Watch Tower: Dissention in Pittsburgh Over Jonathan Dwyer? Plus Hail to the Chief, Art Rooney Sr.

Cut down day always brings a flurry of news around the NFL, this year things were more active than ever at the South Side as the Steelers 2013 Roster contained some surprises, giving the Watch Tower plenty to focus on. And it begins by shining its light on a story that wasn’t told.

Dwyer:  The Glory and Agony of 140 Characters 

The biggest cut that the Steelers made the release of Jonathan Dwyer. Dwyer was not only their season leading rusher, he was also the only healthy back.

• Nonetheless, he got a visit from the Turk.

The fact that Dwyer’s roster spot was in jeopardy was not a surprise in Steelers Nation. On the blogesphere, (or at least at Behind the Steel Curtain) several articles and many fan exchanges rested on the premise that the numbers game would dictate that either Dwyer or Isaac Redman would be a goner.

But among the professional press, the conventional wisdom was that Dwyer was safe, esp. in light of the injury to Le’Veon Bell, as Jim Wexell’s tweet indicates.

This is why #Steelers wouldn't have cut Dwyer. They can win with him as feature back.
— James C Wexell (@jimwexell) August 15, 2013

To be fair, the arrival of Felix Jones complicated the picture, but the move to cut Dwyer was nonetheless a surprise.

Shortly after the move became public, Mark Kaboly  of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review dropped a bomb via Twitter:

One last thing on Dwyer ... it wasn't the coaching staff that wanted him gone.
— Mark Kaboly (@MarkKaboly_Trib) September 2, 2013

In journalism speak, Kabloy had a scoop.

News of the front office overruling the coaching staff on a personnel selection, regarding a past and potential future starter, is a tremendous news coup for Kaboly. In fact, such a morsel literally screams for more.

• Yet none was forth coming.

Not in the regular Tribune Review, not in the Steel Mill Blog (which still remains inaccessible from the Trib’s main Steelers site – yours truly had thought the blog had gone dark and needed to find it by Googling it), not anywhere else.

To make matters worse, Kabloy himself seemed to validate the need for more information in an additional Tweet.

24 hours later and it still makes no sense whey #Steelers released Dwyer.
— Mark Kaboly (@MarkKaboly_Trib) September 1, 2013

• The Watch Tower agrees… or at least it makes no sense that a further explanation was given.

Kaboly obviously learned that Dwyer had supporters on the coaching staff, perhaps the entire coaching staff, but that they were overruled by someone else in the organization, and since you can rule out the business and scouting departments, that leaves the front office.

Which means that someone named Colbert and/or someone name Rooney spoke up on the issue. What happened?

• Did the coaches split and Colbert/Rooney provided the deciding influence?
• Were the coaches united, but a cap conscious Kevin Colbert, with backing from Rooney, overruled them?
• Or did Art Rooney II just pull rank?

We know from Bob Labriola’s tweets that coaches had concerns about Dwyer, but no matter how you slice it there’s a story screaming to be told there, and one that goes far beyond the confines of Twitter’s 140 characters.

5 Bars of Hail to The Chief

August 25 marked the 25th Anniversary of the passing of a legend, namely the death of Steelers founder Art Rooney Sr.

The death of Art Rooney Sr. was a touchstone moment for me, as it coincided with my renewed following of the team (not very easy to do from suburban Maryland in the pre-internet era.)

And although his passing had little impact on the Steelers, clearly Pittsburgh lost some of its finest citizens then.

• Credit the Post-Gazette for remembering the anniversary.

It was entirely appropriate to do so and the Tribune Review did not run anything on the Chief. Neither did ESPN, nor did any of the other major fan sites.

• Yet the commemorative piece(s) were not without problems.

The article dealt with the way in which the five Rooney sons divided their father’s possessions, and then offered perspectives on how each of the five Rooney sons, Dan, Art Jr., Tim, John, and Pat, felt about that day and provided some insights into the relationships that the men had with their father.

• The real issue was with the Post-Gazette’s presentation of the articles. There was one article which told the entire story. And then there were five other articles on each of the Rooney brothers.

