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.

Where Are The Editors at the PG?

Chuck Noll and his first Steelers coaching staff

at St. Vincent College

1969

Perhaps I am becoming what I always decry - an Old Guy Shouting At Clouds - but sometimes, you just gotta do what you gotta do.

Today the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a feature on the sports pages to mark the 50th Anniversary of Head Coach Chuck Noll's first training camp with the Pittsburgh Steelers.     The article was written by Joshua Axelrod, and no Steelers fan will dispute the appropriateness of such a story.  To research and write the story, Mr. Axelrod went into the morgues of both the PG and the old Pittsburgh Press and culled his article from reports from the Steelers beat writers at the time, Pat Livingston of the Press and Jack Sell of the PG.  Again, not a bad way to go about it, and probably about the easiest way for a reporter to come up with a story.

The problem is that throughout the article Mr. Axelrod refers to the PG's reporter at the time as "Jack Sells".   So, here are my questions:

• How is that in looking at the copy from the 1969 issues of the Post-Gazette, Mr. Axelrod saw the name "Jack Sell" and typed the name "Jack Sells" in his article?
• How is it that an editor at the PG missed this mistake?  
• Is there no one on the PG's sports department editing staff that remembers Jack Sell and who could have corrected this error? Obviously not. 

Jack Sell, as I remember him, was a sportswriter of the old school.  He revelled in cliches.  Boxers were "mitt tossers", track and field athletes were "thin clads", football players were "gridders", and I believe it was he who coined the term "Rooney U" to describe the Steelers. His brand of sports writing was of a bygone era, and he would be laughed at today, but despite all of that, he deserves to have his former long time employer get his name right when referencing his work here in 2019.

Book Review - "Chuck Noll, His Life's Work"

As the book, "Chuck Noll, His Life's Work" by Michael MacCambridge was about to be released, I heard Dan Rooney being interviewed, and he said something to the effect that he was tired of going to NFL meetings year after year and hearing about how great guys like Bill Walsh and Bill Parcells were, while no one ever said anything about Chuck Noll.  So, in 2012 Rooney, at that point a United States Ambassador, approached author Michael MacCambridge and asked if he would be willing to write a definitive biography of the former Steelers coach.   MacCambridge agreed to take on the task, and now, after four years of dedicated research (the bibliography covers five printed pages), hundreds of interviews, and actually sitting down and writing, football history, not to mention football fans in general and Steelers fans in particular, are the better for it.   I just finished reading this book and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Part of the reason that so little is known of Noll other than the runs-hits-and-errors (if I may use a baseball metaphor) of his coaching record can be traced to Noll himself.  A naturally reticent man, Noll was a notoriously private and closed individual. Part of this is his family heritage and background, which is told in great detail here, and he made his choice to be that way.   Yet, he was one of the more interesting and well rounded men - away from the football field - that you will ever read about.  He was, MacCambridge says, "one of the last hugely successful NFL coaches to have an identifiable life outside of football, to be such a well rounded person."  However, few people knew this, and players who played their entire careers for him will tell you that they never had a personal conversation with him.  Those same players will also tell you, decades removed from their playing days, just what an effect Noll had on them and continues to have on them in their life's work as, say, football coaches (Tony Dungy), businessmen (John Stallworth), and parents (Cliff Stoudt).  

Above all, the book is about the love story that was the life and fifty-seven year marriage of Chuck and Marianne Noll.  Marianne Noll and the Nolls' son, Chris, cooperated with and were interviewed by MacCambridge for this book.  During all the years of Noll's coaching tenure, the Noll Family was very private by their own choice, you knew they existed, but you knew nothing about them, so their stories and input to the book are invaluable and extremely insightful.

Two things I learned in this book that I never knew.  One was that Noll suffered from epilepsy, which he lived with and controlled all of his adult life.  Secondly, when his older sister became widowed at the age of 38 with seven children under the age of ten, Chuck and Marianne contributed greatly to the upbringing and raising of those nieces and nephews.  Chuck walked his one niece down the aisle at her 1989 wedding.

Just about every important and significant name in football and the Steelers of that era agreed to talk with MacCambridge as he researched and wrote this book with one notable exception - Terry Bradshaw.  Probably just as well given Bradshaw's penchant for giving, shall we say, contradictory viewpoints of his relationship with Noll (and others) over the years.  There is a great anecdote in the book of Stoudt running into Bradshaw at some NASCAR event in 2002 where he pretty much tells Bradshaw to give it up and realize just what Noll did for him.

Like many biographies, the best part of the book comes in the telling of the subject's life after he leaves the main stage, and this one is no exception.  I defy anyone to read the last two chapters and the epilogue of this one without a few tears welling up in your eyes.  

