The Pittsburgh Steelers had an all-time defensive run from 2001 to 2010. They had Casey Hampton clogging up the trenches, James Farrior patrolling the middle, guys like Joey Porter, James Harrison, and Jason Gildon tormenting QBs off the edge, and Troy Polamalu showing up everywhere all at once.
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All in all, they fielded a defensive unit that had 17 All-Pros and 26 Pro Bowlers during that ten-year stretch. Across that decade of dominance, they allowed 17.2 points per game (1st in the NFL), 278.8 yards per game (1st), 4.66 yards per play (1st), 194 passing yards per game (3rd), 84.8 rushing yards per game (1st), and had 449 sacks (1st).
Everyone had their role during those successful years—which produced three Super Bowl appearances, including two wins—and Joey Porter’s was that of the vocal leader. He left after the 2006 season, but he returned in the 2010s as a coach, and has once again been ever-present since his son, Joey Porter Jr., was drafted by the Steelers in 2023.
Porter recently spoke about what made those groups in the 2000s so special—and what separates them from today’s units.
“The accountability that we had for each other on how we played, and the closeness we had. Me being in the locker rooms from when we left, the era at that time, it was a different era,” said the former linebacker (via Not Just Football).
“The dialogue that we shared between each other is different. Like a player now, they feel a certain way if you tell ’em, ‘Man you need to pick your sh*t up,’ they take that personally. That wasn’t personal. That was our natural dialogue. Whether it was Troy, Jerome, nobody was off limits.”
It was clear that everyone knew their role and knew how to do it well. During that decade, they had no less than eight different starters named to the Pro Bowl. And as Porter tells it, a lot of that had to do with their defensive coordinator for much of that run: Dick LeBeau.
Porter credits Steelers DC Dick LeBeau with building the defense
LeBeau is a legend of the NFL, who spent every year from 1959 to 2017 with the league. He’s one of the few who had careers as both a player and a coach that each could have landed him in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And they did. He made four All-Pros and three Pro Bowls during a 14-year career as a cornerback with the Detroit Lions from 1959 to 1972. He finished his career with 62 interceptions, which is still 10th all-time.
LeBeau then had a long and winding coaching career that eventually landed him on Bill Cowher’s Steelers staff in the mid-1990s. After leaving in 1997, he returned in 2004 for another stint that lasted until 2014 and (probably not coincidentally) coincided with the most successful era the franchise had seen since the 1970s.
Porter says that LeBeau wasn’t only a defensive genius, but he was an excellent man manager as well.
“It was the best because he’s a coach who builds you up. He’s not part of the tear down, he’s gonna build you up. And he’s gonna explain it in a way that everybody in the defense has a blitz. He’s gonna draw you up a special play so you don’t ever feel left out.”
“Everybody will be asked to do something that’s unconventional… You’re gonna do it because the defense is based on everybody doing their job. It ain’t gonna work if you got one hero. That’s why our defense was so easy to figure out who was out of pocket.”
LeBeau’s impact was clear: all those blitzes continued Pittsburgh’s defensive identity as a quarterback’s worst nightmare that was first founded by the Steel Curtain in the 1970s. Pittsburgh has continued to field elite defenses in the 10 years since LeBeau left, but not quite as dominant as the ones he constructed in the previous 11-year period.
From 2004 to 2014, Pittsburgh allowed 17.9 points a game (1st) and 287.9 yards a game (1st) while recording 448 sacks (t-third). From 2015 to 2024, they have allowed 20.4 points per game (3rd) and 331.2 yards per game (5th) with 486 sacks (1st).
They have retained their status as the number one assaulters of QBs. But otherwise, they’ve been missing LeBeau’s magic a little bit. It’s worth noting that the last time Pittsburgh won a playoff game was 2016, just two years after LeBeau left.
