The late former Steelers coach commanded respect and demanded results. He got both with a simply stated approach. Justin Zackal remembers.
A continual ticker of encomia paying tribute to Chuck Noll filled social media feeds, newspaper pages, and talk-show segments since the former Pittsburgh Steelers coach passed away Friday at age 82.
This wasn’t false chatter, especially for a man who disdained the drivel that lathers sports narratives.
When a lazy reporter once asked Noll the cringe-worthy question “How do you feel?” following a loss to the Bengals, Noll responded matter-of-factly:
“It hasn’t changed,” Noll said. “I still feel with my hands.”
This was how Noll handled his teams: simply stated yet intimidating, the highs never too high, the lows never too low.
He certainly had a feel for his teams from the moment he raised his hand to shush his players’ customary hooting and hollering as they were about to begin training camp in 1969. Noll, addressing the team for the first time, silently held up his hand and said plainly, without emotion, “You do not win games with false chatter.”
The man was just so consistent in his belief that we just believed everything he said.
|
Noll was their fourth head coach in six years, during which the Steelers had gone without a winning record. That had to change.
Five years later, the Steelers won their first of four Super Bowls under Noll, still the most by any head coach. The stereotypical football coach is one who barks with vein-popping fire and brimstone to command the respect of his team, so it’s refreshing to know that the coach with the most Super Bowl wins possessed such a steady, calm demeanor.
“A dog is not considered good because of his barking,” wrote ancient Chinese philosopher Chuang-Tzu, “and a man is not considered clever because of his ability to talk.”
Noll didn’t succumb to showing these outward displays of pressure, an example he made for his players. “Pressure is something you feel when you don’t know what you’re doing,” was a memorable Noll quote that Peyton Manning recites so much that it’s often credited to him instead.
I’m a lifelong Steelers fan and Noll was the Steelers coach during my entire childhood, but I don’t think I could recognize his voice like other current and former Steelers greats. Granted, Noll kept a private profile since retiring in 1991, and the one other former Steelers coach of my lifetime remains on television as a studio football analyst and cable company pitchman. Noll never endorsed anything or wrote a book. His life’s work was just coaching football.
That was a reminder he’d often tell players—getting on with their life’s work. Noll recognized that a player’s career was just a season of his life, which kept players’ highs and lows in perspective.
Noll never was a win-one-for-the-Gipper, pep-talking coach. Perhaps his most memorable locker room speech, according to Hall of Fame defensive tackle Joe Greene, was a week before the 1974 AFC Championship game. Noll, in this instance, acknowledged the false chatter of Oakland Raiders players who claimed the best two teams played when the Raiders beat the Dolphins. Noll told his players, “I want you guys to know that the Super Bowl is played three weeks from now. And the best team in football is sitting right here in this room.”
That may not sound like much motivation, but it was for a team that longed for a compliment the way a devoted son yearns for acceptance by his disciplinarian father.
“The man was just so consistent in his belief that we just believed everything he said,” said Greene, who played his entire 12-year career under Noll. “He was a man who wasn’t about any kind of hyperbole at all. You got the same Chuck all the time.”
Too often as fans we measure a coach by what we hear in the press conference and see on the sidelines. We are pissed off when our team loses, so our coach should be matching our sentiment by spitting nails and throwing headsets. With Noll, you got results.
That’s why we are quick to offer all this praise for Noll, because he never did it on his own behalf.
Lazy reporters this week probably asked others, “How do you feel about Chuck Noll?”, following this loss.
The most fitting response: “You have to hand it to him.”
Photo: AP/Greenawalt
Thank you