By the end of the 1997 season, Bill Cowher had already led the Pittsburgh Steelers to three AFC Championship Games. But the rest of the decade wasn’t as kind. Pittsburgh failed to make the playoffs the next three seasons and finished 1998 and 1999 with losing records. By the turn of the 21st century, they had lost 19 out of their last 32 games. In the mostly unstable world of NFL coaching, that kind of two-year stretch has frequently resulted in the coach losing his job. But the Steelers are different. Through 2021, the franchise has only had three head coaches in the previous 52 years.
The Pittsburgh Steelers were founded by Art Rooney in 1933. Art ran the team until his son, Dan, began managing the day-to-day operations in 1969 and was given full control of the team in 1975. During the 1970s, Dan Rooney presided over the greatest run of success in the franchise’s history. Under his leadership, and that of legendary head coach Chuck Noll, the Steelers won four Super Bowls and became one of the most well-known and respected brands in the league. But the team fell on tough times in the 1980s, and by the end of 1991, they had made the playoffs only once in the previous seven seasons.
COWHER REVITALIZES THE STEELERS (1992–1996)
Chuck Noll retired after the 1991 season. To replace him, Dan Rooney hired Cowher, then a 34-year-old defensive coordinator with the Kansas City Chiefs. Cowher immediately turned the Steelers’ fortunes around. In his first season, he led the Steelers to an 11–5 record and their first division title in eight years. For his efforts, Cowher was named the NFL’s coach of the year by the Sporting News and the Associated Press. In 1995, the Steelers were one game shy of a championship, but lost to the Dallas Cowboys in the Super Bowl.
Initially, Cowher’s coaching style, demeanor, and personality were a hit in Pittsburgh. With his famous long double-jointed jaw, he had a confrontational and intense style. He would snarl around the sidelines, get in his players’ faces, and spew spit-laced tirades when upset. While some opponents found him annoying, fans thought he was infectious, and the players raved about him. The media touted him as an excellent communicator and motivator.
“CAN YOU THINK OF ANY OTHER REASONS COWHER SHOULD [NOT BE FIRED]? I CAN’T” (1997–2000)
The Steelers made the playoffs in each of Cowher’s first six seasons as head coach. However, by 1998, things started to get rocky. Free agency was chipping away at the Steelers’ roster. Many of the Steelers’ Pro Bowlers or future Hall of Famers, like Rod Woodson, Kevin Greene, Leon Searcy, Greg Lloyd, and Chad Brown, who were all integral to the team’s success, were either deemed too expensive and released or signed by other teams for more money upon free agency. Essential members of the coaching staff also started to move on.
As the Steelers started to lose more, Cowher’s passion and emotion began to be viewed much less sympathetically. His coaching acumen was drawing questions. His teams sometimes looked unprepared and his late game decision making and clock management were shaky. The Steelers were also stuck with a long-term contract with inconsistent-but-promising quarterback Kordell Stewart after giving him an extension in 1999 that bound him to the team until 2003.
In mid-December 1999, after Pittsburgh’s fifth consecutive loss dropped them to a 5–8 record, Dan Rooney sent a message: “You guys talk about all the free agents we lost, but we signed everybody this year that we really went after,” he said after the game. “The talent should be there.” The knock was viewed as a subtle jab at Cowher, and, at the same time, appeared to be an endorsement of general manager Tom Donahoe. “It’s safe to say Tom Donahoe’s job isn’t in jeopardy,” wrote local columnist Ron Cook in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
During the 1998 season, the previously strong relationship between Cowher and Donahoe, who both joined the team around the same time, began to deteriorate behind the scenes. The tension between the two came to a head at the end of the 1999 campaign. “Tom and Bill disagreed over many things, especially who had the greater say—the coaches or the scouts—over player personnel,” Dan Rooney recalled years later. “Bill didn’t want Donahoe in coaches’ meetings because he thought Tom was a spy. Tom thought Bill was finished as an NFL coach.”
