The Pittsburgh Steelers have long been built on the strength of their defense, and one man helped return the unit to glory in Dick LeBeau. During his second stint as defensive coordinator in Pittsburgh from 2004-2014, LeBeau was a constant on Pittsburgh’s sideline and coached one of the best defenses in NFL history in 2008. The Pittsburgh Steelers have just one defensive player who was coached by LeBeau, and that’s defensive lineman Cameron Heyward. On his Not Just Football podcast, Heyward and former Steelers GM Kevin Colbert talked about LeBeau and how he would motivate the defense and check in on them after losses.
“The thing I love about Coach LeBeau, the thing I loved about him was you could come off a game, and he knows everybody’s dejected if we lost,” Heyward said. “He would come in on Wednesday, and he would say, ‘There’s no prize at the bottom of that bottle.’ And he was saying, don’t get too low on yourself and don’t get too high on yourself. But what he was telling us is, we got more football to worry about. Don’t drown in your problems. And sometimes, we wouldn’t even talk football in that meeting. It was more to just check the morale of the group and keep everybody light on their feet. Sometimes we’re getting this, it’s all football, all the time. But Coach LeBeau, being a player, being a head coach, he knew the heartbeat of the room every time he walked in.”
Colbert called that aspect of LeBeau’s personality the “intangible quality you can’t measure,” and that LeBeau would give it to the defense when needed, but for the most part, he wouldn’t let them get too down on themselves.
It’s a difficult balance to navigate an NFL locker room as a coach, especially after a rough game. If guys didn’t do their job or struggled, it’s easy to harp on that and try to point out their mistakes to fix them and get the most out of them. On the flip side, if a player messes up, he usually knows he messed up, and continually bringing it up and pointing it out could affect morale. For the most part, LeBeau, who as Heyward mentioned was a former player and head coach, understood that and made sure guys stayed steady and weren’t getting too low.
It’s likely one of the things that made him great. His players respected him, but he seemingly wasn’t feared, and players wanted to play for him and give it their all on every down. No matter how good a team is, there are going to be problems when it comes to performance or morale or chemistry at some point in time. Even the best teams have some sort of struggles, so by encouraging players to stay even and not get too high during the good times or low during the bad times, it made it easier to mitigate what was going on.
By getting to know the person beyond the football player, talking to guys and not always making it about football, LeBeau earned a lot of respect and had a locker room full of dudes who were going to go out and play some great football on a weekly basis. His attitude and personality and obviously his football brain led to some really talented defenses in Pittsburgh, and there’s a reason why LeBeau won two Super Bowl rings with the Steelers.
