Throwback Thursday: 1979 Steelers lone NFL 'home grown' team?

Steel City Underground takes fans back in time to feature events, special moments, and historical times and players in the world of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Steelers Nation. Join us in our “Steelers Throwback Thursday” series as we revisit these moments.

Over the years – since they were founded in 1933 – the Pittsburgh Steelers have had fans that bring up some obscure fact or rumor about the team. This week, we throwback to 1979 to look into one such item of interest to find out if it is, indeed, true.

What’s been said?

Allegedly, the 1979 Steelers team was the first to be “entirely home grown” per Positively Pittsburgh. On their site, it went on to state:

“Every player on the Steelers’ roster was [also] either drafted by the Steelers or was signed as an undrafted free agent. That means that not a single player on the Steelers’ roster that year had worn another NFL uniform before.”

So, we decided to deep dive into the statement. Were the Steelers the first NFL team to ever have that occur, or was it the first Steelers team to be comprised in that manner? It sounds like it is completely plausible that any NFL team could be made up that way before the 1990s, for sure. What made it “homegrown,” though? Surely a homegrown team would be made up of local talent only, right?

Well, let’s dive in…

The 1979 Steelers

In the franchise’s 47th season in the National Football League (NFL), the Steelers successfully defended their Super Bowl Championship from the previous year by defeating the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl XIV. They finished the regular season at 12–4. In six of those games the opponents were held to a touchdown or less.

We analyzed the 1979 roster, and this is what we discovered.

The Steelers selected 15 players in the 1979 NFL Draft. They are as follows:

• Rnd 1: Greg Hawthorne (RB, Baylor)
• Rnd 2: Zack Valentine (LB, East Carolina)
• Rnd 4: Russell Davis (RB, Michigan)
• Rnd 4: Calvin Sweeney (WR, USC)
• Rnd 5: Dwaine Board (DE, North Carolina A&T)
• Rnd 6: Bill Murrell (TE, Winston-Salem State)
• Rnd 6: Dwayne Woodruff (DB, Louisville)
• Rnd 6: Matt Bahr (K, Penn State)
• Rnd 7: Bruce Kimball (G, Massachusetts)
• Rnd 8: Tom Graves (LB, Michigan State)
• Rnd 9: Richard “Rick” Kirk (DE, Dennison)
• Rnd 11: Charlie Moore (C, Wichita State)
• Rnd 12: Ed Smith (LB, Vanderbilt)
• Rnd 12: Mike Almond (WR, Northwestern State)

The draft selections were obviously not local Pittsburgh-area guys. You could argue that Penn State, Michigan State, and Michigan are close… but local? We say ‘nay.’

We moved on to the players on the roster that season that were not “rookie selections” next. Here are our findings:

Out of the entire 1979 Steelers roster, the following players were the only ones to play high school and/or collegiate football relatively close to (local) Pittsburgh:

• Franco Harris (Penn State)
• Randy Grossman (Haverford PA – Temple)
• Thom Dornbrook (North Hills PA – Kentucky)
• John Banaszak (Holy Name OH – Eastern Michigan)
• Jack Lambert (Crestwood OH – Kent State)
• Steve Courson (Gettysburg PA – S. Carolina)
• Dwayne Woodruff (New Richmond OH – Louisville)
• Jack Deloplaine (Pottstown PA – Salem)

To be honest, that was a stretch for us to use as the definitive decision that “homegrown” fit 100 percent. After all, Ohio isn’t Pennsylvania; Pennsylvania encompasses more than Pittsburgh. Obviously, some of those listed players did fit that billing.

So, is it true or not?

There was one roster standard that made what Positively Pittsburgh stated true:

Not one player on the 1979 Pittsburgh Steelers roster – per Pro Football Reference – ever played for an NFL team before joining the Steelers. The roster was comprised of collegiate players who had either been selected via the NFL Draft or entered the league via rookie free agency and joined the team.

As for whether the Steelers were the first to have this happen – a homegrown roster – we had to peruse several sources. We had little success proving any other team has had this happen.

If you want to get fancy and check AI (which we did – Google AI) you’ll likely get the result we did:

“No, no NFL team has ever had a roster entirely made up of players who were either drafted by that team or never played for another NFL team.”

Well, that would technically be incorrect since we verified it was true for the 1979 Steelers team.

The closest information from the league that we could run down was the NFL all-time undrafted team; a list of undrafted players that went on to play for various teams in the NFL.

We invite you, the fans, to look into this throwback moment in Steelers history and let us know in the comments if you can find any other NFL team that fielded a roster without a single player on it that had worn another NFL uniform before, were drafted by that team or signed as an undrafted rookie. Good luck!