Player-coach Johnny "Blood" McNally once showed up to watch a Green Bay game, unaware that his own team was playing somewhere else that same day.
During the manpower shortages of the Second World War-when more than six hundred NFL players were fighting overseas-the Steelers and Eagles merged for a season in 1943. "Had to do it," explained Bert Bell, then the owner of the Eagles. Pittsburgh had no backs left, and Philadelphia had no linemen." The "Steagles" went 5-4-1, and a year later, with Philadelphia back on its own, the Steelers merged with the Chicago Cardinals. "Card-Pitt," or the Carpets, as they became known throughout the league, went 0-10.
In 1946, the Steelers hired Pitt coaching legend Jock Sutherland, and a year later, managed to tie for the 1947 Eastern Division title with the Philadelphia Eagles, only to lose the playoff, 21-0. Sutherland died the following spring on a scouting trip in Kentucky, and it would be eleven years before the Steelers won more than six games in any single season.
The team seemed perpetually behind the times. They were the last NFL team to move from the single-wing to the T formation, in 1951. To Chuck, playing in Paul Brown's state-of-the-art system in Cleveland, the Steelers of the era looked like haphazard misfits. "They didn't seem to wear the same helmets all the time," he said.
The team's first full-time scout was an undertaker.
In 1955, with the very first pick in the NFL draft, the Steelers selected a defensive back from Colorado A&M named Gary Glick, based solely on a letter of recommendation sent to the Steelers' head coach, Walt Kiesling.
Even when they found good players, they often didn't know what to do with them. In the 1950s , the Steelers would release or trade away five different quarterbacks-two of whom would later be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame-who would go on to start a total of twenty-one league championship games or Super Bowls over the following fifteen seasons. None was more famous than Pittsburgh's own Johnny Unitas.
"Unitas was totally ignored," said Dan Rooney. "They never did anything with him. It wasn't a question of misjudging him. They would have had to judge him first. But they never did a thing with him."
He wasn't the only one. Jack Kemp, who played in five championship games in the AFL, was released in the preseason of 1959. Future Hall of Famer Len Dawson, who would become one of the most accurate passers in league history, was drafted first overall in 1957, but he never really got a chance to prove himself. It was (Buddy) Parker's first year, and he traded instead for veteran Earl Morrall.
In 1958, the Steelers lost their first two games behind Morrall.
"You guys are too tight," Parker told his players. "Go out and get drunk and come back in here on Tuesday. We will have this problem solved."
That Tuesday, at the weekly quarterback meeting to watch game films, Morrall was gone. Shortly into the meeting, in the dark, someone walked into the meeting room and sat down next to Dawson.
"Hi, partner-how ya' doing?'" he asked.
It was Bobby Layne. Parker had traded Morrall and two draft choices (a number two in 1959, and a number four in 1960) for Layne, a legendary carrouser-"I want to run out of money and breath at the same time," he once said-whose lifestyle was not conducive to the finer points of football.
There were further problems with Parker's reign. But the biggest may have been his fondness for veterans at the expense of draft choices. Under Parker in 1959, the Steelers traded away their top seven choice; in 1960, they drafted Jack Spikes of TCU in the first round (but lost him to the Dallas Texans of the AFL) and traded away their next six choices. I both 1961 and 1962, they traded five of their first six draft choices. In 1963, they dealt each of their first seven choices. "That was his downfall," said Steelers' running back Dick Hoak. "What he did, he traded all of our draft choices, I mean, if you were from Texas, he was going to trade for you."
Parker's last season was 1964, but he'd already dealt Pittsburgh's first rounder in the 1965 draft, which the Chicago Bears used to select Hall of Famer Dick Butkus.
After a 1965 season with interim coach Mike Nixon, the Steelers hired former Packers assistant Bill Austin.
"He wanted to be Vince Lombardi, and he wasn't Vince Lombardi," said Dan Rooney.
"Bill Austin wanted to be Vince Lombardi and Steve McQueen rolled into one," said John Brown, who came to the Steelers in 1967.
***
Just like most of the Steelers' coaching hires since 1933, the hiring of Bill Austin didn't take. After three sad seasons, they were again looking for a new head coach. Chuck Noll was that coach and everything changed in Pittsburgh. And it's been pretty good ever since.
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