The problem was that the individual pieces on the Rooney brothers were written as part of a single story, and not intended to be stand alone pieces. So if you clicked on one of the individual links, such as the story on Tim Rooney, the stories were disjointed, making references to events in other stories.

The Post Gazette did later provide some clarifying text and a link to the main story, but that was only after several people complained via Facebook.

PG Takes Shot at SEO?

One possible reason behind the Post-Gazette’s decision to publish multiple articles on the Rooney brothers is to catch more search engine traffic.

• SEO, for those not familiar with the term, is the art of trying to get your pages to rank well on Google (and Bing, for what that’s worth) so that you get more visitors to your site.

While the Watch Tower has not (yet) done any comprehensive assessment of how the various major Steelers news sites fare in SEO, some cursoury analysis shows them lagging behind the competition.

Search rankings for major Steelers related stories are frequently dominated by the likes of Behind the Steel Curtain and the Bleacher Report.

The decision to break the Rooney stories up into multiple pieces, could be a step towards changing that, as could their decision to create a separate landing page for what has been a rather impressive series of regular season previews.

Post-Gazette Goof on Dwyer

While the Post-Gazette’s regular season preview coverage was generally very good, they did let one rather glaring error slip through in Ed Bouchette’s Five Keys piece as the screen shot reveals:

Jonathan Dwyer had been cut by the time this ran...

• The problem with this piece is that Jonathan Dwyer had already been cut by the time this article ran.

Its normal (and highly advisable) to write stories like this in advance of publication, but going back and making these corrections is also necessary.

Steelers Today Goes Dark?

Finally, the Watch Tower notes, and laments, what appears to be the passing of a long established, well written fan site Steelers Today.

Steelers Today has been around for several years, dating back to about 2006 if memory serves. While the site was known for long periods of inactivity during the off season, it had been active up until the NFL draft.

However, attempts to access it now reveal that the domain registry has expired, seemingly signaling that the days one of the more prominent fan-based sites has unfortunately come to an end.

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Bill Austin, Former Pittsburgh Steelers Coach, 1928-2013

Bill Cowher once remarked that he didn’t know who had coached the Pittsburgh Steelers prior to Chuck Noll.

Well they did play professional football in Pittsburgh before The Emperor’s arrival, and the man who preceded him was Bill Austin who passed away Thursday evening at his home in Las Vegas, reports Allan Robinson of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

From Nixon to Austin

History will note that Bill Austin was the last Pittsburgh Steelers head coach hired by franchise founder Art Rooney Sr. And even in that respect, Austin represented something of a transition.

“The Chief” Art Sr., was first an exceptional human being, second an outstanding citizen and ambassador for the city of Pittsburgh, third a phenomenal athlete, and fourth a ace horse race odds maker.

• He was not, however, a good football man.

The Steelers did nothing but lose during the 35 years that Art Sr. ran the franchise. Despite suggestions of his later life moniker “The Chief” Rooney was not one to meddle or micro manage the decisions of his coaches. “There can only be one boss” Rooeny explained to his five son’s as they vigorously protested Walter Kiesling’s decision to cut Johnny Unitas – without so much as allowing him to throw a pass in practice.

• In short, Rooney believed in hiring someone to do a job and then standing behind them – the only problem was “The Chief” never hired the right people.

But by the early 1960’s Dan Rooney began to assume more and more control of the Steelers operations. When Dan tired of Buddy Parker’s alcohol induced shenanigans he convinced his father to take Parker up on often repeated threats to resign.

Two weeks prior to the Steelers 1965 season Parker informed Dan he was trading defensive end Ben McGee (who went on to be a Pro Bowler). Dan told him they’d discuss it in the morning. Parker balked, insisting he was the coach. Dan put his foot down. Parker offered to resign.

• Dan called his bluff.

That left the Steelers without a head coach two weeks prior to the regular season. Dan and Art Sr. turned to Mike Nixon, but they knew he was not the man for the job. Art. Rooney even advised Nixon to turn down the offer.

• They were right. Nixon won two games and was gone.

