Nobody has worn No. 12 for the Pittsburgh Steelers since Terry Bradshaw retired after the 1983 season, but the number has yet to be retired by the Steelers. The Steelers are notoriously slow to retire numbers, with Franco Harris’ No.32 becoming just the third uniform in team history to be retired in 2022, and it came nearly 40 years after his last snap with the team. With Steelers jersey numbers once again becoming a topic due to Cordarrelle Patterson wearing No. 84, the subject of Bradshaw’s jersey and whether his number will be officially retired has come up again. In his weekly chat, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Gerry Dulac seems to think that the Steelers will retire Bradshaw’s number soon.
“They will do it. And if they don’t, shame on them,” he responded to a reader’s question about whether the Steelers will retire Bradshaw’s number soon and while he’s still alive.
Harris passed away just days before his number was set to be retired. That scenario is obviously one the Steelers should be looking to avoid, and the easy way to do that is to retire numbers sooner rather than later. Instead of waiting and waiting, the Steelers should look to prioritize retiring the numbers they know they want to. No one has worn No. 12 since 1983, so why wait to make it official?
It’s something that Josh Carney wrote about last week. The Steelers “unofficially” retire numbers and then seemingly at will decide which ones to bring back into circulation. The Steelers shouldn’t become a team like the Boston Celtics, who have 24 retired numbers, but only having three numbers officially retired for a team with so much history and so many great players is a little bit crazy. If the Steelers only wanted to honor a select few players, then fine, but unofficially retiring the numbers for years and years but not making it official doesn’t make much sense, and that’s currently the case with Bradshaw.
So it would make sense if the Steelers want to make Bradshaw, who led the team to four Super Bowl titles at quarterback, the fourth player whose number they retired. But sitting on their hands and waiting for it to happen is something that they should’ve learned not to do, and Dulac seems to believe that a jersey retirement could be in the cards sooner rather than later. Hopefully, that ends up being the case.