But, okay, if all you really care about is the football stuff, there is plenty of that in there for you, too.   Reading it brought back memories of many football games at Three Rivers Stadium where I was present, including the Immaculate Reception Game, but two other stories recounted in the book also stand out to me.  One was the reaction of Glen Edwards in the tunnel waiting to be introduced before Super Bowl IX when one of his old college teammates, now a member of the Vikings, refused to acknowledge him.  If you know your Steelers lore, you know this story, but it's one I never get tired of reading.  The second story was about the Wild Card Playoff game win over the Houston Oilers in overtime in 1989.  It was a loss that cost Oilers Coach Jerry Glanville his job, and the players' euphoria over that win rivaled that of previous Super Bowl wins.

Like I said, I cannot recommend this one highly enough.  Four Stars from The Grandstander for this one.

My Autographed Baseball

In my previous post, I alluded to having a baseball autographed by Chuck Noll.  My friend Tim Baker asked about seeing a photo of said baseball, so here you go....

I obtained the Coach's signature when I was a participant in the Pirates Alumni Golf Outing in July 1992.  Other autographs on that ball are former Pirates Bill Mazeroski,  Bob Friend (right below Noll's), Nellie Briles, Nellie King, Vernon Law, Dave Guisti, Roy Face, Grant Jackson, and Frank Thomas.  

One other autograph on that ball is from the former ball player in whose foursome I played that day.  He was not a Pirate Alumnus, but, rather a former major leaguer who now lives in the Pittsburgh area.  I admit that I was unaware of this guy at the time I met and played with him, but he was very nice gent, and a pleasure to play with. He also was guy who would have a most significant impact on the Pirates in the years ahead, although we didn't know it at the time.  His name is Tom Walker, and one day, many years down the road, his son Neil, only six years old back in July of '92, will one day no doubt be playing in that same Pirates Alumni Golf Outing.

To Absent Friends - Chuck Noll

By now, everyone with even the remotest bit of interest in the subject is aware of the death of former Steelers Head Coach Chuck Noll this past Friday night at the age of 82.

I am not going to use this space to regurgitate the facts and figures of Noll's career - the 209 wins, the four Super Bowls, and on and on.  If you are a Steelers fan and a football fan, you know all of that.  However, if you are a Steelers fan and are under the age of, say forty or so, know this:  none of the tradition and the history of your favorite team would be what it is today were it not for Chuck Noll.  The Steelers Dynasty of the 1970's and the "Steelers Tradition" and the high standards to which the franchise holds itself to the very day, none of it would have happened were it not for Chuck Noll.

I highly recommend that you read the excellent book about those dynastic Steelers, "Their Life's Work" by Gary Pomerantz.  It will give you the picture of just what a towering presence Noll was to those Steelers teams, not only while he was coaching them, but also in the effect that he had on so many of those players' lives well after their football days were over.

I also recommend that you read the terrific special "wrap-around" section in today's Post-Gazette sports section that pays tribute to Noll with stories and columns by Ed Bouchette, Gene Collier, Ron Cook, Gerry Dulac, and Dan Rooney.  It is worth saving.  John Mehno also wrote an excellent column in today's Beaver County times.

One of my favorite Noll stories, which was also an example of his sharp wit and way with words was a quote of his when reporters asked him about the playing status of running back Sydney Thornton.  "Sydney's problems are many, and they are great."  Can't see Jim Harbaugh saying something like that, can you?

I will close with my own encounter with the man.  It was July 1992, and I was playing in the Pirates Alumni Golf Outing at Churchill Valley Country Club.  In addition to all the old Pirates who were the "stars" of the Outing, one of the other celebrity guests was the newly retired coach of the Steelers, Chuck Noll.  At one point shortly before the groups were to gather to be sent out to play, I found myself walking across a parking lot and coming towards me was Chuck Noll himself.  I introduced myself, congratulated him upon his retirement, and thanked him for all he did for the Steelers.  Then I said something inane like, "would you rather be up at St. Vincent's today than here playing golf?"  He smiled, and said "not a bit."  He couldn't have been nicer or more gracious.

When you play in that Outing, you are given a baseball that the participants will autograph for you during the day.  I have that ball, and it is signed by lots of old Pirates heroes, but the signature that makes that ball REALLY special, in my mind, is the the one that simply says, CHUCK NOLL.

RIP Chuck Noll.  The Steelers and the NFL will not see your like again.

Book Review: "Their Life's Work"

Got my reading for 2014 off with a bang with "Their Life's Work" by Gary M. Pomerantz.  The subtitle of this book says it all: "The Brotherhood of the 1970's Pittsburgh Steelers, Then and Now."

Now, when I first became aware of this book a few months back, I thought that it would be yet another regurgitation of facts and stories of the  Super Bowl Seventies Steelers.  You know, kind of like the endless stories we've all heard a million times over the years.  However, as I read the reviews of this book in recent months, it prompted me to put this book on my Christmas wish list, and Santa Marilyn came through.