Finally, Dan Rooney had the chance been waiting for, the opportunity to put his own stamp on the selection of the Steelers head coach.

In his self titled autobiography Dan Rooney explained that he began an exhaustive search, that included Bill Austin, then a coach for the Los Angles Rams. Austin interviewed well, Rooney admits.

But then Art Sr. called Vince Lombardi, who had mentored Austin, and Lombardi give Austin a glowing recommendation.

That was enough for The Chief. Dan protested, insisting that the selection process must move forward, but The Chief had spoken, and Austin took the reigns of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Austin in Pittsburgh

In his book From Black to Gold author Tim Gleason rated Pittsburgh Steelers head coaches not named “Noll,” “Cowher,” or “Tomlin.”

Austin came in at #6 – out of seven by Gleason’s rendering. As Gleason explains “Bill Austin was Walt Kiesling reincarnated, without Kiesling’s good qualities.

Bill Austin you see, was a true disciple of Vince Lombardi. In fact, he did all he could to emulate Lombardi. But, as Gleason quote Steelers legend Dick Hoak, “’His problem was that he tried to be someone that he wasn’t.’”

Dan Rooney recounts how Andy Russell told him that former Packers on Austin’s Steeler squads remember Austin quoting Lombardi speeches verbatim. Alas, channeling his inner Lombardi didn’t work for Austin.

• It also had disastrous effects on the Steelers.

Austin did walk Lombardi’s walk in one aspect – he was demanding of his players. In fact, he ran them into the ground, once demanding that his players practice at game speed resulting in:

• Linebacker Bill Saul suffering a career-ending knee injury
• Defensive end Ken Koratus spraining an ankle that slowed him for the entire season
• Running back Jim Butler injuring a knee that cost him most of a season
• Defensive back Paul Martha cracking his helmet in two and getting a concussion in the process

Worse yet, all of this happened on the fields of St. Vincents, sabotaging the Steelers season before it began.

The One Thing Austin Did Right….

Bill Austin started out the 1968 0-6. Then he did something that many at the time would categorize as a mistake.

• He coached the Steelers to two victories and forced a tie in the third.

After that he went back to his losing ways, finish 2-11-1. But Austin’s mid-season “sin” cursed the Steelers with the fourth pick in the 1969 draft, robbing Pittsburgh of the chance to draft the consensus number one overall pick USC star running back O.J. Simpson.

• Yes, it was Austin cost the Steelers a shot at O.J. Simpson. Bill Austin, it seems, wasn't even smart enough to play for draft position....

....And Steelers Nation has thanked him since, as Chuck Noll used that self same pick to draft Joe Greene.

The rest is history.

Thanks Bill. May you rest in peace.

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In Memory of Rita McGinley, Part Owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers

Long time Pittsburgh Steelers minority owner Rita McGinley has passed away.

Rita McGinley was the daughter of Barney McGinley who bought out Bert Bell’s shares of the Steelers when Bell became NFL commissioner. She was related to the Rooney’s by marriage as her brother Jack McGinley was married to Art Rooney Sr.’s sister Marie.

McGinley Loyal to Her Community and Her Team

McGinley was a graduate of Carlow College (then known as Mount Mercy) where she earned a degree in biology, graduating in 1940. She went on to teach at Braddock High and Woodlawn Hills High.

Rita McGinley was not a silent partner in the Steelers. In her obituary on Steelers.com Art Rooney II went at great pains to say that she watched games at Three Rivers Stadium and Heinz Field for as long as she could, always attended shareholder meetings, and was a frequent presence at training camp.

Like her brother before her, Rita McGinley was fiercely loyal to both the Rooney’s and the Steelers.

During the Steelers ownership restructuring of 2008, it became known that shortly after the death of Art Rooney Sr. a representative of an investor approached Jack McGinley asking him if he would be interested in parting with his shares of the Steelers. (Sorry, no link available.)

McGinley promptly told the said representative that his patron could keep his money and while he held on to his share of the Steelers. After McGinley passed away in 2006, a similar offer was made to his heirs.

