Pittsburgh Steelers · History

The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional football franchise based in Pittsburgh, founded in 1933 by Art Rooney. They compete in the AFC North and play at Acrisure Stadium, which opened in 2001 as Heinz Field. The club has won six Super Bowls, a total it shares with the New England Patriots.

From the Pirates to the Steelers

Art Rooney paid $2,500 for the franchise in July 1933 and named it the Pittsburgh Pirates, after the city's baseball club. The present name arrived in 1940, after a fan contest, and came from the steel industry. Between 1933 and 1968 the club played one playoff game, in 1947, and lost it 21-0 to the Philadelphia Eagles. It had merged with those same Eagles in 1943, during the Second World War, as the Steagles; in 1944 it did the same with the Chicago Cardinals as Card-Pitt and lost all ten games. In 1955 Pittsburgh cut a rookie quarterback named Johnny Unitas without giving him a regular-season snap.

From Forbes Field to Acrisure Stadium

The club has had four homes. It started at Forbes Field, shared with baseball's Pirates, and stayed until 1963, then moved to the University of Pittsburgh's Pitt Stadium from 1964 to 1969. In 1970, with the AFL-NFL merger settled, the Steelers took $3 million to switch to the AFC alongside the Cleveland Browns and the Baltimore Colts, and opened Three Rivers Stadium at the meeting point of the Allegheny and the Monongahela. That stadium was brought down with explosives in February 2001. Heinz Field opened the same year on the same North Shore site, seats about 68,400 and was renamed Acrisure Stadium in 2022 under a sponsorship deal. The team trains at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex on the city's South Side.

Chuck Noll and the 1974 draft

Rooney hired Chuck Noll in January 1969. He was 37 and had come from the Baltimore Colts staff. His first season ended 1-13. His drafts rebuilt the club: Joe Greene in 1969, Terry Bradshaw and Mel Blount in 1970, Jack Ham in 1971 and Franco Harris in 1972. The 1974 draft has no equal in league history: Lynn Swann in the first round, Jack Lambert in the second, John Stallworth in the fourth and Mike Webster in the fifth, all four Hall of Famers. That same year the club signed undrafted safety Donnie Shell, who also reached Canton.

The Immaculate Reception

On 23 December 1972 at Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh played Oakland in the divisional round. Twenty-two seconds remained, the Steelers trailed 7-6 and faced fourth-and-ten in their own half. Terry Bradshaw's pass ricocheted off the collision between John Fuqua and Jack Tatum. Franco Harris took the ball off his shoetops and ran sixty yards to the end zone. The 13-7 win was the franchise's first in the playoffs in forty seasons.

The Steel Curtain and four Super Bowls in six years

The defensive line of Joe Greene, L.C. Greenwood, Ernie Holmes and Dwight White was nicknamed the Steel Curtain. In 1976 that defence gave up 28 points across the last nine games and recorded five shutouts. The titles came in a run: Super Bowl IX on 12 January 1975, 16-6 over the Minnesota Vikings; Super Bowl X on 18 January 1976, 21-17 over the Dallas Cowboys with 161 receiving yards from Lynn Swann; Super Bowl XIII on 21 January 1979, again against Dallas, 35-31, with 318 yards and four touchdown passes from Bradshaw; and Super Bowl XIV on 20 January 1980, 31-19 over the Los Angeles Rams, settled by a 73-yard catch from John Stallworth. Four rings in six seasons.

The Terrible Towel and the Rooney family

Radio broadcaster Myron Cope introduced the Terrible Towel for the playoff game of 27 December 1975. The crowd has twirled the yellow towel ever since. In 1996 Cope signed the rights over to the Allegheny Valley School. The Rooneys have owned the club since 1933. Dan Rooney drove the Rooney Rule, adopted in 2003, which requires teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching jobs; his son Art Rooney II has been club president since that year. The helmet has carried the Steelmark logo on the right side only since 1962. The club has had three head coaches since 1969: Noll until 1991, Bill Cowher from 1992 to 2006 and Mike Tomlin since 2007. Since 2001 the stadium has closed the third quarter with Styx's Renegade, and in 2012 the team brought back the striped 1934 design that the press calls the bumblebee uniform.

Cowher, Roethlisberger and the 2006 and 2009 titles

Cowher took the team to six AFC Championship Games and lost Super Bowl XXX to Dallas in January 1996. Three Rivers Stadium was demolished in February 2001 and Heinz Field opened that year. Ben Roethlisberger was the eleventh pick of the 2004 draft and won all fifteen of his starts as a rookie. On 5 February 2006 in Detroit, Pittsburgh won Super Bowl XL 21-10 over the Seattle Seahawks; running back Jerome Bettis retired in his home city. Tomlin, hired in January 2007 at the age of 34, won Super Bowl XLIII on 1 February 2009, 27-23 over the Arizona Cardinals: James Harrison returned an interception one hundred yards at the end of the first half and Santonio Holmes caught the winning touchdown with 35 seconds left. On 6 February 2011 the team lost Super Bowl XLV 31-25 to Green Bay. Roethlisberger retired after the 2021 season, his eighteenth. Tomlin did not post a losing record in his first eighteen seasons, through 2024.

The eight Super Bowls

Pittsburgh has played eight Super Bowls and won six, more than any other AFC club. Four came in six seasons under Noll and two under Tomlin; the defeats came with Cowher in 1996 and with Tomlin in 2011. Dallas is the most frequent opponent, with three finals.

Retired numbers, records and the Hall of Fame

Pittsburgh has been among the most reluctant clubs in the league to retire numbers. The first was defensive end Ernie Stautner's 70; Joe Greene's 75 followed in November 2014 and Franco Harris's 32 in December 2022, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Immaculate Reception and four days after the running back's death. Harris is still the club's career rushing leader, Ben Roethlisberger its career passing leader and Hines Ward its career receiving leader as well as the MVP of Super Bowl XL. More than twenty people connected to the franchise are in the Hall of Fame, among them Art Rooney, Dan Rooney, Noll, Cowher, the four picks of the 1974 draft, Rod Woodson, Dermontti Dawson, Alan Faneca and safety Troy Polamalu, inducted in 2020. The 2008 defence finished first in the league in points and yards allowed, and linebacker T.J. Watt recorded 22.5 sacks in 2021 to tie the single-season record.

Browns, Ravens and Bengals: the AFC North

The Cleveland rivalry is the club's oldest and has been played twice a season since 1950. In 1996 Art Modell moved that franchise to Maryland and the Baltimore Ravens were created; they have been the benchmark opponent ever since. The two met three times in the 2010 season, with Pittsburgh winning 31-24 in the divisional round in January 2011. That game and the AFC Championship of January 2009, settled by a Polamalu interception return, are the fixtures that define the rivalry. The third neighbour is Cincinnati, in the same division since 2002.