they need.”

Keisel also visits children in the shelters and facilities supported by the Homeless Children’s Education Fund. “Children who are experiencing homelessness have gone through a lot of trauma and a lot of stress in their lives,” says Bill Wolfe, the fund’s executive director. “Many have grown up in generational poverty, which has resulted in homelessness. A positive adult role model that comes into their lives — even if it’s for a short time — has a tremendous impact. It pumps these kids up; it makes them feel special. And they don’t have a chance to feel special very often.”

The Keisels began their involvement with HCEF in 2002, soon after Brett’s arrival in Pittsburgh. Through that time, Wolfe has seen Keisel grow into the personality that the city has embraced.

“I could tell from the very beginning that both he and Sarah are very passionate people,” Wolfe says. “They care about people who are less fortunate. As far as the showman in him, I think that’s something that has evolved over the last 10 years. I think it has grown as his confidence as a player has grown; I also think it has grown from his being exposed to organizations like HCEF and the meetings we’ve asked him to attend and the other charities he’s involved in.”

Wolfe says that during their first meeting, Keisel insisted that his wife handle the public speaking; in 2002, he wasn’t comfortable in front of a crowd. To say that picture is markedly different from the Brett Keisel fans know today is an understatement.

“I enjoy getting up and talking in front of people, making people laugh,” he says. “But at the same time directing a message that I want to get across to the audience.” It wasn’t all humility that had him put Sarah’s name first, though. “Sometimes I get most of the credit for some of these things, but a lot of it [is] hers. She keeps me grounded. She’s making sure that my head doesn’t get bigger than it should.”

It seems that the disparate elements of Brett Keisel’s personality share one basic premise: that he can help. If he’s a stone-faced monster on the football field, that can help inspire his teammates. If he’s riding a dump truck to Saint Vincent College or letting his beard turn into a tangled thicket of fur, that can rally Steelers Nation — and eventually, do some good for children in need. If he’s quietly making unannounced visits with kids who need a break from reality, that can help a family make it to the next day. The actions change; the motivation does not.

So who’s at the core? Of all the different versions of Brett Keisel that the public sees, who’s left when Keisel is alone?

“It’s probably my family side,” Keisel says. “That’s what I think about the most. How lucky I am to have a great wife, how lucky I am to have three healthy, beautiful children.

“Taking everything away, that’s what I’m most proud of.”

In the long-term memory of Pittsburgh sports fans — many of whom still regularly revel in rose-colored memories of the Steel Curtain and the “We Are Family” Pirates — the Steelers’ victory over Arizona in Super Bowl XLIII may as well have happened yesterday. Typical Steelers fans can likely tell you not only where they watched that triumph but also whom they sat next to, how many pints of Iron City they downed and which chicken-wing sauce they preferred among the evening’s offerings.

Check a calendar, though, and you’ll notice that Feb. 1, 2009, was more than four years ago. The Steelers’ other “recent” Super Bowl win is now 7-plus years old. While some aspects of Steelers football, from philosophy to theme songs, never change, others — such as rosters — certainly do.

Of the men who suited up to face Seattle in February 2006, a mere seven still wear black and gold. Wind the clock forward to Super Bowl XLIII, and you’ll add only five still-present faces. That tally amounts to a stark minority on an NFL roster; entering the 2013 season, most Pittsburgh Steelers do not have a Super Bowl ring.

So Ike Taylor is not just a starting cornerback. He’s also a veteran, a leader and a keeper of the Steelers’ vaunted championship tradition. The 11th-year defensive force out of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette seems distinctly qualified to assume those roles, for reasons ranging from a healthy appreciation for team history to his close relationship with team chairman Dan Rooney. In a recent Steelers.com video, Taylor interviewed Rooney about their relationship; it was difficult to determine which man respected the other more.

In spite of an ankle injury late in the 2012 season, Taylor told Pittsburgh Magazine he’s entering this season with more confidence in his physical abilities than ever. Now that the Steelers suddenly look more like a young team than a veteran one, a poised, willing leader may be exactly what they need.

