When Chuck Noll was a rookie with the Browns in 1953, a reporter looking to make conversation asked him if he had a girlfriend. Noll's response: "First I've got to make good. Then maybe I can get serious about girls."

It was typical Noll. He always had a plan, an if-then strategy tucked in his back pocket. His ideas were never fanciful, never full of dreamy prose; no one would ever make one glorious leap to the moon listening to him talk. But they'd know the first step they ...

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