Cleveland Browns: 10 Pittsburgh Steelers we love to hate

9. Mean Joe Greene was really mean

Mean Joe Greene was every bit as strong, vicious, and mean as Reggie White for the Green Bay Packers and Philadelphia Eagles. The dude has six Super Bowl rings. Four were earned as a player, and two more came as an assistant coach in the Roethlisberger era.

Mean Joe was supposed to be “Mean but clean” so the Pittsburgh sportswriters used to say, but Cleveland fans don’t remember him quite that way. We remember him kicking offensive lineman Bob McKay in the groin, and the entire Browns team jumped on him and punched him out.

Due to copyright reasons, we cannot link you to the video footage directly, but if you go to YouTube and search for Joe Greene and Bob McKay, it will pop right up. Special kudos to center Tom DeLeone, little Greg Pruitt, and Doug Dieken (yeah, the sweet old announcer guy was a tough lineman back in the day) for coming to McKay’s aid and pounding some sense into Mean Joe. Good job, guys.

Chuck Noll explained that the referees weren’t enforcing holding penalties closely enough and that’s why Mean Joe got frustrated. Sure, Chuck.

You shouldn’t need any further reason to understand why we old guys do not much care for Joe Greene. One other time, he punched center Bob DeMarco and knocked out a few teeth. Not cool.

Off the field, however, Greene really is soft-spoken and articulate. It’s hard to understand how he would just turn into a monster when he got a dose of adrenaline, it seems. He was a brilliant player, but he could be incredibly savage when he played the Browns.

In his playing days, They filmed a commercial in which a little boy gives him a Coke and Joe smiles at him and everybody was so amazed that they made a (lousy) TV movie out of it.

He was just a scary, intimidating player and typified the Steel curtain.

A guy who was just as intense was Jack Lambert, out of Kent State.