What is the Steelers greatest mistake of all time?

I'm going with cutting Johnny U a case could be made for not drafting Marino as well.

 

Yeah I see what you are saying I don't know if I would rate it as worst ever but you gotta put letting woodson go in the top 5 area.

 

Marino for sure. I mean can you imagine Marino to Stallworth?! However, something I've thought about this before is that Chuck Noll liked to run it. Don Shula would let Dan throw it. Do you think Chuck would have let Dan be Dan? I'm just saying would our system have been beneficial to his talents?

 

Letting Mike Wallace go to Miami.

Sorry. I hadn't made a Wallace reference in a while. To me it's obviously our failure to draft Dan Marino. To answer your question, BFT, I don't think Noll would have been able to keep Marino's talents under wraps for long. We might have 8 or 9 Super Bowls at this point had we drafted Marino. I think the Rooneys would say the same thing. Art, Sr. never forgave Dan for passing on Marino when we had a chance to draft him.

 

There is a lot of talk about Marino here but living in south Florida I followed the Dolphins with Shula and Marino. Marino never won a Super Bowl, it wasn't because he was with a bad team, he had great receivers but no running game. All Marino wanted to do was pass pass and pass some more, the heck with the run and Shula let him do that building the team around a passing game. Sure he was great but I don't think Noll would have let Marino loose like Shula did........I think Marino would have been great in Pittsburgh with their great running game and receivers, he probably could have gone a long way if he would have handed the ball off a lot more that he did.

 

Let me throw this out there for discussion. In 2001 many pundits thought we needed a quarterback and I remember some draft analysts predicting that we would draft Drew Brees with our 19th pick in the first round. Instead we drafted Big Snack, which worked out pretty well, and Brees went to the Chargers with the first pick in the second round. Hard to argue against drafting Hampton in the first, but Brees has developed into a pretty decent quarterback. You can also make the argument that, had we drafted Brees, we would not have drafted Ben 3 years later. Out of curiosity, how many on this board would have drafted Brees instead of Snack if we had it to do over again?

 

the marks (duper and clayton) had a lot to do with dans success in south fla. early on. they were a couple of the best I ever saw at taking a 10 yard pass and turning it into a 30 yard catch.

also remember at that time the steelers were starting into a transition period much like right now, so all the parts were not there for the next few years.

if dan played now during this push to the passing NFL, he may have been even better. I don't think shula was capable of putting together a high powered passing offense, nor would chaz at the time. they were much more old school and so was cowher for us to ever have seen dan throw that much here. so it may not have resulted in a lot more SB's.

my gaffs would be ray seals,chad brown,kevin greene and earl holmes. add len dawson.

 

1. Creating Steeley McBeam!
2. Allowing Lynn Swann to retire. Should have handcuffed him to his locker during the offseason.
3. Tearing Down TRS!

 

ok, I'm not going to argue against anything mentioned, especially Unitas and Marino. One thing about Unitas- the Steelers had some decent teams in the early 1960's. They had John Henry Johnson, a Hall of Famer at RB, and a really good WR named Buddy Dial who'd be a Hall of Famer if he had played with Unitas. Swap Johnny U for Ed Brown, the Steelers qb at the time, and see the balance of power change between the Steelers and Colts.

I'll throw out a couple more.

1- trading down in the 1990 NFL draft, allowing the Cowboys to take Emmitt Smith while the Steelers ended up taking Eric Green.
Granted, Green is probably the Steelers 2nd best TE in their history, and at the time the Steelers did not have a glaring need at RB, but put Emmitt on the Steelers and off of the Cowboys, and the history of the NFL in the 1990s is dramatically changed. (My guess is that if the Steelers had taken Emmitt, it would have been the Cowboys who took Barry Foster a few rounds later).

2- not drafting Joe Montana in 1979, when he lasted until round 3. People talk about missing Marino, but passing on Montana who was also a local guy was just as bad. He would have pushed Terry into retirement a year earlier or so. The Steelers took the very forgettable Greg Hawthorne and Zack Valentine instead of Montana. Marino was a great Qb, but Montana was better at winning football games.


I really, really, really hope I'm wrong saying this, but--

I fear that taking Le'veon Bell instead of Eddie Lacey was a major mistake.

 

Hard to argue against passing on Marino. I feel like QB was the missing piece for all our solid teams in between Superbowl wins. I have a hard time not believing he would've won at least 1 ring in Pittsburgh.

