John Harbaugh found a unique way to engage his players prior to the Ravens’ wild-card playoff showdown against the rival Steelers. Harbaugh, whose Ravens would ultimately secure a 28-14 win over Pittsburgh, shared some words of wisdom from the Steelers’ first Hall of Fame coach during a team meeting leading up to the game.
“Anybody know who Chuck Noll is?” Harbaugh asked his players in a meeting that was captured during the latest “Hard Knocks” episode. Several players acknowledged that they did while staring at a picture of Noll posing with the four Vince Lombardi Trophies the Steelers won under his watch.
“What team did he coach? The Steelers in the 70s, all right? The Lynn Swann, Terry Bradshaw, Joe Greene Steelers. I was not a fan of the Steelers then, not a fan now, but respect them. That’s our rival. But back in those days, I was a Browns fan, because my dad was a Browns fan.”
Harbaugh, who said he read about Noll when he first got into coaching, shared some of his favorite Noll quotes with his players.
“Champions are champions, not because they do anything extraordinary, but because they do the ordinary things better than anyone else,” Harbaugh said, quoting Noll. “Here’s another one. He said, ‘Pressure is something you feel when you don’t know what’s going on.’ Kind of goes back to what we’re talking about now, preparing for these games, right? All these situations.
“‘Good things come to those who hustle.’ Simple right? Simple football stuff. ‘Some coaches pray for wisdom. I pray for 260-pound tackles. They’ll give me plenty of wisdom.’ That’s great. Now it’s 360-pound tackles, right? It’s getting to be that way. But that point is true, man, no doubt about it.”
Harbaugh using wisdom from Noll is interesting given the opponent the Ravens were preparing for. And when the ball was kicked off Saturday night, the Ravens played more like Noll’s old Steelers teams than Pittsburgh did.
In Noll and the Steelers’ first AFC Championship Game win, Pittsburgh outrushed its opponent, the then-Oakland Raiders, 210-29. On Saturday, Baltimore outrushed Pittsburgh 299-29. Ahead 7-0, the Ravens embarked on a 13-play, 85-yard drive that was done exclusively on the ground. It was a brand of football Noll surely would have appreciated.
A week prior to Pittsburgh’s win over Oakland, Noll delivered what was one of the only pregame speeches of his Hall of Fame career. The speech was inspired by then-Raiders head coach John Madden, who had declared that his Raiders and Don Shula’s Dolphins were the best two teams in football after Oakland defeated Miami in the divisional round.
“It was a fantastic game, and in coach Madden’s exuberance, he said the two best teams in football played today, that this was the Super Bowl,” recalled Steelers Hall of Fame defensive tackle Joe Greene. “Then in our meeting, Chuck said, ‘Well, fellas, the Super Bowl wasn’t played yesterday, it’s going to be played in two weeks, and the best team in football is sitting right here in this room.’ It just kind of levitated us out of our seat and everybody let up a big whoop and it was a done deal.”
Pittsburgh went on to win that year’s Super Bowl and would win three more over the following five seasons. In the process, the Steelers established themselves as a dynasty while creating a brand that continues to endure to this day.
Harbaugh and the Ravens would surely love to have a similar run, starting with a win Sunday night over Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills.
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