That suitor was none other that Stanley Druckenmiller, who of course emerged in 2008 with his attempt to buy out the shares of Tim, John, Pat, and Art Rooney, Jr. after Roger Goodell ordered the Rooney family to divest itself of either the Steelers or its horse racing interests.

• For a time there it seemed like the Rooneys could lose control of the Steelers.

But Rita McGinley made it clear in an interview that she was not parting with her shares of the team, no matter what price was offered to her.

True to her word, she retained her 10% stake in the Steelers when the ownership restructuring was complete. It is unknown who now inherits those shares.

Friend to Carlow College and St. Vincents

While part ownership of the Pittsburgh Steelers may have earned Rita McGinley notoriety, “The best description of her is that she was a teacher and philanthropist who happened to have an interest in a football team,” explained her Jack McGinley in an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

McGinley was generous with her wealth, donating 5 million dollars to Carlow College where she founded the Rita McGinley Center for Student Success. Mary Hines, President of Carlow College, told the Tribune-Review that was a very dear friend of the university who truly exemplified what a Carlow alum is and what they value.”

• She also endowed a chair at St. Vincent’s College in Latrobe to help perpetuate the legacy of Pittsburgh icon Fred Rodgers.

St. Vincent’s College is well known to Steelers Nation for the obvious reason, but Carlow College might very well be new for many. Situated on “17 glorious acres  in the Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood, Carlow is a small, traditionally female, Catholic liberal arts school sponsored by the Sisters of Mercy.

In the generations when female higher education was the exception and not the rule, Carlow severed as a gateway to a college degree to thousands of young women in Western Pennsylvania, including my aunt and my mother.

Thanks, in part, to Rita McGinley’s generosity that door will remain open, and perhaps that will be her most enduring legacy.

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Fans Name James Harrison's 99 Yard Pick Six as Steelers Favorite Super Bowl Moment

All things must eventually draw to a close and in the case of this blog that includes our “Steelers Favorite Super Bowl Moment” poll.

Born during the Steelers 2010 playoff run, the poll got deleted by mistake after the Steelers 2010 AFC Championship victory over the New York Jets when it had at least 500 votes.

The poll immediately went back up, and was kept after the disappointment of Super Bowl XLV as sort of a rallying cry.

However, in the fall of 2012 Google Blogger’s polling function ran into problems, and votes began disappearing from polls. While Blogger fixed it, the patch did not seem to apply to older polls, as this one had close to 1000 votes on it in October, and it closed at 800 and change.

So its time has come.

James Harrison's 99 Yard TD Tops List

And what was the favorite Super Bowl moment of the Steel Curtain Rising faithful? See for yourself:

There’s little wonder why. |

James Harrison made one of the most dramatic game-changers in the history of the Super Bowl. Ben Roethlisberger’s final drive in Super Bowl XLIII comes in second on this list. The only other two moments to get any real “love” were the Lombardi Trophy presentation to Art Rooney Sr. following Super Bowl IX and Lynn Swann’s acrobatic catches in Super Bowl X.

Thanks to all who voted. Steel Curtain Rising is always running a poll of some sort, so if you found this page via Google and have read this far, please scroll up and vote!

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Steelers Nation: "Generation Immaculate Reception" Celebrates 40 Years

Terry Bradshaw and Franco Harris connected through the Immaculate Reception on December, 23rd 1972, combining to make the most spectacular play in football history.

The play happened precisely a week before my 4 month birthday, making me a member of Steelers Nation’s post Immaculate Reception generation.

Comprehending what that means requires knowing what came before, experiencing what followed, and appreciating the almost super natural aspect of what occurred on that day. Scroll down or click on the links below to reach each thread of this incredible story.

