Andy Russell, the Steelers former outside linebacker and a two-time Super Bowl champion, passed away on Thursday at the age of 82.

I grew up watching Russell, but not as a Steelers player. No, I grew up watching him talk about his Steelers career during interviews on countless NFL Films features.

One of Russell’s most famous stories of his time as a Steeler was his recollection of Chuck Noll’s very first training camp speech after being hired as head coach in 1969. The Steelers were obviously a sad-sack franchise. In fact, that was their identity for the first four decades of their existence. The 1960s were especially rough, particularly the latter portion of the decade. As Russell recalled, Noll told his inherited players that the reason they weren’t winning had nothing to do with anything, other than their talent level. He was going to have to get rid of most of them and rebuild from the ground up. Noll once insisted that he wasn’t as harsh with his initial player critiques as Russell often said, but only five players from that ’69 training camp were still around for Pittsburgh’s Super Bowl IX championship.

Russell was obviously one of them.

Russell had been a full-time starting outside linebacker for many years after Pittsburgh selected the Missouri product in the 16th round of the 1963 NFL Draft. Russell was named a team captain in 1967. He made his first Pro Bowl in 1968, just prior to Noll’s arrival.

As Russell told it in an interview for the America’s Game episode that chronicaled the Steelers Super Bowl IX team, Noll’s initial critiques of Russell weren’t very flattering, despite the latter’s recent Pro Bowl success. Noll said he was going to make Russell a better outside linebacker, which he did; Russell was named to the Pro Bowl six more times between 1970-1975. Noll made the entire team better, of course, as evidenced by the Steelers back-to-back Super Bowl championships following the 1974 and 1975 seasons.

Russell was a huge part of Pittsburgh’s early-to-mid-’70s Steel Curtain defenses; he teamed up with Jack Lambert and Jack Ham to form perhaps the greatest linebacker trio of all time.

Russell started a total of 162 games at outside linebacker before retiring following the 1976 season at the age of 35. As for the postseason, Russell started 11 playoff games for Pittsburgh. He appeared in four AFC Championship Games and two Super Bowls.

In terms of individual honors, Russell was named to the Pro Bowl seven times. He was voted a First-team All-Pro once and a Second-team All-Pro three times. Most importantly, he became the proud owner of two Super Bowl rings.

Many have said that Russell was underrated, that he was overlooked because of the endless amount of legends he played with during his time in Pittsburgh, especially on those legendary Steel Curtain defenses of the 1970s.

It is true that Russell, a member of the Steelers first Hall of Honor class, is often overlooked when talking about the organization’s all-time greats, particularly at outside linebacker. If you examine Russell’s career in a vacuum, it’s more than easy to make a case for him for enshrinement in Canton, Ohio, the home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Maybe Russell would be in the Hall of Fame, if not for the fact that he played alongside so many legends. Perhaps things would have been different, had the organization not evolved from the “Same Old Steelers,” and Russell got to retire as one of the greatest defenders in franchise history.

But would it have been as fun a ride for him, for us? No.

In a way, we got to experience the Steelers transformation from sad-sack organization to NFL royalty through Russell’s eyes, through his stories. He was there when it was as bad as it had ever been, and he got to stick around for when things finally became great.

While his teammates obviously enjoyed the heck out of that first Super Bowl title, do you think they appreciated it as much as Russell? Most of them didn’t know any better, save for Russell, the late, great Ray Mansfield and a few other leftovers from the 1960s.

The Steelers first taste of championship success in the mid-‘1970s gave Russell notoriety. It gave him a community that included teammates and life-long Steelers fans. Most of all, it gave him a life and an identity.

Andy Russell, two-time Super Bowl champion.

Russell wore his Super Bowl rings during many appearances throughout his post-playing days. I’ll bet he cherished them just as much or more than his teammates who got to wear four of them.

After all, Andy Russell became a Steeler when the thought of sporting even one championship ring was a mere pipe dream a player might experience during the psychedelic 1960s.