Super Bowl IX — 1974 Season

Result

Super Bowl MVP

Franco Harris, RB, Pittsburgh Steelers

Starting lineups

Starting offense

Starting defense

Note: Larry Brown, Pittsburgh's starting tight end, led the team in receiving (3 catches, 49 yards, 1 TD) - noted so he isn't miscategorized as a wide receiver. Franco Harris's 34 carries for 158 yards was a Super Bowl rushing record at the time.

Box score

Passing

Rushing

Receiving

Game context

Super Bowl IX marked the beginning of the Pittsburgh Steelers' 1970s dynasty, as the Steelers -- the last of the NFL's "Original Eight" charter franchises never to have won a league championship -- defeated the Minnesota Vikings 16-6 in a defensive struggle at Tulane Stadium. The victory, delivered by a roster stocked with future Hall of Famers taken in a remarkable run of drafts (Joe Greene, Terry Bradshaw, Jack Lambert, Franco Harris, Mel Blount, Jack Ham, and more), announced the arrival of the franchise that would win four Super Bowls in six seasons. The two defenses dominated from the start. Pittsburgh's "Steel Curtain" front produced the first safety in Super Bowl history when Dwight White tackled Fran Tarkenton in Minnesota's own end zone, giving the Steelers a 2-0 halftime lead in a half where neither offense could sustain a drive. Pittsburgh broke the game open in the third quarter, when Franco Harris capped an 11-play drive with a 9-yard touchdown run to make it 9-0. Minnesota answered with a blocked-punt recovery for a touchdown to cut the deficit to 9-6, but Pittsburgh's offense responded immediately with a 66-yard, 11-play, 6:47 scoring drive finished off by a Larry Brown touchdown reception, sealing the 16-6 final. Harris finished with a Super Bowl-record 158 rushing yards on 34 carries and a touchdown -- more rushing yardage, famously, than Minnesota's entire offense generated that day -- and was named Super Bowl MVP. The Steel Curtain defense was every bit as dominant on the other side of the ball, limiting the Vikings to just nine first downs, 119 total yards, and a mere 17 rushing yards with no offensive touchdowns of any kind; Tarkenton finished 11 of 26 for 102 yards with three interceptions and a passer rating of just 14.1, an almost complete shutdown of one of the NFL's most dangerous offenses. Terry Bradshaw, still developing as a passer at this stage of his career, needed only 9 completions on 14 attempts for 96 yards and a touchdown, letting Harris and the defense carry the day. Head coach Chuck Noll, at 42, became the youngest coach to that point to win a Super Bowl, validating years of patient roster-building through the draft after a franchise history defined by futility -- Pittsburgh had never won a championship in more than 40 seasons of existence before this game. The win kicked off arguably the most dominant single-decade run by any team in Super Bowl history, as the Steelers would go on to add three more Lombardi Trophies (Super Bowls X, XIII, and XIV) by the end of the decade, built around the same defensive nucleus and a Bradshaw-led offense that matured alongside it. For Minnesota, the loss was the first of what would eventually become four Super Bowl defeats without a title, an ongoing frustration for a franchise that had posted an outstanding 87-24-1 record across the era under coach Bud Grant.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Super Bowl IX
• Pro-Football-Reference: Super Bowl Game Summaries