The Post Immaculate Reception Steelers
The Pre-Immaculate Reception Pittsburgh Steelers
The Immaculate Reception – A Franchises’s Fortunes Change

The Post Immaculate Reception Steelers

While the Steelers lost in the following week to Don Shula’s perfect 1972 Dolphins team, the Immaculate Reception ushered in an unheralded era of pro football prosperity. Since that fateful the Pittsburgh Steelers have:

• Won 6 Super Bowls, more than any other team
• Played in 8 Super Bowls, tying the mark for championship appearances
• Achieved a winning record in 32 of those 40 years, again, more than anyone else
• Posted an overall winning percentage that is better than any other NFL team
• Sent 64 players on the NFL's All Pro Teams, more than any other franchise
• Never once did they win fewer than 5 games something that no one else in the NFL can say 

These stats come courtesy of Tim Gleason, author of From Black to Gold, whose article on the Immaculate Reception on Behind the Steel Curtain is simply one of the best articles on the Pittsburgh Steelers I have ever read (full disclosure - I also writer for BTSC.)

Pittsburgh measures success in Super Bowls. Few other NFL cities can make that claim. Its often said that Steelers fans are spoiled, and to a large extent that’s true.

No other NFL franchise can match the Steelers record of success, stability and sustained since that day in December 1972.

The Pre-Immaculate Reception Steelers

The Immaculate Reception was also the Steelers first playoff victory.

• That’s hard for many fans to fathom, just as it was hard for me to grasp as a child.

The morning after the Penguins most recent Stanley Cup victory, I declared that Pittsburgh was once again the City of Champions.

In doing so, I shared memories of seeing framed copies of the Sports Illustrated cover featuring Terry Bradshaw and Willie Stargell adorning walls that overlooked barbershop counters where Iron City Steelers Championship cans were proudly displayed.

An unremarkable memory, until you consider the fact that Dino’s barbershop lay in Aspen Hill, Maryland, which is about 10 miles from the DC border.

But to a 7 year old all of this was "normal." Neither of my parents followed sports closely, but as a child I naturally asked them if they’d similarly been Steelers fans growing up.

“You don’t understand, the Steelers and Pirates were terrible when we were growing up,” was the response.

The Pirates did have their moments in the sun, but the Pittsburgh Steelers were a paragon to futility for 40 years. Aside from failing to win a playoff game, the pre-Immaculate Reception Steelers could “boast” of:

• A single playoff appearance (a 1962 loss to Detroit)
• A mere 8 winning seasons and 5 more seasons at .500
• Not even allowing Johnny Unitas, perhaps the best quarterback ever to play, to throw a pass in practice before giving him his walking papers
• Cutting Len Dawson, future Super Bowl Champion and NFL Hall of Famer
• Trading Bill Neilson away for nothing to the arch-rival Cleveland Browns where he’d appear in two NFL Championships
• Passing on future Hall of Famers Bill Schmidt and Lenny Moore opting to pick dud Gerry Glick in the later case
• Stubbornly sticking to the obsolete Single Wing formatting deep into the 50’s

The pre-Immaculate Reception Pittsburgh Steelers also suffered their share of bad luck.

Legendary Pitt coach Jock Sutherland coached the Steelers two winning seasons following World War II, but unfortunately died after the 1947 season on a scouting trip. Joe Bach was also making progress towards building a winner, until health problems forced him form the game.

Then there was Gene Lipscomb aka “Big Daddy” tragic death to heroin in 1963. Former Colorado stand out Byron White led the NFL in scoring, rushing, and total offense in 1938, but decided to study for a year at Oxford and played for Detroit in 1940. (White later went on to the US Supreme Court.)

The Steelers just couldn't seem to get a break.

The Immaculate Reception -- A Franchise's Fortunes Change

The root of many if not all of the Steelers ills for those 40 years was the simple fact that Art Rooney Sr., for as decent and honorable of a man he was, was as bad at picking coaches as he was good at handicapping horses.

Dan Rooney began to take over control of the Steelers in the 1960’s while Art Rooney Jr. began building the scouting department. Rooney in fact influenced his father’s decision to fire the mercurial Buddy Parker, yet could not persuade The Chief to ignore Vince Lombardi’s advice to hire Bill Austin.

