The NFL may be more of a passing league now than it was in the 1970s when the Steelers were building a dynasty, but that didn’t mean there weren’t great quarterbacks who could beat a team through the air. To win those four championships, the Steelers had to go through the likes of Ken Stabler, Roger Staubach, Fran Tarkenton, and others. Mel Blount is the main name many fans think of first in that Steelers secondary, but it may have been Donnie Shell, the other Hall of Fame player on the back end, who served as the linchpin for the Steelers.
Shell mainly played strong safety for the Steelers during his career, but early on, he spent time working as the slot corner for the team. Speaking to News Talk 1480 WHBC, a news station based in Canton, Ohio, Shell talked about some of the early mentorship he received from cornerbacks like Blount and J.T. Thomas, as well as how thankful they were to him for doing that dirty work in the slot.
“I learned a great deal. When I first got here, my rookie year, especially for Mel and J.T. because they were starting, and they taught me a whole lot,” he said. “They taught me how to read routes. I became the nickelback on third downs, I wasn’t starting, but I came in on third downs, so I had the slot.
“I didn’t know this either, but J.T. said, ‘Man, we appreciate you because, most people don’t know, most corners flip flop because you don’t have another guy to come in and cover the slot. But we never had to because you always played the slot, and you allowed Mel and I to stay on that same side.’ I didn’t realize that until he said it.”
It’s probably not something many people think about today because the slot corner is effectively a starter on most teams now, but back then, it makes sense that a team would only need two outside corners. Most teams that were throwing the ball had one, maybe two, receivers who were real threats, as the priority for almost everyone was to run the football. However, the plethora of excellence that the Steelers had on defense allowed them to be ahead of the curve once again.
With Glen Edwards and Mike Wagner at safety, and Blount and Thomas at corner, it speaks volumes that Shell saw any time on the field after making the team as an undrafted free agent. Now, it seems that he was just as important as anybody else, his presence allowing the Steelers to not have to play mix and match when they needed a slot corner on the field. But it was from those men whom Shell learned how to play the game and embark on a career than ended in Canton.
The league has slot specialists now like Mike Hilton and Kenny Moore II, but Shell may have been the first, and it seems he believes he would have thrived today along with those players, regardless of the rule changes. His time at safety is what got him into the Hall of Fame, but it’s clear that Shell’s work in the slot was just as important to the Steelers.
