Bill Chastain

“Mean” Joe Greene and Mel Blount carpooled during their playing days with the Pittsburgh Steelers, talking about anything and everything while commuting to work like a couple of Joe Six packs. When Three Rivers Stadium came into view, Blount would turn toward Green.

“See that stadium?” Blount would say. “We kicked a lot of ass over there.”

Heinz Field is now the Steelers’ home after dynamite turned Three Rivers Stadium into a parking lot. Only the memories of a lost era remain, along with the legacies of Greene, Blount and the other players and coaches who made Pittsburgh’s “Steel Dynasty” of the 1970s the glory of their time.

The Dallas Cowboys came to be known as “America’s Team” for their popularity in the 1970s, but clearly the Steelers were every American’s team during the decade. So popular were the Steelers that twenty-one members of the team made national commercials by the time the team lined up to play the Los Angeles Rams on January 20, 1980 in Super Bowl XIV—none of the commercials were more memorable than Greene’s Coca Cola ad. The All-Pro defensive tackle looked battered and intimidating when a little boy handed him a Coke. Greene chugged the soda then smiled at the boy before tossing him his jersey. America loved the fact Mean Joe had a soft spot for kids and the ad won a “Clio” award.

Mean Joe, Terry, Franco, Swann, Lambert, Ham, Stallworth, Webster, Greenwood ... these were household names playing for the defending champions, who had won three Super Bowls in five years. But time had oxidized into rust on this regal NFL product. Ten of the team’s twenty-two starters were age thirty or older heading into the 1980 Super Bowl. Among the aging were Terry Bradshaw, Greene, Blount and Jack Ham. Ham wasn’t even suited up for the contest against the Rams after suffering an ankle injury.

Much of the NFL landscape had changed since the Steelers came into prominence earlier in the decade—particularly the rules that made playing defense more difficult every year. Rules were adopted to thwart talented defenses like the Steelers’, which had crushed opposing offenses like no team in NFL history. Head slaps and chucking receivers running patterns up the field became taboo. Offensive linemen were even empowered to use their hands to block. By virtue of their success the Pittsburgh defense initiated the changes that would make their jobs more difficult.

Late in Super Bowl XIV with the Rams still very much alive, this remarkable Steelers defense had to rise to the occasion to do what it had done so many times in the past: stop the opposing offense.
The Steelers’ journey had begun in the midst of a depression with a feisty Irishman who loved football. Would their remarkable dynasty culminate with a fourth Super Bowl victory? Sixty minutes of football would answer the question.