TERRY BRADSHAW
Coach Chuck Noll and quarterback Terry Bradshaw never really got along.
They won four Super Bowls together, or at the same time, or begrudgingly, in each other’s presence.
Not necessarily company.
But presence.
What an unlikely pair.
Noll was the definition of hard-nosed.
Tough.
Bradshaw was tough too, believe it.
But, he was also Bradshaw.
Charles Henry Noll was a 20th round pick (239th overall) selected by the Cleveland Browns out of Dayton in 1953.
He was a guard/linebacker whose seven-year professional career in Cleveland included two NFL championships.
Another NFL title as the Defensive coordinator and backfield coach of the 1968 Baltimore Colts, to go with an AFL championship in the same capacity with the 1963 San Diego Chargers, vaulted Noll into rarified air.
To the tune of eight professional football world championships.
Only Bill Belichick has won eight Super Bowls — and finished runner-up 4 times — as an assistant and head coach.
Elite company, indeed.
So it makes sense that the kid who was born in Cleveland and attended Benedictine High School, and who began working in the seventh grade in order to pay his share of the tuition, came from a brood which didn’t suffer fools gladly.
Throughout high school Noll continued to work, making 55 cents an hour at Fisher Brothers meat market after school.
That he starred on the football team and valued education enough to graduate 28th in a class of 252, served as the foundation of an enduring legacy.
Bradshaw?
Another story.
Terry Paxton Bradshaw was a far better athlete than Chuck Noll ever was, and he was a much more accomplished football player.
Were Noll still alive, he’d probably admit that.
Or not.
Regardless, different skeins of yarn were lightly twisted into a coil in Bradshaw’s case; in Noll’s, the skeins were pulled much tighter.
The square-jawed, cleft-chinned Bradshaw is 73 years old today.
He is no longer prematurely bald.
Bradshaw played 14 seasons for the Pittsburgh Steelers and won four Super Bowl titles in a six-year period (1974, 1975, 1978 and 1979).
At the time, he was the first quarterback to win 3 and then 4 Super Bowls; in so doing, he led the Steelers to eight AFC Central Division championships.
He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1989, his first year of eligibility, and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1996 (Louisiana Tech).
He was the first pick in the 1970 NFL Draft.
Chuck Noll and the Steelers drafted him.
And Noll thought Bradshaw was dumber than a bag of rocks.
Dumber than dirt.
Thicker than…well, you get it.
Despite their well-documented on-field successes, Bradshaw still harbors traces of resentment, even today.
Theirs was a complicated relationship.
“The first 10–15 years after (my retirement) I was pissed, I’m not going to lie to you,” Bradshaw said in April, on the ‘Fan Morning [radio] Show.’
“He is no longer with us on this earth and there are so many wonderful things that Chuck did for me.
But he did not know how to handle me.”
Two completely different people, with personalities 180 degrees apart.
“When I really sat down and had a conversation with myself, I said, ‘He probably saw in me this naive momma’s boy, aw shucks, doesn’t study enough, for him anyway.
He’s gotta toughen me up. He’s gonna break me down and get me hard so I can handle the NFL.’
I’m going to go with that because that’s the only thing that makes sense.
Or else why would he have treated me that way?”
Noll was the antithesis of a people person; Bradshaw was, is and will forever be, the definition of it.
If Bradshaw was in the coffee room and Noll walked in, Bradshaw couldn’t wait to walk out.
“It was just uncomfortable. Always uncomfortable.
The way he talked to me, just God nobody talks to their starting quarterback like that.
Nobody knows about it, nobody will ever know about it.
But I had a hard time with that and I was angry with him.”
Bradshaw conceded however, that he learned plenty from Noll.
“I learned from Chuck toughness.
I had to create in me this nasty guy to survive.
I didn’t like that person and it still carries over today.
It’s just not me. But I did and I survived and went on…
So while I had a hard time with him, that’s OK.
He was a great coach, man.”
They were one of the most successful head coach-quarterback duos ever — think Belichick/Brady, Brown/Graham, Walsh/Montana, Landry/Staubach and Lombardi/Starr — Noll’s 193 career wins are the ninth-most recorded by a coach in league history.
For Bradshaw’s part, he ranks second in Steelers franchise annals in passing yards (27,989); touchdowns (212); completions (2,025); and wins (107), trailing only Ben Roethlisberger.
And he may have been even more successful in his post-football incarnation.
Historically, but in no particular order:
Broadcaster, salesman, author, recording artist, NASCAR, TV, movies.
In the meantime, the deepest and most incisive look at Terry Bradshaw can be found and seen vividly, elsewhere.
Watch the new E! reality show, The Bradshaw Bunch.
That’s Terry Bradshaw, through and through.
And he seems pretty happy with it.
Because that’s him.
[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in November 2021.]