Austin failed after just two seasons, and Art Rooney Sr. finally relented in allowing Dan to conduct a thorough coaching search. Then, things began to change for the Pittsburgh Steelers:

• Rooney hired Chuck Noll, the first and as yet only NFL coach to win four Super Bowls
• The city of Pittsburgh agreed to build Three Rivers Stadium, giving the Steelers a modern home
• Noll selected future NFL Hall of Famer Joe Greene with his first pick in 1969 NFL Draft
• Terry Bradshaw, a future Hall of Famer, came to Steelers in the next year as the number one overall pick in the 1970s NFL Draft
• Jack Ham, another future NFL Hall of Famer followed in the second round of the 1971 NFL Draft

Chuck Noll entered the 1972 NFL Draft actually wanting to draft Robert Newhouse. But Art Rooney Jr. and Dan Radakvoich and prevailed on him to ignore Newhouse and instead take Penn State fullback Franco Harris.

• Finally, reason intervened in the draft room and tipped the scales in the Steelers favor to another Hall of Famer.

Still, when Harris first joined the Steelers, team capital Andy Russell feared he wouldn’t make it, as Harris seemed to shy from hitting holes.

Yet, in his first exhibition game start off tackle to the left, found nothing, planted his foot, and cut back to the right, exploding for a 75 yard touchdown. After the play Noll offered his running backs coach, Dick Hoak a simple instruction:

• “Dick, don’t over coach him.”

At 6’2” 220 lbs., Franco Harris was a big back for his day. Yet he was fast. He was also cerebral.

According to The Ones Who Hit the Hardest Harris once confided to NFL Films that “The art of running is being able to change and do things because what you thought would be there is not there.”

• That ability served Franco Harris, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and Steelers Nation extremely well on December 23rd 1972.

The Raiders and Steelers staged the first of many hard-fought battles those two teams would fight throughout the 1970’s. The score stood at 0-0 at the half, and the fourth quarter found the Steelers clinging to a 3 point lead.

John Madden benched starter Daryl Lamonica for of “The Snake” Ken Stabler. With just over a minute to play, Stabler exploited the weakness of a the Steeler Curtain without Dwight White, and ran 30 yards for a touchdown.

• Art Rooney Sr. had waited 40 years to taste playoff victory, and the Chief concluded he’d have to wait one more, heading to the locker room to console his team.

The Steelers got the ball back, but only advanced to their 40 by the time 22 seconds remained. The call was “66 Circle Option Play” to Barry Pearson.

Terry Bradshaw faded back. The Raiders laid in the blitz. Bradshaw evaded. Bradshaw stepped up. Bradshaw fired a missile downfield to Frenchy Fuqua. The ball soared downfield carrying with the momentum of 40 years of losing.

As the ball reached about the 30 it slammed into a wall created by a hellacious collision between Jack Tatum and Frency Fuqua ricocheting it backwards.

And in that instant, the fortunes of the Pittsburgh Steelers changed (available as of 12/31/12):


Certainly no one diagrammed “66 Circle Option Play” to end that way.

Was it luck or did a divine hand intervene to push the ball in Franco’s? I’ll lean towards the later, but you decide that question for yourself.

But there was nothing super natural about Franco being in the right place at the right time.

Franco Harris role in “66 Circle Option Play” was to block the outside linebacker. He wasn’t even supposed to be downfield. But when the linebacker didn’t appear, Franco took off feeling he might contribute elsewhere.

• As Chuck Noll explained, “Franco hustled on every play.” 

Fortune’s hand, in one form or fashion, opened the door between winning and losing for Pittsburgh, but it was Franco’s dedication and determination that drove the Steelers through it.

• And for 40 years the franchise has continued moving forward. 

Since then more Steelers seasons have ended at the Super Bowl than have ended as losing efforts.

Since that fateful day, “Steelers” has been synonymous with success, winning, and championships for an entire generation within Steelers Nation.

You can simply call us Generation Immaculate Reception.

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Dermontti Dawson, Jack Butler Round Out Chuck Noll's Hall of Fame Resume

In 1987, Joe Greene and John Henry Johnson entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame together. Happy happenstance allowed the first Super Steeler to share this individual honor with a star from Pittsburgh’s SOS (same old Steelers) era.

