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.