When you look at this year’s team — with a lot of new faces, and a lot of second- and third-year players — does it resemble the championship Steelers of the past decade?
The foundation is Super Bowl XL. We all know what it takes, from XL to [Super Bowl XLIII] to [facing Green Bay in] Dallas. But we also understand that it’s a transition; there’s a change going on, [and] it’s happening right in front of us. We’re not going any [further] than the young kids are going to take us. They have to understand — just like you’re depending on us, we’re depending on you.

How do you approach the younger players?  
I just try to make them feel like they’re at home. They’re family. I want them to feel comfortable; every time they come into the locker room, I want them feeling like it’s a breath of fresh air. They have to understand that I’m going to need them, [and] I need them comfortable and relaxed, regardless of what’s going on in their personal life.

That gets into the notion of being a “locker-room leader.” Do you have to think about that? When you’re going to practice, do you have a different attitude than you did five or eight years ago?  
It’s natural for me. I’m an entertainer. I like [to see] people have fun. I feel like that’s one of the positives I have.

But the Steelers locker room is supposed to be pretty competitive, too, right?
With the trash-can basketball …  We have trash-can basketball, we have ping pong, we have shuffleboard. From lifting the most weights and doing the most reps and push-ups, to having [on-field] competitions with one another — who’s going to get the most interceptions? Who’s going to make the most touchdowns? It’s highly competitive, but it’s a good kind of competitive.

What does that atmosphere do for relationships within the team?  
It’s an “us” mentality. It’s all about us. We’re going to have our ups and downs. But if you don’t have a good game, I’m still here for you. If I don’t have a good game, they’re still here for me.

We’ve seen how close you are with Dan Rooney. How did that bond develop?  
That’s a unique relationship, a one-of-a-kind relationship. I call him Pops; I don’t know how many people in the NFL can call their owner Pops. I ask him every day, “How you doing?” He asks me about my family. A guy of that caliber, you wouldn’t believe he could be so down-to-earth and so humble.

What’s your personal focus this season?  
This is the best I’ve ever felt, injury-wise. One of my personal goals is to make it to the Pro Bowl — and to win the Super Bowl. I finally feel 100 percent, and I can’t tell you the last time I felt [that way] physically. Mentally, I’m always feeling 100 percent.

There are several new members of the defense this year. Does that change your approach to the season?  
What I’ve learned about the Pittsburgh Steelers — they reload. On defense, they had Jason Gildon. After Gildon, it was Joey Porter. After Joey Porter, it was James Harrison. After James Harrison, you’re looking for LaMarr Woodley to step up. And after LaMarr, you’re looking for a Jason Worilds or a Jarvis Jones to step up.

You’ve always made a point of engaging with Pittsburgh; you’ve hosted radio shows and written newspaper columns, among other endeavors. Why is that important to you?  
You still see Mel Blount, Franco Harris and Rocky [Bleier] — they still live [in Pittsburgh]. They’ve made it their home, and if you’ve been here for the amount of time I’ve been here, you understand why. Once you’re a Pittsburgh Steeler, you’re always a Pittsburgh Steeler. So why not venture into new avenues?

So you’d like to have that kind of long-term relationship with the city?  
No question — those guys are still making money! (laughs) They’re even going on a Steelers cruise next year.  I don’t know if you could get that from any other team.

Tell me about Face Me Ike, the youth football camp you host in your hometown of New Orleans.  
I have a couple teammates come to [conduct] drills. It’s just a good atmosphere. It’s about the time — the kids enjoy their time with us just as well as we enjoy our time with the kids.

The Steelers are traveling to England this month to face the Minnesota Vikings at Wembley Stadium. Do you prepare for that game any differently?  
It’s a business trip. It just happens to be in England. Football is football, and we’re still going to win a football game.

Are you going to be a tourist at all?  
Nah. They say the weather over there ain’t good anyway, so it’s not like I’m going to catch a tan. 

