Steelers' Legend Bill Cowher Tells Ben Roethlisberger The Painful Truth About Retirement "We Built That Team"

The Pittsburgh Steelers were in disarray in 1991. Chuck Noll had delivered a Steelers dynasty in the 1970s, but the franchise had fallen into disrepair. The Steelers had made just one playoff appearance in Noll’s last seven seasons and even that was only after Dan Rooney insisted that he purge almost his entire coaching staff in 1989. The Steelers turned the reigns over to Bill Cowher to start a new era in 1992 after Noll was allowed to retire at the end of his contract.

Steelers Bill Cowher Made Curious Decision In His First AFC Championship Game That Cost Him Dearly

Cowher had an amazing start to his career in Pittsburgh. He went 63-32 in his first six seasons with the Steelers but only 5-6 in the playoffs. Cowher lost three of four AFC Championship games during the first six seasons of his NFL career before a miserable three-year stretch that saw him go 22-25 over the next three seasons and miss the playoffs. Cowher’s seat was red hot when he managed to go 13-3 and 10-5-1 over the next two seasons but he posted another AFC Championship game loss that saw him fall to 1-4 in AFC title games.

Ben Roethlisberger released his most recent episode of Footbahlin with Ben Roethlisberger and the future Hall of Fame quarterback and his cohost Spencer Te'o welcomed one of the fans' most requested guests to appear on the podcast. The Hall of Fame Coach and CBS studio host Cowher joined the duo this week in the most dynamic episode to date. Roethlisberger asked his first head coach about the process of getting into the Hall of Fame and if he had made peace with his career.

“I didn’t think I was getting in,” Cowher began. “I was talking myself into being fine. I still thought you know man, you can compare all you want but let me tell you the facts. You look at the quarterbacks we won with, and Ben was the best one we’ve had. But I only had him for three years and two of those years we went to a championship game and won a championship. If Ben does not get into an accident, I am not so sure we don’t go back-to-back.”

Cowher and the Steelers were in a position to draft Roethlisberger after a 6-10 season in 2003 but he did not take much consolation in the arrival of the franchise quarterback. He was convinced that the rookie quarterback would do a great job for the next coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Cowher was forced to insert the rookie in just the third game of his first season and the rest was history. Roethlisberger won 13 games in a row but after his fifth championship game loss, Cowher and the Steelers broke through in Super Bowl XL and won one for the thumb.

“Before that, the most wins I had was with Kordell Stewart,” Cowher continued about thinking the Hall had passed him by. “At the time, 15 years nobody won more games than we did while I was in Pittsburgh. Yeah, we lost a bunch of championship games and I get that. I probably wasn’t the guy who was the greatest with the media at the time. I was short at times. When people asked dumb questions, I gave them short, terse answers.”

The next season, which was his last in Pittsburgh, was marred by the horrible motorcycle accident of his star quarterback and a dire health diagnosis for his wife, Kaye Cowher. Cowher’s wife was diagnosed with cancer and would pass on just four years after her husband raised the Super Bowl Trophy in Detroit. Roethlisberger asked his head coach about how he felt finally getting the news he was being inducted into the Hall of Fame after enduring so much to get there.

“I said give me a beer, give me a scotch,” Cowher concluded about the night he found out. “I usually don’t drink before (broadcast days) but I am still processing this. I had one scotch and one beer, and my wife went to bed, I said just let me sit here by myself. I always thought about it, you know if I’d stayed here, it would have been a no-brainer. When I left here, I thought I probably walked away from a Hall of Fame career. I know this was a team, as you did, three years later, could have won again. We built that team, and I knew when I walked away it was really hard. I had to for personal reasons, but it was a well-oiled machine, just don’t screw it up.”

Cowher walked away from coaching to spend as much time at home as possible during the height of his coaching career. The coach was aware after losing in AFC Championship games five times that he had found the perfect quarterback to get him over the hump, but he walked away after just one championship. The CBS studio analyst revealed later in the episode that the Steelers were his boyhood team and could not envision coaching anywhere else but his hometown when other teams approached him.

Cowher was named as part of the Centennial Class of the Hall of Fame in 2020 but because of the pandemic had to wait until 2021 to be inducted into Canton. Art Rooney II gave the presentation speech for Cowher. Cowher’s selection of the son of the man whom he called one of the two people who had the greatest influence on him professionally was a subtle nod to how important family was and is to Coach Cowher.