When I asked Jerry Jones this summer about his determination to do things differently from 31 other NFL organizations in terms of his unique owner/general manager position, part of his answer was a point of pride that the Dallas Cowboys have had only two GMs in their 65 seasons.
There was Tex and now there is Jerry, and that is it.
On Sunday, Dallas makes one of its once-every-eight-seasons trips to Pittsburgh. The Cowboys and Steelers are the only three-time Super Bowl rivals, another point of pride for both franchises. The Steelers organization, one of two to have surpassed Jones’ Cowboys in Lombardi trophies during Dallas’ long dormant period, is anti-Cowboys in almost every regard, from the nature of its blue-collar fan base to its quiet behind-the-scenes management style.
You might not know Omar Khan is the Steelers’ GM, and some of you might struggle to describe what the previous GM Kevin Colbert looks like, even though he ran the Steelers’ drafts for 22 years, a stretch that included three Super Bowls and six AFC championship games.
And the Rooney family is not the Jones family. At owners meetings I attended in the ‘80s and ‘90s, soft-spoken Dan Rooney could have been mistaken for a media guy in his Members’ Only jacket and khakis. He didn’t do two radio shows a week.
The Steelers may have the occasional flashy diva-style wide receiver like Antonio Brown, but mostly they play defense and play a sort of no-nonsense football that represents their total stability at head coach. In the time that Bill Cowher served there and won the team’s fifth Super Bowl while coaching in six AFC title games, Jones got rid of Jimmy Johnson and hired Barry Switzer, Chan Gailey, Dave Campo and Bill Parcells. And during the tenure of current coach Mike Tomlin, who reached two Super Bowls in his first four seasons including the sixth Lombardi Trophy won against Arizona, Jones has given us 3 1/2 seasons of Wade Phillips, a full 9 1/2 of Jason Garrett and now Mike McCarthy into his fifth season.
Tomlin has stuck around long enough that he has critics in Pittsburgh, those who believe his style no longer works as it once did, although that’s hard to prove based on results. Even if Pittsburgh hasn’t been to a Super Bowl since its loss to Green Bay here after the 2010 season, the Steelers made it to the AFC title game (the third under Tomlin) in 2016. As the team has struggled at the quarterback position, both at the end of Ben Roethlisberger’s long career (2021) and in his absence, Pittsburgh has found its way into the playoffs. Kenny Pickett and Mason Rudolph weren’t exactly long-term answers for the Steelers but the team scrapped its way to 10-7 and a playoff appearance in Buffalo last year.
The team the Cowboys will face is improved at the quarterback position, even with Russell Wilson mired on the bench all season with a calf injury. Chicago took a pass on giving Justin Fields, its first-round pick in 2021, a second contract and sent him to the Steelers to make room for first-round pick Caleb Williams. It’s far too early to be second-guessing that move but Fields, who was expected to back up Wilson this season, has been as steady as any quarterback in the league in getting Pittsburgh to 3-1.
A 90.0 passer rating represents a good, productive afternoon if not necessarily a great one. Only four quarterbacks have delivered a 90-plus rating in each of the first four games in 2024 — Minnesota’s Sam Darnold, Washington’s Jayden Daniels, the LA Chargers’ Justin Herbert and Fields. So a rookie and two players who were supposed to be on the bench rank among the top four in getting the job done each week this season.
That’s par for the course for Tomlin. Even if he has his detractors, even if the Steelers’ Super Bowl drought has gone more than a decade (which is nothing around here but considerable in Pittsburgh), Tomlin’s teams find ways to win. We are told that winning close games in any sport is not really a trademark of any particular team, that over time the ups and downs of living on that fine line will even out. It so happens that Pittsburgh has the league’s best record in one-score games (11-3) since the start of last year. And the best record (18-8) since 2022. And, if you prefer a deeper dive, the best record (52-24-2) since 2017.
In fact, Tomlin’s .616 winning percentage in close games (eight points or fewer) is the best since the NFL-AFL merger of 1970.
That’s with a rapidly changing cast across the board on offense and a fairly long line of Big Ben replacements the last three years. That’s what a franchise guided by a steady hand at the head coaching position can do. Chuck Noll, Cowher and Tomlin have served Pittsburgh well for more than half a century. Clearly, Tom Landry had a remarkable run and Johnson was the perfect second act in Dallas, but the only constant in the 21st century for the Cowboys is the owner/general manager and his son being in charge. I hesitate to say being in control.
Put it this way: The last time the start of a Steelers’ workout was interrupted (even briefly) by the owner or general manager landing his helicopter on the practice field was ... never.
Around here, that’s just a Wednesday.
The Cowboys will have their chances Sunday night in a game in which both teams (Dallas on defense, Pittsburgh on offense) are missing key linemen. But if it’s a close game, history tells us the more predictable Steelers are the better bet.
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