CANTON, Ohio -- The list continues to grow.
With the additions of Troy Polamalu, Donnie Shell, Bill Cowher, Bill Nunn and Alan Faneca into the Pro Football Hall of Fame here Saturday and Sunday, the Steelers now match the Packers as the team with the second-most members who primarily spent their career with the franchise who have been enshrined.
Only the Bears, with 30, have more.
For the Steelers, it's an even bigger deal. Their five-man class going in this year marks the most for one franchise in a single year, though that is only because the 2020 and 2021 classes will both be inducted this weekend after the 2020 event was forced to be cancelled last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But it promises to be a special weekend for the Steelers, who opened the festivities Thursday night by besting the Cowboys, 16-3, in the Hall of Fame game.
"It’s an honor, No. 1, to be in Canton with everything that’s going on this year and to have this many guys going in in one weekend is unique," said Steelers president Art Rooney II, who will present Cowher on Saturday night. "It’s special. I had a chance to talk to the players Monday morning about it and just making sure they knew how special of a week this is for our franchise. We’re excited about it. It’s going to be a great weekend."
This class also shows the depth of the Steelers in the Super Bowl era.
Nunn, who joined the Steelers in 1967 as a part-time scout before accepting a full-time role in 1969, was with the team through 2014. He helped build teams that won six Super Bowls and went to two others.
Nunn, a former sports editor at the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the nation's top Black newspapers, ushered in an era when NFL teams, starting with the Steelers, began scouring the Historically Black College and Universities for players.
"I often have good conversations with Art regarding his impact and others’, particularly during that era of the '70s and so forth," Mike Tomlin said. "But I just appreciate the mentorship I got from him, the wisdom that I got from him, the time spent. All of us that had an opportunity to spend time with him really enjoyed it. Me, personally, I loved how scientific he was in terms of the evaluation of talent or pedigree, and the things that he focused on in terms of the evaluation of athletes.
"Many of the things that he taught me I use to this day, and probably will continue to use and share with others. He was a legendary talent evaluator. His enshrinement is well-deserved."
Shell was one of those players Nunn found for the Steelers playing linebacker at South Carolina State. Though he went undrafted in 1974, Nunn talked him into signing as a free agent with the Steelers, where he would be moved to strong safety and help the team win four Super Bowls.
Shell, who played until 1987, appearing in 201 games and recording 51 interceptions, will be the fifth member of the Steelers' 1974 rookie class to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, joining Lynn Swann, Jack Lambert, Mike Webster and John Stallworth.
That's quite the haul.
It took Shell a while. He was elected as a senior committee member as part of the Hall of Fame's Centennial Class, but he and Nunn make 12 people who were associated with the Steelers of the 1970s, including coach Chuck Noll and team president Dan Rooney, who will be in the Hall of Fame.
"One year we won the Super Bowl and we had 10 players in the Pro Bowl,” Shell said. “We had a sense of it. We had some pretty good players around. When you’re playing, you’re so focused on the next game. Now I’ve been out. Now you look back at it and they were some special teams and special people.”
Like Shell, Polamalu helped set the tone for a Steelers defense that went to three Super Bowls and won two during his tenure with the team from 2003 through 2014.
Polamalu is one of the team's most beloved players of the team's second Super Bowl era, a player who made big plays on the field and was perhaps even more interesting off it.
He and Faneca were part of Cowher's first Super Bowl-winning team in 2005. Cowher had also led the Steelers to the Super Bowl in 1995, but the team lost to the Cowboys. But Cowher led a resurgence of Steelers football after taking over for fellow Hall of Fame coach Chuck Noll in 1992.
The Steelers went 149-99-1 in the regular season under Cowher's direction and 12-9 in the postseason from 1992 through 2006.
"You know, you follow a guy like Chuck Noll, I don’t even think there’s any pressure, because you’re not even going to come close to doing what he did in terms of ... the run they had in the ’70s, what he did for the city of Pittsburgh and rejuvenating that whole city,” said Cowher, a native of Crafton, Pa., who has said numerous times that he just didn't want to screw it up.
He didn't, leading the Steelers to the playoffs in each of his first six seasons with the team.
Faneca was part of that. Drafted in the first round in 1998, the big guard helped bridge the gap between Cowher's first Super Bowl team and the one that won it.
Faneca spent his first 10 seasons with the Steelers before moving on to the Jets for two years and finishing his career with the Cardinals in 2010, missing just one game in 13 seasons.
He was a big part of the team's Super Bowl win in 2005, throwing the key block on a 75-yard touchdown run by Willie Parker that remains the longest run in Super Bowl history.
“He was an integral part of the run game. The guard position, he almost redefined it," Cowher said of Faneca. "He was a guy who could block at the point of attack, but also block in space. We all remember the big run Willie Parker had in Super Bowl XL. It was really Alan at that point of attack. That was what we were able to do with a guy like him. He was a staple. He was a constant. He set the tone. He was a quiet leader on our football team. Without a doubt he was the heart and soul of the offensive line.”
The same could be said of all five men who will enter the Hall of Fame this weekend. They were in some form or fashion the heart and soul of Super Bowl winners.
And now, they'll be forever remembered by future generations of football fans.