Greene and Johnson had little in common beyond having worn the Black and Gold.

Scribes in Steelers Nation might be tempted to say the same thing about this past weekend’s induction of Dermontti Dawson and Jack Butler, but they’d be mistaken because the two men share a deeper, if latent, connection that spans several generations of Steelers football.

Dermontti Dawson – Succeeding a Legend

Men who follow legends generally fail, at least by comparison. Frank Pollard took Franco Harris’ place in Pittsburgh backfield, and while he did finish his career with a better yards-per carry average, Pollard’s sin was to be merely good instead of great.

Dermontti Dawson followed legendary Pittsburgh center Mike Webster, and in a very literal sense of the word, he succeeded his predecessor.

Success on offense starts with the offensive line but, in an ironic twist of fate, few metrics exist to evaluate offensive lineman. They accumulate no yards, score no points, make no splash plays. Instead, their efforts empower others to make plays.

Dermontti Dawson claims his share of success in this regard, because Dawson:

• Opened holes for 1000 yard rushers Jerome Bettis and Barry Foster
• Did road grading that allowed the troika of Erric Pegram, Bam Morris, and John L. Williams to help Pittsburgh to Super Bowl XXX
• Blocked and pulled open the door to Merril Hoge’s cult-hero status

“Pulling” is perhaps Dawson’s greatest legacy. Prior to Dawson, only guards pulled.

Outside of quarterback, the center has the most difficult job on the offense.

He’s got to keep one hand on the ball, pay attention to shifts by linebackers and lineman, release the ball backwards, get the snap count exactly right, snap the ball backwards and then, in a split second, shift his attention to one or two 300 pound tackles with blood in their eyes.

• Dawson was able to do all that, then move outside to take on linebackers and defensive backs.

A single play suffices to illustrate Dawson’s excellence at pulling.

In January 1998 the Pittsburgh Steelers were hosting a playoff game vs. the New England Patriots. The two teams had fought a neck-and-neck battle that the Steelers won in OT after never leading in regulation.

The game was a pure chess match, and Dawson made the pivotal move.

Early in the game Kordell Stewart rolled out. It was meant to look like a pass, but it was in fact a designed run. After snapping the ball, Dawson pulled out wide to the strong side, and as Kordell began his advance up field, Dawson obliterated the closing defender.

• 40 yards later Kordell was in the end zone on a day when the final score was 7-6.

"Dermonti Dawson" doesn’t appear in the box score, but his ability to pull and then deliver a decisive block carried the day.

The Butler Did It

Jack Butler came from an era where the Steelers played third fiddle behind the Pirates and Pitt. He became a Steeler because Fr. Silas, St. Bonaventure’s athletic director, was Art Rooney Sr.’s brother.

Butler joined the Steelers in 1952, playing it wide out and the defensive end. Then, as a testament to how times have changed, a defensive back got hurt and Joe Michelosen put him in the game.

As Ed Bouchette detailed, in his second game, Butler took his first NFL interception to the house and never looked back.

In fact, Butler hauled in 52 interceptions – an incredible sum during an era when seasons lasted 12 games and a 200 yard passing game was considered exceptional.  When Butler retired he held the number 2 spot on the all-time interceptions list. Over 50 years later, he’s still 14 on the list.

BLESTO, Butler, Noll and Dawson

Canton is honoring Butler for his achievements on the field, but he easily could have earned induction for his accomplishments off of it. From 1963 to 2007, Jack Butler directed BLESTO (Bears Lions Eagles, Steelers Talent Organization), the league’s first scouting combine.

Obviously, the Steelers were not the only team to benefit from Butler’s prowess as a scout.

• But four generations of Pittsburgh Steeler rosters can’t help but bear his figure prints. 

And of course, the Pittsburgh Steelers won a few games during that time.

The key to winning those games, was of course the players. From 1969 to 1991 one man had the final word on draft day, and his name was Charles Henry Noll.

• Noll’s run of Hall of Famers selections in the 1970’s remains unprecedented. 

