PITTSBURGH — For the Steelers, the first full weekend in August will be a lot of pomp and circumstance mixed with a little bit of in-stadium preparation. As fans in Canton fete the likes of Bill Cowher, Troy Polamalu, Alan Faneca, Donnie Shell and the late Bill Nunn, those inductions will be sandwiched around a real football exhibition — sort of — when the Steelers face the Cowboys in the annual Hall of Fame Game to kick off the preseason.
It’s not as if Mike Tomlin will be selling out to coach the Steelers past the Cowboys in a meaningless “Week 0” matchup to set the stage for a perfect 4-0 preseason, but he may have to break his focus momentarily the night of Aug. 5. His Pittsburgh predecessor might lobby him to put the headset on for old time’s sake.
“Let me call one play, let me call one blitz,” Cowher, 64, joked on a Zoom call Tuesday afternoon, a few weeks before his enshrinement in the Hall of Fame. “I’ll have Dick LeBeau with me, too. We’ll call one blitz, see if we can get Mike to run one. It will be fun.”
Perhaps that can be T.J. Watt’s only play of the game, just so Cowher can get one more over on former coaching rival Jimmy Johnson. Johnson, too, is one of 19 living members who will go into the Hall next month, and the two-time Super Bowl-winning coach of the Cowboys figures to be on the Dallas sideline himself.
Cowher and Johnson never faced each other as the head coaches of those two dynastic franchises, but they did once Johnson took over the Miami Dolphins in 1996. They split two meetings, in 1996 and 1998, but now they’ll get their gold jackets together. Cowher will be presented by Steelers team president Art Rooney II, a no-brainer for him given the impact Rooney and his father, Dan, had on Cowher’s life and football career after hiring him to replace the legendary Chuck Noll in 1992.
“At 34 years old, I didn't know if I was a better coach once I got there, but I was a better father and better husband because of the Rooney family and the culture they created,” Cowher said Tuesday.
At this point, Cowher — now an analyst for CBS — is bogged down by the logistics of making his Hall of Fame weekend come together. There are a lot of places to be and people to see, from family and friends to former players, including a couple who also will receive the game’s greatest honor in Polamalu and Faneca.
Given his prominent media role, Cowher also still keeps close tabs on the current Steelers, his childhood team since growing up in Carnegie and starring for Carlynton High School. And if everyone’s talking about Ben Roethlisberger — and whether he still has what it takes — you can add Cowher to the list, too.
After all, when Roethlisberger burst onto the scene as a rookie back in 2004, it was Cowher who was pleasantly surprised by his wunderkind first-round pick. Now, 17 years later, Roethlisberger’s journey is winding down, and 2021 figures to be his final season. The pressure has come full-circle, in a sense.
“It was never too big for him. I think what you've seen him do through a period of time, and consistently, year in and year out, he’s a great competitor. I’m sure he’s just thriving right now on that everybody thinks he’s done, thinks the Steelers are done,” Cowher said.
“I’d be very surprised if he didn't have a great year this year. He’s a Hall of Fame player — first ballot, no question about it — but yet he continues to play the game with a great passion, as a great competitor, and I think you’ll see that this year.”
And with that, you could say Cowher got to give his quarterback one last pep talk.