It became apparent that one of the two was going to have to go. “We were beyond mediation or a conversation to clear the air,” Cowher wrote in his 2021 memoir Heart and Steel. “I could not and did not want to work with Tom anymore.” According to team vice-president Art Rooney II, the tension between the two became so heated that the organization could not function. From the outside, the bet was on Donahoe surviving. “It would be an upset if Bill Cowher remains in Pittsburgh,” wrote Thomas George in the New York Times. In the Los Angeles Times, writer Houston Mitchell wrote that it “might be wise” for Cowher to move on from Pittsburgh and take a step back.
In the Post-Gazette, Cook wrote that he thought Cowher should go:
Think of the reasons Bill Cowher should be fired as Steelers coach: A 6–10 record. Two consecutive seasons out of the playoffs. A team that has grown stale after six successful seasons. A team that lacks discipline. A lousy working relationship with his general manager. Then think of the reasons Cowher should be retained: Those six successful seasons a lifetime ago. A contract that has three years left and will pay him $2 million per season… Can you think of any other reasons Cowher should stay? I can’t, either. Shouldn’t this be an easy call for Dan Rooney?
The growing theory among Steelers fans and the NFL media was that Cowher was immovable for the Rooneys. If the Steelers terminated Cowher, they would have to absorb the remaining three years of his contract, which had been extended in 1998 after the Steelers made the 1997 AFC Championship Game. The Post-Gazette’s Mark Madden agreed. He wrote: “The Steelers won’t fire Cowher and eat the last three seasons of his [contract]… But Rooney and Donahoe would probably be happy if Cowher quit. And maybe it is time for Cowher to move on. Cowher is still an excellent coach, but the team isn’t responding to him.”
On January 12, 2000, a “league source” told the Green Bay Press-Gazette that “the Steelers are going to fire Cowher today.” That never happened. A few days later, both Cowher and Donahoe offered their resignations. Rooney only accepted Donahoe’s. Not long thereafter, the Steelers announced that Donahoe had “resigned.” Donahoe’s departure was described as Cowher winning a long-standing “power struggle” between the two. However, Cowher insists a power struggle never existed, and that he didn’t want to be the general manager’s boss. “I just wanted a collaborative and transparent approach to the job,” he recently insisted.
“THE STEELERS SIGNED THE FRANCHISE’S DEATH WARRANT MONTHS AGO” (2000)
The reactions among fans about Cowher coming back were mixed, but many were upset. “I am writing to express disappointment and disgust with the Rooneys’ decision to accept Tom Donahoe’s ‘resignation’ and to keep that foul-mouthed, in-your-face, spitting, childish Bill Cowher,” a fan wrote to the Post-Gazette. “Giving more power to Bill Cowher is like giving a Ferrari to a teenager with his learner’s permit,” wrote another.
Fans weren’t the only ones who disapproved of Rooney’s decision. Bob Smizik of the Post-Gazette thought Cowher should have been given the ax. “This stunning decision is potentially disastrous for the Steelers,” he wrote. “The chances of the Steelers hiring someone of similar competence to replace Donahoe are minuscule.” Smizik believed the Rooneys shared some responsibility for letting Donahoe and Cowher’s relationship become so tenuous that one had to leave. “They had two men who were at the top of their fields,” Smizik added. “It was their job to make certain they worked together.” The Los Angeles Times’s T. J. Simers was even more critical. “The Steelers signed the franchise’s death warrant months ago,” he wrote a few months later. “Choosing between personnel whiz Tom Donahoe and tyrant Bill Cowher, owner Dan Rooney went with the fixed jaw.”