The fact that was passed on a future hall of famer is bad enough, but we drafted a guy that didn't play past his rookie season in Rivera.

 

I'll add to the discussion not running the rock more in the Super Bowl vs the Packers. We averaged 5.5ypc with 123 yards total to the Packs 50. Ben had 2 ints too. Late in the game our running game was poised to take over in the 4th and our 7th ring was lost in a very close game.

 

In these stats our running game vs theirs and Ben's int's stand out

Team Stat Comparison

PIT GB



1st Downs 19 15

Passing 1st downs 11 11

4

8



Rushing 1stdowns



1st downsfrom Penalties 0 0

3rd down efficiency 7-13 6-13

0-0

0-1



4th down efficiency



Total Plays 64 55

Total Yards 387 338

6.1

6.0



Yardsper play



Total Drives 12 12

Passing 261 288

Comp - Att 25-40 24-39

7.4

6.5



Yardsper pass



Interceptions thrown 2 0

Sacks - Yards Lost 1-2 3-16

50

126



Rushing



Rushing Attempts 23 13

Yardsper rush 5.5 3.8

1-2

2-3



Red Zone(Made-Att)



Penalties 6-55 7-67

Turnovers 3 0

0

1



Fumbles lost



Interceptions thrown 2 0

Defensive / Special Teams TDs 0 1

Possession 33:25 26:35

 

Well, in their defense, after missing out on Emmitt Smith, they landed Barry Foster in the 5th round that same year. Then they wound up with Bettis. The RB position wasn't really a problem at all during the span of Emmitt's career. Might they have been better with him? Yeah maybe, but it's not exactly Marino vs. Gabriel Rivera and Bubby Brister. Having Emmitt could have made our already great running game a little greater. Not that big a deal in my opinion, considering every team misses out on better players every draft. Having Marino instead of a stream of struggling quarterbacks on an otherwise Super Bowl quality team would have resulted in multiple Super Bowl wins. Jesus, we almost won some anyway. If he'd been there we'd be looking for our 8th or 9th Lombardi about now.

 

Our running back also had a big part in losing the game by fumbling. Just playing devil's advocate.

 

Credit Clay Matthews with an OUTSTANDING play on that one. Sometimes the other guy just flat out does a better job.

 

Great tackle and luck played a huge part in the ball coming out, but a lot of players can do that when the guy supposed to block them runs right by without making physical contact.

 

I've said since the super bowl that if we would have ran it 25-30 times we would have won. Also on mendys fumble people like to forget on the play before that Ben missed a wide open Wallace in the end zone

 

keeping our head coaches for TOO LONG FTAI

letting O'Donnell go

tearing down tree rivers n building Heinz small

not drafting Johnathon Cooper or anyone else I wanted this year

letting Haslam go to the Browns

 

I'm not saying either of these was worse than not taking Marino- although I prefer Montana to him, just wanted to mention them for historical reference. Fact is, it was the Steelers trade that allowed the Cowboys to take Emmitt Smith, who was a definitely a better RB than anyone the Steelers had during his career including Bettis. If Smith is NOT on the Cowboys, then I don't think they win 3 SB during that decade. Just saying.

The mention of the running game against the Packers- does anyone remember how effective Redman was on the series they gave him the ball? 3 carries for 20 yards and 2 FD, and he was running over people. Would have loved to see him get the ball again in that game, but he never did.

I will always question why the Steelers chose to give the ball to Bettis on 1st and goal from the 1 against the Colts in the 06 AFC playoff game. The Colts had 3 timeouts left, and I was thinking that the best thing the Steelers could do was to run quarterback sneaks on the first 3 downs. One of them would have probably worked, and the worse case then would have been 4th and goal from the 1 with the Colts having no timeouts left. Even if Bettis scored on first down the Colts would still have had all 3 timeouts and 1:20 left to try to get 10 points.

 

How about Neil O'Donnell forgetting to mention to Corey Holliday that he expected him to run a different route on the pass out right?

 

... and with Charlie Tolar, who they cut a couple of years before the Dial trade.

Some might consider the Buddy Dial trade one of the worst trades anyone ever made, considering who the Steelers ended up with. LOL

 

Not hiring me as the head coach?

 

I'm pretty sure that falls on Holliday's shoulders. He was in the game for an injured ?????? and missed the hot read.