In high school at suburban St. Louis and in college at the University of Missouri, Andy Russell helped make every football team he played for a winner and was at his best in the most important games.
A hometown standout would seem a natural choice for the St. Louis Cardinals. Instead, Russell played his entire NFL career as an outside linebacker with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
He was named to the Pro Bowl seven times in 12 seasons and was captain of the Steel Curtain defense that transformed the franchise into Super Bowl champions.
In his rookie season in 1963, Russell stung the Cardinals, intercepting a pass in a Steelers victory. He was 82 when he died March 1, 2024.
Executive’s son
Charles Andrew “Andy” Russell was born in Detroit and lived in Chicago and New York before his family moved to the St. Louis suburb of Ladue. His father’s job as an executive with Monsanto, the chemical company, required the relocations.
According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Andy Russell said his father William “was an immigrant who came to the United States from Scotland in 1922 at age 11. He was proud of making his way in this new world. It’s a million miles from the tenements of Glasgow to the top ranks of Monsanto.”
Andy Russell became an accomplished fullback on the Ladue Horton Watkins High School football team. Nicknamed “The Horse” because of his power and ability to stiff-arm tacklers, Russell led the team to an 8-0 record his senior season in 1958.
He chose Missouri from among 25 college scholarship offers because, in part, “I was impressed particularly with the members of the faculty whom I met,” Russell told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
As Russell entered college, his father got promoted to lead Monsanto’s overseas division. Andy’s parents moved to Brussels, Belgium (and later Geneva, Switzerland), and Monsanto provided Andy with roundtrip airfare each summer during his college years to join them in Europe, according to the Post-Dispatch.
Missouri Tiger
In Russell’s three varsity seasons (1960-62) as a fullback and linebacker for head coach Dan Devine, Missouri was 25-4-3, including victories against Navy in the Orange Bowl and Georgia Tech in the Bluebonnet Bowl.
As a junior in 1961, Russell was Missouri’s leading rusher, but defense was where he excelled the most. At linebacker, he played “aggressively and with intuition, diagnosing running plays and wheeling back to knock down and intercept passes,” columnist Bob Broeg noted in the Post-Dispatch.
Playing before 71,218 spectators, including President-elect John F. Kennedy, in the Orange Bowl, Russell intercepted two passes from Navy quarterback Hal Spooner.
In Missouri’s 10-0 victory versus Oklahoma State in 1961, Russell scored the lone touchdown, intercepting a pass and returning it 47 yards for the score. The next year, he picked off two passes to help Missouri beat Nebraska, 16-7.
In his final game for Missouri at the Bluebonnet Bowl in Houston, Russell made two interceptions and nine tackles. He also threw the key block to spring Bill Tobin on a 77-yard touchdown run.
As the St. Louis Globe-Democrat noted, Russell “always seems to rise to the occasion in important games.”
Join the club
During a visit to St. Louis, William Russell took Andy to a Cardinals football game and was disheartened by the brutality he witnessed on the field. According to Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray, the father said, “Son, promise me one thing: You will never play pro football.” Andy replied, “Don’t worry.”
Andy Russell planned to start a business career in St. Louis after he graduated. He also was facing a stint in the Army because he had completed the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program at Missouri.
“I never even considered pro football,” Russell said to The Pittsburgh Press. “I can honestly say the thought never occurred to me.”
During his senior year, when NFL teams sent Russell questionnaires that included a query on whether he wanted to play pro football, Russell checked the box marked “no.” According to the Associated Press, the only team that didn’t mail him a survey was the Steelers. So they didn’t know he was uninterested.
The Steelers had traded their top seven spots in the 1963 NFL draft and didn’t have a pick until the eighth round. When their turn came in the 16th round, the Steelers selected Russell, then sent scout Will Walls to meet with him. Walls “gave me a real sales talk on the (team’s) shortage of linebackers,” Russell recalled to the Post-Gazette. “That convinced me that I had a chance.”
After graduating from Missouri in June 1963 with a degree in economics, Russell signed with the Steelers. According to the Associated Press, he got a $12,000 contract and $3,000 signing bonus. Russell planned to play one season for the money, then pursue a graduate degree. At the Steelers’ suggestion, he asked the Army for a delay in fulfilling his ROTC commitment and it was granted.