But Noll’s drafting record slipped in the late 70’s, a tendency that worsened in the ‘80’s.

Many reasons those draft misfires, but a big factor was Noll’s inability to get along with effectively with Art Rooney Jr. (to better understand Pittsburgh’s drafting woes in the 80’s, click here to read the article Chuck Noll vs. Bill Walsh – Talent Evaluators.)

Tensions got so great in 1986 the Dan Rooney was forced to make a choice, and he fired his younger brother.

Ed Bouchette chronicled the move in his classic, Dawn of a New Steel Age, and concluded that Dan’s difficult decision failed to pay dividends.

The record suggests Bouchtte is mistaken.

• In his first post Rooney Jr. draft, Chuck Noll drafted Hall of Famer Rod Woodson
  A year later he picked Dermontti Dawson 

Even in his twilight of his reign The Emperor retained an uncanny ability to transform raw data from the scouts like Butler into draft day home runs.

And that’s what makes Jack Butler and Dermontti Dawson’s simultaneous induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame just a little extra special for Steelers Nation.

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Steelers Not Among iPad Early Adopters in NFL

Training camp is still a few weeks away, but this might be the last summer that a familiar NFL ritual plays out in St. Vincents.

What every player dreads all summer long in Latrobe is a knock at the door from “The Turk.” Who knows who plays the role of “The Turk” today.

That’s not what’s important. It’s the news he brings.

The knock at the door is usually followed by the grim phrase:  “Coach wants to see you. And bring your play book.”  The later part of that phrase tells all – your days as a Steeler are over.

Some unfortunate few will hear that dreaded phrase this summer, but they might be the last.

No, the Steelers are not planning on holding camp elsewhere.

But as NFL.com recently profiled, tablet computer technology is sweeping the NFL, simultaneously replacing the traditional pen and ink playbook and radically alerting the experience of film study.

As the article details, every NFL team is experimenting with the iPad with several teams discarding dead tree editions of the playbook.

The Steelers, as reported by Neal Coolong of Behind the Steel Curtain, are not one of them. The Steelers will make film and plays available for iPads, but they’re not making them mandatory.

Avoiding “Putting on the Dog?” Not so Fast

Why aren’t the Steelers early adopters? There’s no way to be sure.

Art Rooney Sr. always admonished against “Putting on the dog,” his way of reminding the boys to be modest, translating his credo in to practical advice such as “Don’t get a Cadillac, get a Buick instead.”

Dan Rooney is a traditionalist when it comes to the game and its presentation. In 1998 when a Jacksonville Jaguars team mascot and mocked the Steelers huddle Rooney loudly complained, going as far as to say, “It’s a shame we didn’t have Lambert or Lloyd with us. They’d have put him in the hospital.” 

When the Jacksonvillebeat reporter protested “But its only entertainment” Rooney’s report was “At Three Rivers Stadium our entertainment is in between the lines.”

But it would be a mistake to insist that the Steelers resist technology.

In fact, as part of the BLESTO scouting combine, the Steelers were one of the first teams to use computers in the scouting and evaluation of players. In fact, former Steelers defensive back, long-time BLESTO head, and soon to be Hall of Famer Jack Butler starred in a Sperry Rand commercial touting its computer’s role in the NFL draft.

Down Side to Technology

Traditionalists like Art Rooney Jr., who ran the Steelers scouting department in the 70’s, were “OK” with using computers, but were smart enough not to become slaves to them.

As he details in his biography/autobiography Ruanaidh, that self-same BLESTO computer didn’t think that Mike Webster could cut it in the NFL.

Even when it factored in intangibles like attitude and football intelligence, Webster simply lacked the measurables, or so that Sperry Rand algorithm concluded.

Fortunately Dick Haley, Tim Rooney, Art Jr. and Chuck Nolltook the time to look at tape on Webster, who of course became a Hall of Famer.

The smart money says that the Steelers will fully embrace tablet technology. But they’ll leave it to others to work out the kinks.

So it might be a few summers before the phrase “Coach wants to see you, and bring your iPad” are uttered in the halls of St. Vincents.

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