Chuck Noll is regarded as one of the greatest head coaches in NFL history. He led the Pittsburgh Steelers to four Super Bowl championships and oversaw a fearsome defense, known as “The Steel Curtain.”
Chuck Noll became the Steelers’ coach in 1969, and he went on to lead the once downtrodden Steelers to greatness.
Chuck Noll as a Dayton Flyer (photo courtesy University of Pittsburgh Press)
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Noll played on a youth football team with Harold Owens, the nephew of famed Olympic star Jesse Owens. Noll accepted a football scholarship to the University of Dayton, where he played multiple positions during his college years, including offensive and defensive line and linebacker.
After graduating from college, Noll was selected by the Cleveland Browns in the 1953 NFL Draft, a team that won the NFL Championship in 1954 and 1955. Noll retired in 1959.
Coaching was his next step, and he intended to return to his alma mater in that role. Instead, Noll was offered and accepted an assistant coach position in 1960 with the fledgling AFC Los Angeles Chargers, a team that moved to San Diego starting in its second season. In 1965, Noll moved to Baltimore and served as the assistant to head coach Don Shula for the Colts, and he remained there during the Colts’ Super Bowl season when they lost to the New York Jets in one of the most memorable Super Bowls in history.
Success that year was Noll’s springboard to being offered the head coaching position in Pittsburgh, replacing Bill Austin. Noll was 39, the NFL’s youngest head coach.
The Steelers were a losing franchise at the time, having won only 18 games total over the previous five seasons. Pittsburgh never had a winning record over those years, and the situation didn’t improve in Noll’s inaugural season, 1969, when the Steelers went 1-13.
Noll knew that he had to rebuild the roster. He picked Mean Joe Greene out of North Texas State in the 1969 NFL Draft, followed by Louisiana Tech’s Terry Bradshaw in 1970. Still, losing seasons continued in 1970 and 1971, before the Steelers turned the corner.
A team that was considered one of the NFL’s worst franchises, then became one of the league’s best. The Steelers made the NFC Playoffs starting in 1972 and remained a playoff team for the next seven seasons. It was 1985 before Pittsburgh again suffered a losing season.
Noll’s first Super Bowl win came in 1975, and he went on to become the first NFL coach ever to win four Super Bowls (IX, X, XIII, XIV).
Noll coached the Steelers for a total of 23 years and won nearly 60% of his games overall and 70% of Playoff games. He retired after the 1991 season, having notched 209 career victories. Noll was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1993, in his first year of eligibility.
Noll also advocated for giving African Americans a chance to play in the NFL. Under Noll’s coaching tenure, Joe Gilliam was the first African American starting quarterback. In 1975, Franco Harris became the first African American to win the Super Bowl MVP award.
Chuck Noll with QB Bradshaw (photo, NY Times)
Many teammates commented on the late coach.
Terry Bradshaw: “I’m proud to have played for him. It was a great honor.”
Franco Harris: “These are times when we reflect on all the great memories and the great times we had. And there’s no doubt that these memories that we had, probably people consider them the best of times in pro football.”
Jack Ham: “He was the glue, he was the guy that got all of us to buy into how to win a championship. He took the lead.”
In his own words, Chuck Noll wanted to balance leadership and teamwork when he coached football. “I can’t tell you how much you can gain, how much progress you can make by working as a team, by helping one another. You get much more done that way, and if there is anything the Steelers in the 70s epitomized, I think it was that teamwork.”
Chuck Noll died in 2014 at 82.