Making the grade
The 1963 Steelers were loaded with characters. “That was a fun team,” Russell recalled to the Post-Gazette. “They used to drink a lot of ‘fluids’ to ward off colds. I had played for Dan Devine at Missouri and things were so disciplined that you couldn’t even cough in a meeting. At my first meeting with the Steelers, you could barely see the blackboard through all the cigarette smoke. Some guys would snore in the back of the room and others would argue with the coaches on whether or not plays would work.”
Russell said to Jim Murray, “We were a wildly reckless team … We were about as disciplined as a litter of puppies.”
The Steelers accepted Russell because of how well he played in training camp. Defensive coordinator Buster Ramsey told United Press International, “You don’t often see a rookie work into a system that quickly. He has speed and lateral movement and should develop into one of the best linebackers in the league.”
Early in the season, when linebackers John Reger and Bob Schmitz got injured, Russell stepped in and impressed. On Sept. 29, 1963, facing the Cardinals at Pittsburgh, Russell intercepted a Charley Johnson pass, helping the Steelers to a 23-10 victory. Game stats
“The Cardinals had little success with rookie Andy Russell, even though they picked on the St. Louis youngster time and again,” The Pittsburgh Press reported. “His best play was an interception of a pass intended for fullback Joe Childress. The Cardinals tried to play it cute. On the preceding play, they tried the same over-the-middle pass to fullback Mal Hammack, but Russell broke it up at the last instant. Figuring the rookie wouldn’t expect the same play immediately, Childress came in with orders to come right back with the same thing, but Russell wasn’t guessing. He played his man and wound up with the ball.”
Russell was the Steelers’ only rookie regular in 1963. He started in 13 of 14 games, according to pro-football-reference.com.
Rags to riches
In January 1964, Russell was ordered to begin a two-year tour of duty as an Army lieutenant. He spent most of that time at a base in Stuttgart, Germany, where he played football for a service team, and missed the 1964 and 1965 NFL seasons.
Discharged in January 1966, Russell enrolled in graduate school at Missouri before going to Steelers training camp in the summer. He picked up where he left off, returning to the Steelers’ starting unit.
On Nov. 13, 1966, in a game against the Cardinals at Pittsburgh, Russell blocked a Jackie Smith punt, recovered the ball and returned it 14 yards for a touchdown, putting the Steelers ahead to stay. Boxscore
“We normally don’t attempt to block a punt,” Russell told the Post-Dispatch, “but we had seen in films that they left an opening in their line. When they set up the same way on a punt just before the one we blocked, we decided to try it. The punt hit me right in the face, then it was bouncing on the ground. I picked it up, got a good block and ran it in.”
In 1967, Russell was named Steelers defensive captain (a title he held for 10 years) and earned a master’s degree in business administration at Missouri.
Russell played for losing teams from 1966 to 1971 before experiencing a turnaround under head coach Chuck Noll. From 1974-76, the Steelers’ linebacking unit of Jack Ham, Jack Lambert and Russell was considered “the best in football,” Baltimore Colts running back Lydell Mitchell told the Post-Gazette.
The Steelers were NFL champions in 1974 and 1975, beating the Minnesota Vikings and Dallas Cowboys in the Super Bowls those seasons.
Russell played in 168 consecutive regular-season games for the Steelers. Video He was 35 when he stopped playing and opened an investment securities firm in Pittsburgh. Russell also did extensive charitable work there.
Adventure seeker
According to the Post-Gazette, Russell became “the ultimate mountain man,” summiting all 54 14,000-foot peaks in Colorado. He also climbed Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa.
Russell and former Steelers center Ray Mansfield completed the Hunter’s Island Route, a 145-mile canoe adventure through the Canadian wilderness.
“I had always been curious about the limits of physical endurance,” Russell told Neil Amdur of the New York Times. “After football games, I was so exhausted that I used to get this tremendous feeling of peace, as if I had used every bone in my body. I always wondered whether it was possible to achieve this same feeling somewhere else.”