The Pittsburgh Steelers’ 1970s dynasty is one of the greatest in NFL history, and some of their teams were so talented that practice was harder than the game. On an episode of Undeniable with Joe Buck recently uploaded to YouTube, Hall of Fame wide receiver Lynn Swann talked about the difficulties of going up against the Steel Curtain defense in practice. In particular, he told a story about the 1974 Steelers when undrafted Donnie Shell, trying to prove himself, quite literally knocked the snot out of fellow receiver John Stallworth during their rookie seasons.
“When Donnie Shell hit you at practice, it was like a game, it’s a full-body tackle,” Swann said. “Donnie hit him at practice and John said he was lying on the ground, and he felt something wet running down his lip. He looked at it, it wasn’t blood, it was snot. Because Donnie had knocked the snot out of him, literally. So these are the guys we practice against every day.”
He talked about the mindset that the Steelers receivers developed and how it helped them during games.
“Every day in practice we developed an attitude,” Swann said. “Thanks to Lionel Taylor, who was our [wide receivers] coach at the time, former receiver himself, that every day we were winning at practice. We’re gonna beat the defensive backs. Every day at practice we’re gonna win. Not just one day, not just occasionally, every day, we’re gonna win. So when we got to game day, it’s set. We’re winning.”
Iron sharpens iron, and going up against the Steel Curtain defense instilled a winning mindset in Swann and the rest of the offense. Getting hit by Shell, as hard as he went in practice, helped prepare the Steelers to go up against the likes of Jack Tatum and other hard-hitting defenders around the league. And the competitive edge sharpened by wanting to win every single day against a defense littered with future Hall of Famers like Shell, Jack Lambert, Mean Joe Greene and should-be-Hall of Famers like L.C. Greenwood helped them beat up on defenses that lacked the talent Pittsburgh had.
Swann also talked about how the Steelers were a team made up of guys who were hungry to prove themselves. Despite being a playoff team in 1973 and drafting four future Hall of Famers in their 1974 class in Swann, Lambert, Stallworth and Mike Webster while also signing Shell, Swann said the team had 14 free agents who made the team. This was the pre-free agency era so there were a lot of undrafted players from the 17-round draft, like Shell, fighting to prove they belonged in the league and in Pittsburgh.
The story about Shell hitting Stallworth is funny because he literally knocked the snot out of his teammate, but it also goes to show how competitive the ’74 Steelers and the 1970s Steelers as a whole were and how much those guys worked to win. That ’74 team went on to win Pittsburgh’s first Super Bowl title, and three more Lombardi Trophies would follow that decade. It’s a testament to the effort and work put in by the players, which started in practice by trying to win every single day.
You can watch the full episode with Swann below:
