Bill Cowher...and The Grandstander Power Rankings

I have just finished reading this 2021 autobiography of former Steelers coach and current CBS Talking Head Bill Cowher.  It is your basic sports bio, nothing totally new or earthshaking revealed in it, but Steelers fans will eat it up, and it brought back lots of good memories of the Coach's playoff years with the Steelers, and those two trips to the Super Bowl.

It takes us from little Billy Cowher's days on the pee wee fields of Crafton, PA to Carlynton High School, North Carolina State, his special teams career with the Browns and Eagles and his rise as an NFL coach under the mentorship of Marty Schottenheimer.

Bill pitches mostly softballs in this one.  He has wonderful things to say about folks like Hines Ward, Jerome Bettis, Dermonti Dawson, Ben Rothlisberger and other Steelers heroes.  When he talks about players that had issues or whom he had to sit down and have serious heart-to-heart talks with, those guys go unnamed.  If I had a criticism of the book, that would be it.

The hardest part of the book to read was also the best part, and that was his detailed telling of his wife Kaye's battles with cancer and early onset Alzheimer's, which led to her death in 2010 at the age of 54.  Sadly, it was something to which I could closely relate.   The rich, powerful, and famous are not immune to what cancer and an early death can visit upon a family.

Cowher's story of finding love and a new chapter in life with his current wife was also an uplifting story.  How he had to introduce this new person into the lives of his three daughters was also an interesting tale.  It wasn't without some bumps in the road, but they are now one big happy family today, a family that now includes four grandchildren.

The book ends with Cowher's election into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2021.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

The Grandstander Power Rankings

There was no change at the top of the GPR, but in a week where seven of then teams lost, there was plenty of change two through ten.

1. 49ers 10-3 (Last week: 1)
2. Cowboys 10-3 (7)
3. Ravens 10-3 (3)
4. Eagles 10-3 (2)
5. Dolphins 9-4 (4)
6. Lions 9-4 (5)
7. Chiefs 8-5 (6)
8. Browns 8-5 (unranked)
9. Jaguars 8-5 (8)
10. Bengals 7-6 (unranked)

Knocking on the door....Bills, Broncos, Colts, Packers, Texans, Titans

As for the Steelers, what can you say about a team that has lost twice in a row to teams with 2-10 records?  Amazingly, they still sit in playoff position, but they have placed themselves in a position where there is little, if any, margin for error, and if this team has shown us anything in 2023, it is a large capacity for error.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame Inductions

The Induction classes of 2020 and 2021 for the Pro Football Hall of Fame were held over two nights this past weekend, and they made for some good television viewing. Me, I recorded the ceremonies, and then watched them later, fast forwarding through much of it and watching only those speehes that I wished to see.   I mean no disrespect to guys like Edgerin James or Drew Pearson or Steve Hutchinson, but I just didn't care to listen to what they had to say.  This also had the additional benefit of keeping my exposure to Chris Berman to an absolute minimum.

In addition to the speeches ot the incoming Steelers - Bill Cowher, Donnie Schell, Troy Polamalu, and Alan Faneca - I also wanted to see the speeches of Pitt's Jimbo Covert and Peyton Manning.

Let's get the two non-Steelers out of the way.  Enjoyed Covert's speech.  Loved all his references to Pitt and his teammates and coaches there, although I never would have recognized Jackie Sherrill, and I loved that Jimbo has retained that Pittsburgh accent!

As for Manning, well, his speech was everything you would expect from Payton Manning.  Smart and funny, but mostly smart and a ringing endorsement for football.  For all of its problems, we all love to watch it, and those men on stage sure loved to play it and coach it.  It was constant theme through all of the speeches.   On PTI tonight, Tony Kornheiser made the statement that Peyton Manning should one day be the Commissioner of the NFL.  Not sure if it's a job he wants, but he would probably be perfect for it.

Now for the Steelers.

Certainly, the most popular of the speeches - and how about the way those Terrible Towels took over Canton those two nights? - was Polamalu's.   If there remains any rancor between him and the Steelers organization, as has been reported, it was certainly not evident during that speech.

However, perhaps the best speech from all of the Steelers inductees came from Alan Faneca.  It was humble and grateful, and fully expressed the emotions of every inductee those two nights.  There is no way that I could capture the essence of it here, but it is surely out there in cyberspace for you to see, and I would recommend highly that you do so.