“[COWHER] HAS PROVEN HIS INEPTNESS TIME AND TIME AGAIN AND HIS CONTRACT MUST BE TERMINATED IMMEDIATELY” (2000–2002)
The Steelers lost their first three games of the 2000 season. After the second game, a 23–20 road loss to the lowly Cleveland Browns in which Cowher made numerous questionable coaching decisions, Smizik wrote “an 0–16 season isn’t likely, but how can anyone rule it out?” In the Californian, writer Jay Paris contemplated whether the Steelers’ final regular-season game, a Christmas Eve showdown against the also-struggling San Diego Chargers would be between two 0–15 teams. During the CBS broadcast of Game 3, a loss to the Titans, play-by-play commentator Ian Eagle remarked that “It’s funny how much can change in two years. [Cowher] was thought of as the players’ coach, the great motivator… Things have certainly taken a turn.” Former Washington Pro Bowl offensive tackle Mark May, Eagle’s partner on the broadcast, added that if Cowher were stock, people would’ve wanted to “dump him in ’97.” At least a few people thought Cowher’s firing was inevitable. The following day, a blurb in the Los Angeles Times suggested that Cowher should give baseball manager Davey Johnson, who was on the brink of being fired by the Los Angeles Dodgers, “a call to plan a joint vacation.” Paris also thought Cowher had reached the end of the road in Pittsburgh. “Cowher is toast,” he wrote. “The only question is if he can last a year.”
Cowher’s tenuous predicament didn’t last long. The Steelers quickly turned it around. They fired off five straight wins, including back-to-back shutouts, led by their powerful defense, which gave up a minuscule 22 points total during the streak. The team finished the season at a respectable 9–7. Although it wasn’t enough to make the playoffs, the improvement was promising.
By the time the 2000 season began, Cowher and new Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert had already developed a positive working relationship. As for Donahoe, after the 2000 season, the declining Buffalo Bills hired him as their general manager. Cook was bullish about Donahoe’s future, but not as optimistic about Cowher’s. “The guess here is the Bills will be a bigger winner over the long haul than the Steelers, and that Donahoe still will be working in Buffalo long after Cowher has moved on to his next job.” Cook was wrong. Donahoe’s tenure with the Bills was inglorious. He was fired after five seasons, during which the franchise posted a 31–49 record. Only three players Donahoe drafted were selected to a Pro Bowl while with the Bills. As for the Steelers, in 2001, they finished 13–3 and won the AFC Central. But after polishing off the Ravens in the Divisional Round, they were upset at home by the eventual Super Bowl champion Patriots in the AFC Championship Game.
Despite the Steelers’ tremendous bounce-back year in 2001, by the time the following season started, it didn’t take long for the fans to start moaning and groaning again. After Pittsburgh lost its first two games in 2002, a group of Steelers fans created a petition on the web, addressed to Dan Rooney and the rest of the Steelers owners:
Finally, after 10 years of agony living through the un-imaginable [sic] a Super-bowl [sic] loss, 0–3 at home for AFC championship games, I have come to the realization that Bill Cowher is incapable of coaching this championship caliber team. I can or will no longer put up with his childish tirades on the sidelines when the obvious problem begins at the top.
Pittsburgh, a town so-enriched with football talent and tradition, can no longer be the place where Bill Cowher can coach. He has proven his ineptness time and time again and his contract must be terminated immediately.
It could have gotten ugly, but the team again bounced back, closing the regular season with wins in five out of its next six games. The Steelers finished 2002 with a 10–5–1 record. But once again they failed to get to the Super Bowl, eliminated by Tennessee in the Divisional Round of the playoffs in a heartbreaking 34–31 overtime loss.
“WHEN IT COMES TO WINNING THAT ONE CRITICAL GAME, COWHER CAN’T DO IT” (2003)
The great success from the 2001 and 2002 seasons didn’t last long. Cowher’s roller coaster with the Steelers continued in 2003, when the team ended the season at 6–10, causing the complaints about his personality to resurface. For years, Cowher had been criticized for the substantial turnover within his coaching staff, but this time reports of incidents of verbal abuse toward his assistants surfaced, and his relationships with a few of them were falling apart.
