Jack Butler could cover, according to no less an authority than the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Butler is immortalized there after dominating as a Pittsburgh Steelers cornerback in the 1950s. He intercepted 52 passes during a time when legendary Ohio State coach Woody Hayes gave his halfbacks a piece of rope measuring 3.3 yards. Get that on every run play, so went Hayes’ philosophy, and the Buckeyes would find the other tenth of a yard along the way.
As Tom Donahoe later found out, Butler could do more than just blanket receivers.
Twice, Butler tried to get Donahoe to come work with him at BLESTO, a scouting service he helped build. Twice, Donahoe politely declined, happy he was as a high school teacher and coach.
“He offered it to me a third time and I thought, ‘You know what, I’m just going to take a stab at this. If I don’t like it, I can always come back and teach and coach,’” Donahoe told Steelers Depot earlier this week. “I went to work for BLESTO for a year and the Steelers hired me from BLESTO, and the rest is really history.”
A history unlike any other. Or at least the very least unique.
Donahoe was the athletic director, head football coach and head boys basketball at West Allegheny High School in suburban Pittsburgh before his career pivot. After leaving a job that also included Donahoe overseeing the school newspaper and yearbook staffs, the Pittsburgh native ascended to heights he could have never imagined.
He served as the Steelers’ director of football operations from 1991-99, helping build teams that played in the 1995 Super Bowl and won the organization’s one for the thumb 10 years later.
“I really have been blessed every step of the way, been given really great opportunities,” Donahoe said. “I’ve worked with some incredible people who helped me be better than I really am.”
Two of those people: Chuck Noll and Dick LeBeau.
“I could never have worked with anybody better than Coach Noll,” Donahoe said. “I was a high school coach, and I came to the Steelers, and he accepted me like I had been in the league forever. He saw himself as a teacher, and that’s what he did every day. It didn’t matter if it was a high draft pick, late-round guy, free agent. Chuck would spend time working with guys that he knew weren’t good enough to play in the league. I think about Coach Noll almost every day. The absolute best. As a human being, as a coach.”
He holds LeBeau in similarly high regard.
Donahoe can still recall the first training camp after LeBeau joined Bill Cowher’s staff as the defensive backs coach. Like now, the Steelers lived in dormitories at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe. Donahoe roomed right across the hall from defensive coordinator Dom Capers.
“He and Coach LeBeau would be in there every night after the players meetings were over, just watching tape and talking defense,” Donohoe recalled. “Of course, I did a lot of eavesdropping, just to try to learn. It was fascinating because the two of them had a great relationship and a lot of things we did defensively were a product of Coach LeBeau. Dick was really instrumental in my career learning about defensive football, zone blitz, game planning. I’m honored to call Dick LeBeau a really close friend.”
Not that Donahoe was just along for the ride during his lengthy career with the Steelers. He was either prominent in the front office or in charge of it when the Steelers drafted Rod Woodson — “We never really expected a chance to get him,” Donahoe said – Alan Faneca, Hines Ward, Jason Gildon, Joey Porter, Carnell Lake, and Levon Kirkland among others. He was the director of football operations when the Steelers acquired Jerome Bettis right before the 1996 NFL Draft. It is arguably the greatest trade in franchise history.
Of course, Donahoe would be the first to admit that during his time with the Steelers they had their share of misses too. That is the reality of trying to project which college players will successfully transition to the next level.
“The fascinating thing that’s never changed, and never will, is it’s crapshoot,” Donahoe said of the NFL draft. “I don’t care how much work you do, how prepared you are, how much you think you know the players. Chuck Noll, when I first started with the Steelers, had the best line. He always said, ‘You never know what somebody’s like until you live with them.’ And it’s true about coaches, players, draft picks. Until you’re actually in the battle and on the front line with those guys, you never know what somebody’s really like.”
Donahoe is semi-retired and living in Pittsburgh. He’s lived an incredible football life even if it did not have a storybook ending with his hometown Steelers. As has been well-documented, his working relationship with Cowher became untenable after nearly a decade together. Following the 1999 season, ownership sided with Cowher and Donahoe resigned.
“They made a decision, and I didn’t think it was a fair decision but it’s water under the dam and we’ve all moved on,” Donahoe said. “I owe a lot to Mr. [Art] Rooney Sr., Art Jr., Dan. The entire Rooney family has always been nothing but great to me, and I’m very appreciative of that. Great people, really a well-run organization.”
After leaving the Steelers, Donahoe served as general manager for the Buffalo Bills. He later won a Super Bowl ring as a front office executive with the Philadelphia Eagles in 2017, but when the travel became too much of a grind he stepped away from the Eagles in May 2022.
Donahoe keeps close tabs on the Steelers and remains close with people in the organization. He still has a direct line with the Steelers in one sense. Donahoe hired Andy Weidl as a scouting intern while with the Steelers and later worked with him in Philadelphia. Weidl is now Steelers GM Omar Khan’s right-hand man — and on a track to running his own NFL front office one day.
“He’s one of the best,” Donahoe said. “The Steelers will have a hard time keeping him.”