And, of course, the Coach was the Coach.  He lives in New York now and is a TV star  and a Hall of Famer, but Bill Cowher has never left Crafton.   A great speech, accent and all!

As for the guy that waited the longest, how could you not have loved Donnie Shell and his daughter?  Another great speech.

Unfortunately, I missed whatever was doen to commemorate the late Bill Nunn's induction.  I will need to go back over the recording in an effort to find that one.

One thing that each of the four Steelers induction speeches had in common, two things actually, were the overriding gratitude and respect that they had for Dan and Art Rooney, and how special it was to play and coach as a part of "Steelers Nation."

Peyton and Archie

Father and Son Hall of Famers

Marilyn and I will be in Canton later this month as part of an overnight getaway with some friends, and it is in our plans to drop by the Hall of Fame - it has been many years since we've been there - and check out the new residents of the "Steelers Wing" there.  Very much looking forward to it.

Steelers First Round Draft Picks

Today, January 29, 2020, marks the fifty-first anniversary of the day that the Steelers selected Joe Greene of North Texas State with their first round selection (#4 overall) in the 1969 NFL Draft.  Remember the newspaper headline of the next day: "JOE WHO?" Anyway, I would argue that this is the moment in time that everything, and I mean EVERYTHING,  changed for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Because of the trade earlier this season that the Steelers made with Miami for Minkah Fitzpatrick, 2020 will mark the first year since 1967 that the Steelers will not have a selection in the first round of the draft,  

These two facts prompted me to think of first round picks in the past, and that prompted me to do a little research (thank  you, Wikipedia!), and that prompted me to do a Grandstander Spreadsheet.

YEAR	NOLL	Pos	YEAR	COWHER	Pos	YEAR	TOMLIN	Pos
1969	Joe Greene	DT	1992	Leon Searcy	DT	2007	Lawrence Timmons	LB
70	Terry Bradshaw	QB	93	Deon Figures	DB	2008	Rashard Mendenhall	RB
71	Frank Lewis	WR	94	Charles Johnson	WR	2009	Evander Hood	DT
72	Franco Harris	RB	95	Mark Bruener	TE	2010	Maurkice Pouncey	C
73	JT Thomas	DB	96	Jamain Stephens	OT	11	Cameron Heywood	DE
74	Lynn Swann	WR	97	Chad Scott	DB	12	David DeCastro	G
75	Dave Brown	DB	98	Alan Faneca	G	13	Jarvis Jones	LB
76	Bennie Cunningham	TE	99	Troy Edwards	WR	14	Ryan Shazier	LB
77	Robin Cole	LB	2000	Plaxico Burress	WR	15	Bud Dupree	LB
78	Ron Johnson	DB	2001	Casey Hampton	DT	16	Artie Burns	DB
79	Greg Hawthorne	RB	2002	Kendall Simmons	G	17	TJ Watt	LB
80	Mark Malone	QB	2003	Troy Polamalu	DB	18	Terrelle Edmunds	DB
81	Keith Gary	DE	2004	Ben Roethlisberger	QB	19	Devin Bush	LB
82	Walter Abercrombie	RB	2005	Heath Miller	TE
83	Gabe Rivera	DE	2006	Santonio Holmes	WR
84	Louis Lipps	WR
85	Darryl Sims	DE
86	John Reinstra	G
87	Rod Woodson	DB
88	Aaron Jones	DE
89	Tim Worley          Tom Ricketts	RB OT
90	Eric Green	TE
91	Huey Richardson	DE

What you see are 52 players selected over the past fifty-one seasons (two first rounders in 1989), divided among the three coaches, Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher, and Mike Tomlin.  It should also be noted that these drafts were also overseen by three different Personnel Guys/GM's, Art Rooney Jr. (Noll Era), Tom Donahue (Noll and Cowher), and Kevin Colbert (Cowher and Tomlin).  

Okay, besides evoking a lot of memories, most of them good, what do you do with this info?  I decided to look at the picks of each Coach and see how many Hits and how many Misses they had.  Some players by my totally subjective reckoning fell in some nebulous middle ground and were "just okay."

So here you go:

CHUCK NOLL

Hits (12, or 50%) - Greene, Bradshaw, Lewis, Harris, Thomas, Swann, Brown*, Cunningham, Cole, Lipps, Woodson, Green.

Misses (7, or 29%) - Hawthorne, Sims, Reinstra, Jones, Worley, Ricketts, Richardson

Just OK (4, or 17%) - Johnson, Malone, Gary, Abercrombie

We'll Never Know (1, or  1%) - Rivera

*Brown only played one year for the Steelers, and was selected, to the Steelers dismay, in the expansion draft by Seattle, where he enjoyed a long and productive career, so he has to be considered a "hit" even though it was for another team.

Eleven of these players played in Super Bowls for the Steelers. Five are in the Hall of Fame.

BILL COWHER

Hits (8, or 53%) - Bruener, Faneca, Burress, Hampton, Polamalu, Roethlisberger, Miller, Holmes

Misses (4, or 27%) - Searcy, Figures, Stephens, Simmons

Just OK (3, or 20%) - Johnson, Scott, Edwards

Seven of these players played in Super Bowls for the Steelers. Three of them are probable Hall of Famers.

MIKE TOMLIN

Hits (7, or 54%) - Timmons, Pouncey, Heywood, DeCastro, Shazier, Watt, Bush

Misses (3, or 23%) - Hood, Jones, Burns

Just OK (3, or 23%) - Mendenhall, Dupree, Edmunds

Two of these players have played in Super Bowls for the Steelers (so far).

Right now I see two of these guys as possible Hall of Famers, Pouncey and DeCastro; and perhaps Watt if he continues to progress as he has over his first three years.

So what does all of this prove?  Probably not much, and the real lesson is that teams are not built by first round picks alone.  Steelers Super Bowl wins fell on the shoulders of many, many players who were selected in later rounds (Greenwood, Stallworth, Webster, Ham, Lambert, and Ward to name a few) and other Steelers successes on the shoulders of many, many other stars who came well after the first round, like Kordell Stewart, Neil O'Donnell, Antonio Brown and Juju Smith-Shuster, to name a few others.

I guess if there is something to be learned here it is that the lack of a first round pick in 2020 does not and should not spell gloom and doom for the Steelers next season.  There is at least a fifty percent chance that Fitzpatrick will be better than any college kid that they would have selected with that eighteenth overall pick in April.  If they come up with three or four good players with their later round picks,  guys who can start for them, things will be alright.

Oh, and just for fun, I did look at Steelers first round picks in the ten years prior to 1969, 1959-68.  The Steelers had traded away their #1 Pick in the odd numbered years in that period.  In the even numbered years, here were their selections:

1960 - Jack Spikes

1962 - Bob Ferguson

1964 - Paul Martha

1966 - Dick Leftridge

1968 - Mike Taylor

I have no memory of Spikes as a Steeler, but I think that he went on to some success in the early years of the AFL.  Martha had a good career as a Steeler, and Ferguson, Leftridge, and Taylor were colossal busts.  

One other interesting note.  In 1957, the Steelers did use their first round pick to select a future Hall of Famer, QB Len Dawson of Purdue.  In three seasons in Pittsburgh, Dawson appeared in 19 games, threw 17 passes, completed six, and had one TD pass and two interceptions.  Better days were ahead for him when the AFL came into existence.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, that pick of Joe Greene in 1969 changed everything for the Steelers.

Bill Cowher

It was big news this weekend when the announcement was made that former Steelers head coach Bill Cowher was named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.  I was always a big fan of Cowher's when he was here with the Steelers, and I am certainly happy that he has reached this pinnacle.

Rather than list all of his accomplishments that led him to this point, if you are interested enough to be reading this you already know what they are, I will instead turn this one over to my pal Tim Baker, who posted this story on Facebook on Saturday night when the Cowher news became public.  It's a pretty good one.  Take it away, Tim.....

Congratulations Coach Kaahr!!! I have a story, of course.

In my sophomore year, I was a backup O-lineman just trying to figure out how to avoid getting killed every week. And on a sunny Saturday afternoon at Carlynton HS, the guy I was backing up went down. Coach Mac called my name and in I went.

I spent the rest of the afternoon getting my en-tire ass kicked all over the field. I was too dumb to quit so I kept getting smacked around. They guy doing the smacking? Bill Cowher! 

I learned a valuable lesson that day. That I wasn't going to be able earn a living with my athletic prowess and I had better hit the books. Thanks for that Coach!!!!

I will conclude with some photos of the Coach that typify him and his time with the Steelers.  I think that I will need to be making a trip to Canton in the Fall just to see how that famous jaw is depicted on Cowher's bronze bust.

Congratulations, Coach!!