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Top Ten Steelers’ Single-Season Performances (7-8)

By Alex Kozora

Posted on June 1, 2023 at 9:30 am

A new series we’re bringing to Steelers Depot to get us through a portion of the offseason. A list of the top 10 individual seasons in team history. Which as I sat down to research turned out to be a lot harder than I figured. A team that’s been around for 90 years has had lots of great seasons – who would’ve guessed?

So we’re counting down 10 to one the top singular season performances by anyone who has worn the black and gold. One important caveat. Players can only appear on this list once. So their best of the best season. You won’t see any repeat names on here.

As we begin to near the end of the list, I’ll also post an honorable mentions of players and performances that just missed the cut. Let me know your thoughts of the top 10 in the comments below.

We’ll continue things with #7 and #8.

#8 – 2014 QB Ben Roethlisberger: League-Leading 4,952 Passing Yards + 32 TDs

AND

1978 QB Terry Bradshaw: League-Leading 28 TD Passes + NFL MVP

On the surface, the numbers might not look overwhelming but Roethlisberger’s 2014 is arguably the greatest passing season in Steelers history. It combined high-end production with efficiency. There were years where he threw for more yards and more touchdowns but 2014 was the best of both worlds. A lot of both, yards and touchdowns, coupled with a high completion percentage (67.1%), low INT rate (9 INTs, 1.5% rate) with a solid yards per attempt (8.5). His 4,952 yards led the league while his touchdowns finished just outside the top five.

The season included Roethlisberger’s famous back-to-back games of six touchdown passes, lighting up first the Colts and then the Ravens in consecutive weeks, giving his case for one of the best seasons in team history a serious boost. The Colts game also saw him throw for 522 yards, easily the most in team history and, at the time, fourth-most in a game in NFL history. Here are his first touchdowns in each of his six-score games as a little taste of what the run was like.

The 2014 season was the first time Roethlisberger seriously put the team on his back over the course of a season. The running game was statistically average (though Le’Veon Bell had a great season, already appearing on this list), so was the defense, and Roethlisberger went over 600 pass attempts for the first time of his career, leading the Steelers to the seventh-best scoring offense.

Bradshaw’s stats in 1978 were far different but of course, they’re two wildly different eras. Though I generally hate ties, I had to put both quarterbacks here because they were unique for their own reasons. Bradshaw threw a league-high 28 touchdowns that year, including 10 multi-touchdown games, no small feat for the time period. Pittsburgh’s offense shifted away from a run-first approach to airing it out with ’78 really getting that change started.

Bradshaw aired it out, his 7.9 YPA also leading the NFL with Lynn Swann averaging more than 14 yards per grab while deep threat John Stallworth nearly touched 20 yards per reception. Here’s one of those beautiful rainbow touchdowns to Swann.

What makes his ’78 season so special was Bradshaw becoming the first and still only AP NFL MVP in Steelers’ history. He edged out RB Earl Campbell 36-33 in the voting, earning his first All-Pro bid, too. Though I don’t really consider it for this list, it’s impossible to ignore Bradshaw’s successful playoff run, throwing eight touchdowns in three games that ended in a 35-31 Super Bowl win over the Dallas Cowboys. He was masterful against Dallas, his first 300-yard playoff game with four touchdowns on his way to be named Super Bowl MVP, too. Bradshaw’s only one of 11 players in NFL history to win both in the same year.

#7 – 1946 HB Bill Dudley: League-Leading 604 Yards Rushing + 109 Yards Receiving + Two Passing TDs + 5 Total TDs From Scrimmage + 18 Points Kicking + 60 Punts + League-Lead In PR Average + League-Lead In INTs + League Lead in All-Purpose Yards

It’s almost exhausting just to read all of Bullet Bill’s accomplishments in 1946, let alone explain them. It’s a far shorter list to discuss what Dudley didn’t do. That year, he led the league in rushing yards, punt return average (14.3), interceptions (10), and all-purpose yards (1,650).

Here’s one of those 10 picks, jumping this pass thrown by the great Sammy Baugh and racing the other way for an 80-yard touchdown. Pittsburgh won the game, 14-7.

A one-man band, Dudley somehow didn’t even make a Pro Bowl that year despite his video-game accomplishments on both sides of the ball in the days when two-way players were the norm. Not all of his numbers were pretty, he threw nine interceptions to just a pair of touchdowns, but that’s partly a product of the Steelers’ reliance on the Single Wing, which wasn’t meant to push the ball through the air.

Dudley became one of the first two players in NFL history to register 1,600+ all-purpose yards in a season, joining New York’s Spec Sanders, who edged him out 1,691 to 1,650 that year.

In today’s modern and specialized NFL, it’s a colorful stat line that will never be repeated. Arguably, Dudley should be higher than just #7 given the unrepeatable nature of what he did, though it’s worth understanding the era he played in afforded him more chances than even top-tier athletes would get today.