Super Bowl's Super Coach

A quiet craftsman leads the Steelers to another title

"Charles Henry Noll. He's the guy who keeps it going. He's the man who does it all."

--Mean Joe Greene

In the dressing room beneath the stands, the roar of the 103,985 spectators rose and fell like the sound of distant breakers. Then, suddenly, the game was over--and the first black-and-gold jerseys appeared at the end of the floodlit passageway leading from the Rose Bowl playing field. The huge Pittsburgh Steelers ran with mincing steps, cleats sliding nervously on the concrete. Their eyes glittered with exhilaration, and some threw back their heads and whooped triumphantly.

Walking with the Steelers was a sturdy man in a black shirt who seemed strangely subdued. Not a hair or an emotion was out of place. There was about him an air of quiet satisfaction--nothing more. Chuck Noll, 48, had just become the first coach to win four Super Bowls, but he knew that in a few short hours he would feel the sadness that touches him after every game. "You throw so much into preparation, and then afterward there's nothing left, it's all over," he says. "The thrill isn't in the winning--it's in the doing."

In the winning-is-everything world of professional football, Noll is an anomaly, an unassuming craftsman among tough-talking generals. Quietly, efficiently, he performs. When the Steelers rallied to defeat the Los Angeles Rams, 31-19, in Super Bowl XIV, they established themselves as the finest team ever, better than Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers of the 1960s, Paul Brown's Cleveland Browns of the 1950s and George Halas' Chicago Bears of the 1940s. The Packers may have won five N.F.L. championships in seven years, including Super Bowls I and II, but the Steelers, reflecting the rapid evolution of pro football, are stronger, faster, bigger and far more sophisticated in the technical aspects of the game.

Noll came to the Steelers in 1969 with good bloodlines, as Owner Art Rooney, a noted horse fancier, likes to point out: he had become a football fundamentalist while playing guard and linebacker for the old Browns, and he coached under Sid Gillman in San Diego and Don Shula in Baltimore. When Noll arrived, the Steelers were the pushovers of the N.F.L.; they had won just 18 games in the previous five seasons. Noll had no choice but to rebuild the team through the annual college player draft. His very first pick: Defensive Tackle Joe Greene. The following year Noll drafted Quarterback Terry Bradshaw, and the Steelers had their defensive and offensive linchpins for the decade ahead.

If there is a single talent that sets Noll apart, it is his genius for drafting and slowly developing players that other coaches overlook. There always seems to be someone ready to step into the lineup. When All-Pro Linebacker Jack Ham was injured this season, for instance, Dennis Winston (a fifth-round draft pick) came off the bench, and the Steelers kept on winning. Noll has five full-time scouts and subscribes to a talent-hunting service operated by a consortium of nine pro teams, but nonetheless he still leads his eight assistant coaches in forays across the country every spring. Noll visits prospects at two or three colleges daily. He gives them speed and agility tests, and tries as well to get a reading on their character and football intelligence. Pittsburgh drafts for the long haul. Says Noll: "We've had players with marginal physical skills, but they've had other intangibles that allowed them to play."

Incredibly, not one player on the Steelers' roster has played a game with another N.F.L. team. A handful were signed as free agents, but most arrived via the draft. Almost all began their careers as bench warmers or performers on specialty teams. When the Steelers won their first Super Bowl in 1974, for example, Lynn Swann and John Stallworth, their nonpareil receivers, were subs. "You rarely draft a finished product," says Noll. "Most players have to learn what the pro game is all about." He adds: "A player may have great ability, but he has to convince the guys he's playing with that he can be depended on."

There is a remarkable dichotomy in Noll's record. In the past eight years, the Steelers have compiled an astonishing record of 59-1 against opponents with winning percentages below .500. Against winning teams, they have been a so-so 29-26-1. But in his confident, low-key way, Noll can fire up the Steelers in the playoffs; the veteran team is convinced it can win when it has to. Noll's postseason record of 14-4 is topped only by Lombardi's 9-1.

Noll is one of a dwindling number of coaches who let their quarterbacks call most of their own plays: "If he needs help from the bench, you don't get the same kind of leadership." Still, in extremis, the coach will call a signal. Noll, for example, proposed the long pass--73 yards from Bradshaw to Stallworth--that put the Steelers ahead of the Rams for good.

Away from his spartanly furnished office, dominated by a movie screen and blackboard, Noll is a gracious man with a wide range of interests: he flies his own twin-engine Beechcraft, raises orchids and is a gourmet cook (one specialty: coquilles Saint-Jacques). But at postgame press conferences, Noll is so low-key, so carefully balanced in what he says, that his listeners turn glassy-eyed. He admits the failing: "My thing is preparation and teaching, and that's not a good story. I'm not a one-liner man; I'm not a comedian."

Noll was more effusive than usual in the aftermath of his latest Super Bowl triumph, but he stopped just shy of an Ali-like pronouncement that the Steelers were the greatest: "I don't know of any other team that has accomplished what this team has accomplished over a period of time." Some players worried aloud that success might soften the Steelers next year. Not Noll. Says he: "We've won two Super Bowls in a row twice now, but no one has ever managed three. I think that's a pretty good challenge."

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