Photo by Pittsburgh Steelers/Mike Drazdzinski
 

Antonio Brown acts like he doesn’t notice that he’s only wearing one shoe. He’s just run one of his signature routes — a precise 5-yard button hook that will look like an intricate origami figure when it’s drawn up on the telestrator. These kinds of routes are how Brown makes his living now, filling in the empty, treacherous spaces between the hash marks left by his absent mentor. Short, thankless patterns that often end with a dirt-clumped face mask. The types of routes that drive defenders to the point of delirium throughout the course of 60 minutes. In this case, it takes only 29.

Brown turned the first defender to the scene into a flailing-turned-flopping Superman, then hit the open field before Philadelphia Eagles safety Kurt Coleman was forced to take him down, literally, by his shoestring. Frustrated, Coleman took a souvenir with him — Brown’s left shoe.

And that’s when it happens. As Brown bounds up from the sod and heads right back to the huddle without even asking for his cleat to be returned — his tube sock all white against the brownish Heinz Field muck — Coleman gives in to his frustration. He whips Brown’s shoe deep into the Steelers’ sideline like it’s a rolled-up Sunday paper.

“It was a sign of mental weakness,” Brown says. “Right then I knew I had enforced my will upon him. When somebody throws your shoe, you’ve got them beat mentally.”

Instead of freaking out, Brown channels the mentor who taught him how to lather opponents into this kind of conniption: recently retired Hines Ward. W.W.H.D.? It’s a mantra that’s been embedded into the Steelers’ young receiving corps. What Would Hines Do? He’d just smile.

“So I didn’t say anything to him,” Brown says of the brouhaha. “I just smiled and ran to the sideline. That’s what got him.” It’s not just the I’m-having-more-fun-than-you grin. It’s that familiar post-catch bounce — an infuriating bunny hop that Ward bequeathed to his understudy.

But in order to understand the improbable success of Brown, a sixth-round draft pick in 2010 who made his first Pro Bowl last season, you need to understand another acronym — a message that Brown sends out to his 140,000-plus Twitter followers every single day: C.U.E.U.P.U.

“Chest up, eyes up, prayed up,” Brown explains, sitting at his locker at the team’s practice facility, trying to ignore the little-brother charades of pal Mike Wallace, who makes it a point to mess with the mild-mannered Brown on the rare occasions that he grants an interview.

“C.U.E.U.P.U. is something I came up with as a daily inspiration,” Brown says. “It’s a constant reminder that if I live with my chest up and my eyes up, and I’m prayed up, I can handle anything life throws at me.”

Life has thrown plenty at Brown, who grew up in Miami’s notoriously violent Liberty City neighborhood. Due to a complicated family situation, Brown was without a home at age 16, and relied on friends and coaches for safe harbor. Adapting to any situation — and doing it with a smile — became his forte on and off the field.

“The only thing you can do when you’re in a tough situation is to have a singular vision,” Brown says. “Every single day, you have to remind yourself of where you want to be, not where you’re at.”

Perhaps it’s not hard to be humble when you go from Top Ramen to top shelf in just a few short years, as Brown did when he inked a contract extension that will keep him in black-and-gold until 2017. But even when he was still on his league-minimum rookie contract in 2010, Brown made it a point to be a man of the people.

After touching down in Indianapolis the week of Super Bowl XLV, Brown sent a message to his Twitter followers simply asking, “Indianapolis, what’s up?” Seth Paladin, a member of the Steeler Nation diaspora living in Indy, sent Brown a message back offering to hang out and show him the city. Incredibly, Brown accepted.

“The next thing I know, I’m sitting in Antonio Brown’s hotel room,” Paladin remembers. “And he’s just sitting there eating a sandwich, talking like we’re old friends. Next thing I know, he asks if I want to go work out with him.”

The two new buddies ended up going to Paladin’s gym to swim laps and do Pilates for the next four days. To pay Paladin back for his hospitality, Brown took him and five friends to an Indiana Pacers game, where they sat courtside. As the crew walked back to the car after the game, Brown once again proved his innate ability to roll with the punches. “This guy ran right up to Antonio convinced he was [former NFL great] LaDanian Tomlinson,” says Paladin. “I think the guy had one too many beers, and he’s yelling, ‘LaDanian! LaDanian!’ And Antonio just played right along with him. It was great.”

