While Pittsburgh Steelers fans only continue to grow more and more frustrated year by year with the team’s lack of postseason success, they are still some way off from the significant drought between Super Bowls that they faced between the victory in 1979 in Super Bowl XIV and that in 2005 in Super Bowl XL.
The ’79 Super Bowl marked their fourth championship in six years, but even as their stalwart players began to age, it couldn’t have been predicted that they would fall so fast, and enter such a long drought. Bill Cowher would take over for Chuck Noll in the early ‘90s, but while he would have success, it wasn’t until his 14th season as head coach in 2005 that he was able to get over the hump, and get ‘one for the thumb’—an opportunity that meant more to him for what it would do for his boss, seemingly, than for himself.