Would Cowher be able to survive another disappointing season? If it were up to Beaver County Times reporter Chuck Curti, the answer would be no. Curti wrote that other coaches around the league, like Dennis Green, Marty Schottenheimer, and Tony Dungy, all were eventually fired after years of big-game failures, “yet, Cowher continues to get a free pass. And contract extensions.” He added: “When it comes to winning that one critical game, [Cowher] can’t do it. His record bears that out…”
“I HAVE A SOLUTION TO THE STEELERS DEBACLE… GET A NEW HEAD COACH” (2004–2005)
In 2004, the Steelers drafted Miami (Ohio) quarterback Ben Roethlisberger with the 11th pick in the draft. He started the final 13 games of the regular season, and the Steelers won all of them. However, after finishing 15–1, the best regular-season record in team history, the Steelers couldn’t get past their nemesis, the Patriots, losing to New England 41–27 in the AFC Championship Game.
The 2005 season got off to a rocky start. In early December, the Steelers fell to 7–5 when they lost at home, their third loss in a row, to the Bengals. With the win, the Bengals essentially clinched the division for the first time in 15 years, while the Steelers were in grave danger of missing the playoffs. The fan mail wasn’t pretty. “The Steelers will never get to [another] Super Bowl as long as Bill Cowher is their coach,” wrote one fan to the local paper. Another wrote, “I have a solution to the Steelers debacle… Get a new head coach.”
The Steelers likely had to win their final four games to even make the playoffs. “Is the season over?” read the headline on the front page of the NFL Xtra section of the Post-Gazette on the Monday after the Bengals loss. The answer to that question was a resounding no. The Steelers didn’t lose another game that season. In the playoffs, they avenged regular-season losses to the Bengals and Colts and beat the Broncos in the AFC Championship Game, all on the road. Then, in future Hall of Fame running back Jerome Bettis’s final NFL game, the Steelers beat the Seahawks 21–10 to win Super Bowl XL in Detroit. Cowher had finally thrown the monkey off his back.
Right before the Steelers’ Super Bowl XL triumph, Dan Rooney asserted that he was never tempted to fire Cowher at any point. He said he trusted his instincts about how cyclical the NFL is. It is impossible to gauge whether that is the complete truth, but it’s quite clear that Rooney did not want to have to let Cowher go. “We’re about stability—having good people and keeping them,” he said in 2002. “We know what we’ve got here.”
THE TOMLIN ERA AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF PATIENCE
The 2006 season was Cowher’s 15th and final season as an NFL head coach. Despite coming off a Super Bowl win, the Steelers failed to make the playoffs. Cowher immediately retired upon season’s end. His replacement, Mike Tomlin, was a 34-year-old defensive coordinator, just as Cowher had been when he was hired.
Dan Rooney’s son, Art Rooney II, took control of the day-to-day operations of the franchise around 2003. The family philosophy about coaching stability still hasn’t changed. As of 2022, after 15 seasons, Tomlin is still the head coach. He has yet to have a losing season. Nevertheless, during his tenure, he has endured turbulence and success, much as Cowher did. During the 2008 season, Tomlin coached the Steelers to a Super Bowl title, and in 2010 he led them to another Super Bowl appearance. Since then, the team has made the playoffs 7 out of 11 seasons. However, during that time, the Steelers have only been to one AFC Championship Game and no Super Bowls. Tomlin has often been the target of the same type of criticism Cowher received during his tenure. At times, he is berated by the press and the fans about issues such as clock management, team preparation, and his way of dealing with star players. Almost every off-season, there is gossip and rumors about Tomlin’s job security. Despite that, Art Rooney II has stuck with him.
To the Steelers, firing a head coach means starting over and dismantling the stability they believe is critical for the continued success of their franchise. Cowher wasn’t perfect. He had issues with his coaching staff and front office. He lost many big games. Nonetheless, Dan Rooney never lost enough confidence in Cowher to terminate him. It’s the kind of patience and loyalty that is rare in the NFL, but can sometimes bear fruit—and rings.