Later in the week, when Brown became overwhelmed with pre-Super Bowl preparation and realized he forgot to pack dress shoes, he gave Paladin his credit card and asked him to track down a pair of size 11 Gucci loafers.

“I know the guy four days and he trusts me with his credit card,” Paladin says. “Maybe I should’ve bought him an extra pair, just to be safe. He’s been losing his shoes lately.”

This is the land of the free and the cold-activated beer can; the home of the brave and the Quiznos lobster-and-seafood submarine (made with 51 percent lobster). We relish nothing if not progress, and high on our to-do list is the integrity of the New National Pastime, recently beleaguered by autopsies of gladiators both young and old whose spotted, rusting brainscapes resemble those typically found in septuagenarian Alzheimer’s patients.

The national narrative says that safer helmets are the way forward. Science begs to differ. Riddell’s Revolution Speed football helmet retails for $248.99, boasts a “cool, aggressive” shell design and features something the company has branded “Concussion Reduction Technology.” The Revolution Speed so impressed researchers at Virginia Tech University, who have developed the nation’s first comprehensive impact rating system for football helmets, that it was given a five-star safety rating and deemed the “best available” helmet on the market. For comparison, the Riddell VSR-4, which has been the most prominently used helmet in the NFL and NCAA throughout the past few years, received a one-star rating.

On the surface, the news is alternatively haunting and encouraging. While the NFL does not require teams to reveal which helmets their players wear, the eye-test reveals that many players have adopted the Revolution Speed. Oft-concussed Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu saddles one atop his mane. The sleek helmets appear more commonly in college football, where players have had less of an opportunity to become superstitious creatures of habit. In fact, the Biomedical Engineering department at Virginia Tech was so moved by their own research that they purchased an entire fleet of Revolution Speeds for the Hokies football team.

So, is the war finally over? Can’t the powers that be simply make the Revolution Speed the de facto helmet so we can all move on?

The marketers certainly want you to think we’ve arrived. A promotional video on Riddell’s website features a CBS reporter standing on the field at Rutgers University reminiscing about the first collegiate football game ever played there in 1869. “Players didn’t even wear helmets,” she says in that familiar passive-aggressive TV news cadence. “No doubt being exposed to serious injury. Fortunately, times have changed.” Had the Jumbotron behind her projected comic-sans “Mission Accomplished” over a gently waving stars-and-stripes background, it would not have felt entirely out of place.

And yet, just when it felt like we were on our way to once again enjoying rock-riff midfield obliterations without besmirchment, a jarring study on helmet safety was recently published in The Journal of Neuroscience. Inspired by the work being done at Virginia Tech, a team of researchers from Cleveland Clinic ordered 11 popular football helmets from four different manufacturers, including the heralded Revolution Speed. Then they purchased two vintage “leatherhead” helmets from the 1940s. On the surface, their query seemed absurd: Would the cutting-edge helmets protect players better than the leatherheads?

“We’re trying to understand the concept of death by a thousand cuts,” says lead researcher Adam Bartsch. “Most athletes playing football are not getting hit by James Harrison. Most are getting thousands of common impacts to the head that won’t necessarily make a SportsCenter highlight. But the question is: Are the current helmets optimized to reduce all sorts of impacts?”

In order to understand how it can be possible that the majority of NFL players, who are worth untold million to their franchises, are still wearing helmets with a one-star safety rating, you first need to understand the current gold-standard barometer for helmet safety — the test. This is the sticker that is found on the back of every football helmet in the NFL and NCAA. Developed in 1973, the test focuses solely on high-impact linear acceleration and literally involves dropping a helmeted headform onto an anvil *cue ding-dong “Flintstones” sound effect*.

However, NOCSAE safety scores are not publicized. The helmet merely must pass an “impact-severity” threshold that is deemed sufficient to mitigate the risk of a skull fracture — an injury that helmet manufacturers vanquished decades ago. There has not been a skull fracture in the NFL since the 1980s, and linear force is just one of many components in a collision, which is precisely why fans are often confused as to how certain players can not only survive a wreck but suit up the following week, while less fortunate souls have lost entire seasons to collisions that appear to be minor fender benders.