Some reviewers have likened this book to a football version of Roger Kahn's classic baseball book, "The Boys of Summer", and it is an apt analogy.  Like Kahn did with the 1950's Brooklyn Dodgers, Pomerantz tells the story of the Steelers in their glory days, and then revisits many of the players in the current day.  Pomerantz is a national writer and author. He cut his teeth as a sports writer with the Washington Post and later as a general assignment reported with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  I think what makes this book special, besides the fact that he is a gifted writer, is the fact that Pomerantz is not a local guy who covered the team in its heyday.  This makes the point that the Steelers of those years were indeed special on a national and league-wide level to the point that they are an historic team.  And he gives a perspective on such people as Art Rooney, Chuck Noll, Joe Greene, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris and others that were new to me.  Sometimes, I think that we in Pittsburgh are so close to the Steelers of that era that we can't appreciate just what they mean on a national level.

Pomerantz does not give a game-by-game summary of all the events of those six magical seasons.  In fact, he goes into detail on only three specific games: the Immaculate Reception game in 1972, the 1974 AFC title game with the Raiders, and the first Super Bowl win against the Vikings.  Each game is covered in about half dozen pages or so, but written in a such a way that those games that are so familiar to Steelers fans will seem new and fresh to the reader.

The book concentrates on the present day lives of four Steelers: Greene, Bradshaw, Harris, and John Stallworth, but in those chapters, you will also learn about the lives of all of the other big names from those teams.  Pomerantz also does not sugarcoat the down side of life that these players experienced, specifically the trauma and tragedy that was the life and death of Mike Webster.

Lots stand out to me from reading this book, but I will just highlight two of them.  One, that Chuck Noll was and remains a towering presence in the lives of all of these players, and two, the absolute heart and soul of those Steelers was Joe Greene.  No one else was even a close second.

You don't have to be a Steelers fan to like this book. It is that good.  And if you are a Steelers fan, it is an absolute must read.

I will close with just one passage, among many, in the book that stood out to me.  It describes Joe Greene on December 20, 1981, the day he decided to retire:

In the Astrodome that day, with both teams out of the playoffs, the thirty-five year old Greene played his 181st regular season game. He became wistful as he took in the scene one last time. He realized that the game carried no real meaning other than it being his last. Greene thought, Can you imagine playing games like this your whole career? What a sad statement that would be.

Terrific book.

Happy Birthday, Chuck Noll!

Happy birthday  to Coach Chuck Noll, the true architect of the Steelers Dynasty of the 1970's.  He turns 81 today, and is said to be in poor health.  Hope it is a great day today for him.

turns out that January 5 is the birth date for lots interesting, if disparate, folks.  One of Noll's coaching rivals, Sam Wyche, 68, former Vice President Walter Mondale is 85, and actors Robert Duvall, 82, Diane Keaton, 67, and January "Mrs, Don Draper" Jones, 35, all get to blow out the candles today.  It is also the the birth date of Sam Phillips (1923-2003), the owner of Memphis record label Sun Records, and the guy pretty much credited with unleashing Elvis Presley upon an unsuspecting world.

Super Bowl Prediction

So, I have been pondering the question as to who will win the Super Bowl for almost two weeks, and, more than any Super Bowl in recent memory, a case can be made for either team as the eventual winner.

Giants - Pros:

• A strong defense that got hot at the perfect time in the season


• Eli Manning has looked terrific in the playoffs, and proved in 49'er game that he can withstand even the fiercest of NFL defenses


• They have demonstrated a knack to beat the Patriots in recent years, most notably in the Super Bowl four years ago

Giants - Cons

• They seem a bit mouthy and over-confident


• They were only a 9-7 team during the year


• They lost twice, convincingly, to the God-awful Washington Redskins

Patriots - Pros

• They have Tom Brady


• They have, like it or not, Bill Belichick as head coach, and he's pretty good


• They have Rob Gronkowski


• Brady looked like he was from another world in the playoff game against the Broncos

Patriots - Cons

• They have, at best, a very ordinary defense


• Until they beat the Ravens two weeks ago, they had not beaten a team with a winning record all season


• Rob Gronkowski is injured and his effectiveness for Sunday is unknown at this time


• Brady looked very ordinary in the game against the Ravens

So, considering all of these factors, I had been leaning towards picking the Giants to win. However, something last night just clicked in my head and has told me that Brady is going tom take charge and that the Patriots are going to avenge the loss of four years ago and take care of business in Indy on Sunday. There you have it...the PATRIOTS to win on Sunday.

Should this happen, there will, of course, be some major angst among the Yinzers of Steelers Nation as this will mean that Belichick will now join Chuck Noll as the only head coach to have won four Super Bowls, and Brady will join Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana (who played in the WPIAL, which is almost as good as being a Steeler) as the only QB to have played on four Super Bowl winning teams. Should the Patriots win, I predict that the first call to The Fan stating that Belichick's four wins "shouldn't count" because he "cheated by video tapin' n'at" will come in before midnight on Sunday.

Let's hope it's a great game, with lots of great commercials, and an entertaining performance by Madonna at halftime.

Enjoy!!