1989 Pittsburgh Steelers Season

Season Summary (Noll's Finest Coaching Performance): Talent matters. But so does strong, steady, intelligent leadership. That's why I'm not one of those folks who believes a circus monkey could've coached the Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970's to a championship or two. True, the roster was filled with an embarrassment of Hall of Fame talent during that era, the likes of which the NFL has never seen before nor since. But I've witnessed many incredibly talented teams fall flat on their faces and fail to reach their potential over the years (including several somewhat recent Pittsburgh teams) due to questionable coaching. Therefore, I believe with conviction that it required a truly skilled conductor to properly orchestrate the symphony of destruction that Pittsburgh unleashed on the NFL from 1972-1979.

Nonetheless, the ridculous talent level of those "dynasty" era teams remains the primary reason (in my opinion) that Chuck Noll's name is often an oversight in conversations about pro football's greatest coaches, eshewed for names like Shula, Lombardi, Brown, Walsh, Parcels and *gasp* Belichick.

But rather than get into a "greatest of all time" debate over coaches (and yes, I definitely do view Noll as one of the all-time greats), I want to talk about what I believe was Chuck Noll's single greatest season as a coach, and it didn't take place during the glorious '70s. Instead, it happened in 1989, when Noll somehow led a young, woefully talent-deprived team that was outscored 92-10 in their first two games not only to an unlikely playoff berth, but to within a last-minute John Elway comeback of the AFC Championship game.

There were no Franco's or Bradshaw's leading this offense; instead, it was a group of no-names like Merril Hoge and Bubby Brister. Plenty of heart... but not a lot of talent. Coming into 1989, Hoge had had just 713 career rushing yards and Brister had a dismal career QB rating of 57.9.

The season opened with what can only be described as horror. Pounded 51-0 (at home) by Cleveland in week 1. Pounded 41-10 by Cincinnati in week 2. Pounded by Houston (twice), including a 27-0 humiliation in the House of Pain. Thumped by Denver, 34-7, and blanked by Chicago, 20-0. If you're doing the math, that's five losses by a combined score of 174-17... more than a 10-1 ratio.

Playoffs??? Playoffs??? With apologies to Jim Mora, surely there could be no hope of "playoffs" for this team. In the eyes of many, Pittsburgh -- who ultimately finished dead last in total offense in 1989 -- was already "on the clock" for a very high draft choice.

But in reality, the Steelers weren't out of it. Because mixed in with those horrific losses were surprising wins over Detroit, Kansas City and the playoff-bound Vikings. Best of all, there was a 17-7 revenge win over the Browns in which Pittsburgh's young-but-opportunistic defense forced 7 turnovers, intercepting Bernie Kosar 4 times. And following the shut out by Chicago, Noll rallied his young team behind the play of inexperienced, little-known (at the time) players like Rod Woodson, Carnell Lake, Greg Lloyd and Hardy Nickerson -- to win 6 of their next 7 games.

The one loss during that stretch was to the hated Houston Oilers and appeared to be a fatal blow, dropping the Steelers to 6-7 while Houston improved to 8-5 with a regular season sweep of the Steelers. But the Steelers didn't fold, winning their next two games vs. the Jets and Patriots, and headed into their regular season finale in Tampa somehow still mathematically alive for a playoff spot.

But to actually get there would take a minor miracle.

In addition to the Steelers needing a win vs. the Bucs, they also needed the Raiders to lose to the Giants, the Colts to lose to the Saints and the Bengals to lose to the Vikings to earn a playoff berth. Amazingly, all those things actually happened! Even though Bubby Brister completed only 7 passes and threw 2 ints vs. Tampa Bay, Rod Woodson made up for it with an All-World performance, returning the opening kickoff 72 yards to set up Pittsburgh's first score, tackling RB's in the backfield, breaking up TDs and intercepting passes. Merrill Hoge put up his best numbers of the regular season and Louis Lipps was spectacular (4 rec., 137 yds, 2 TD).

Lo and behold, when the dust finally settled on that final weekend of the regular season in 1989, the Steelers -- despite their horrific 92-10 start and being shut out three times -- had clinched perhaps the unlikeliest playoff spot in NFL history.

The “unlikeliest playoff spot” quickly turned into the unlikeliest playoff win. In Houston’s raucous “House of Pain,” scene of a 27-0 humiliation just weeks earlier, Rod Woodson delivered the defensive play of the year, forcing and recovering a fumble in overtime to set up Gary Anderson’s 50 yard dagger. Noll moved on. Jerry Glanville got fired.

Then came Denver, where the Cinderella Steelers were supposed to be blown out again. Instead, Merrill Hoge ran wild, the offense rolled up over 400 yards, and Pittsburgh controlled the game until the final 3 minutes. Leading 23 to 17, they were a defensive stand away from a shot at revenge against Cleveland in the AFC title game. Elway's late heroics crushed that dream, but for Noll, it was a master class in coaching... turning a below-average roster, left for dead multiple times, into a Cinderella story that defied every expectation.