The key is not how hard the head is struck, but how the brain moves inside the skull.

With a more sophisticated test in mind, the Cleveland Clinic team holed up in their biomechanics lab and simulated routine helmet-to-helmet collisions by smashing a Riddell VSR-4 against a headform that was fitted with the 13 various helmet models. The VSR-4 was suspended on a pendulum that was calibrated to deliver common on-field impact magnitudes in the range of 95 to 99 percent of hits on the field — the cumulative terrors that Bartsch refers to as death by a thousand cuts.

The helmets were mounted with accelerometers, which have been used in many university studies to monitor linear impact. However, the Cleveland Clinic study took it a step further, adding angular velocity sensors to the helmets to gauge how rotational head and neck dynamics might affect the brain in a collision (think of the way Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby’s head snapped around when he was blindsided by a seemingly low-impact collision in the 2010 Winter Classic).

The research team smashed the hard polycarbonate helmets from all angles. Then they walloped the vintage leatherheads. The impact data collected by the sensors was instantly fed to a computer that was running a sort of “virtual brain” called the SIMon Model. Developed by the Department of Transportation, it consists of a 3-D skull and brain with white-gray matter, bridging veins and more than 10,000 nodes — essentially a digitized neurosystem for a crash-test dummy.

The data that came back was shocking.

“In many instances the head impact doses and head-injury risks while wearing vintage leatherheads were comparable to or better than those while wearing several widely used 21st-century varsity helmets,” the study concluded.

While the study was testing the effect of mundane horrors and not the killshots that stir the NFL and NHL offices to debit the accounts of league-sponsored super villains, the red and blue lines plotting the impact data in the Cleveland Clinic’s graphs were stupefyingly in sync.

“To use an analogy, what we’re doing is really akin to a crash test with a Model T versus a 2012 BMW,” Bartsch explains. “You would absolutely expect that with any safety parameter, any way you slice it, it wouldn’t even be close. And yet we found that at common impact severities, there really wasn’t much difference. It’s not that the leather helmets were protecting, it’s that none of the helmets were protecting.”

This all seems intrinsically wrong, and yet, through a neuroscientific lens, the results of the study should not be so dumbfounding. Those with the most experience dealing with head trauma in athletes have been warning that advances in equipment technology will never bring an end to concussions.

“Fundamentally, what causes a concussion is the brain moving inside the skull, and unless we can put something around the brain itself, it’s hard to imagine how technology is ever going to mitigate this injury,” says Micky Collins, director of the UPMC Sports Medicine Concussion Program. “There’s no helmet out there that will ever prevent a concussion from happening. The main focus should be treating athletes as soon as the symptoms appear.”

Dr. Henry Feur, member of the NFL’s Head Neck and Spine Committee and a team physician for the Indianapolis Colts, echoes Collins’ sentiment: “It’s always some new material. We’ve heard it for years. Reducing the G-forces in a collision may help with concussions, but it has yet to be proven. The problem is that the brain is encased in fluid, and in cases of rotational force, there is little you can do to stop the brain from crashing against the skull.”

Bartsch believes that while the NFL and helmet manufacturers are putting an enormous emphasis on concussion prevention, a complete rethinking of sports engineering is needed.

“Football helmets have certainly evolved over the past few decades and are optimized for a certain kind of impact,” Bartsch says. “But I think we’d be wise to take a step back and ask a fundamental question: If today we didn’t have any football helmets and we had to design one from scratch, how can we take an egg and throw it against the wall and design a protective enclosure that not only protects the shell from cracking, but also protects the yolk from being scrambled. That’s an engineering problem that I don’t think is solved by the current polycarbonate hard shell with interior padding.”

TV chuckleheads — especially the really proud, goateed NFL pensioners — have developed a fondness for the half-kidding suggestion that the league should just chuck out the fancy helmets and go back to leatherheads — a spiritual return to the days of mutual respect and sideline cigarettes and gloveless, bloody fingers in muddy trenches. And oh how they laugh and back-slap.

You have to wonder if it would still be so damn funny if they knew how perilously close the modern game is to their fraternal dreamland.