One man helped the Pittsburgh Steelers win four Super Bowls before leading Michigan State to two Big Ten titles.

Another was the only coach hired twice by Chuck Noll.

And the third coached Pro Football Hall of Fame linebackers Jack Ham and Jack Lambert during his four championship seasons in Pittsburgh.

Three former Steelers assistants — George Perles, Dan Radakovich and Woody Widenhofer — died within 76 days of each other in the first three months of 2020.

Perles, who was coach and athletic director at Michigan State, died Jan. 7 in East Lansing, Mich. He was 85.

Radakovich, a Duquesne native who spent 13 seasons on the staff at Robert Morris and is a member of its Hall of Fame, died Feb. 20 in Moon. He was 84.

Widenhofer, a Steelers linebackers coach and defensive coordinator through most of the 1970s and into the 1980s, died Sunday in Colorado Springs, Colo. He was 77.

They were part of a coaching staff assembled by Noll that former Steelers publicist Joe Gordon called “one of the best in NFL history.”

“We had a good staff,” said Dick Hoak, a Jeannette graduate, Greensburg resident and former Penn State running back who spent 45 seasons with the Steelers as a player and coach. “Everybody got along with everybody. There wasn’t any, ‘I should be doing this. I should have this. Why did he get (the job)?’

“There was none of that.”

Noll hired Radakovich in 1971 off Joe Paterno’s staff at Penn State where he had earned the nickname “Bad Rad.”

After spending the next two seasons at the University of Colorado, Radakovich returned to the Steelers in 1974, just in time to help win the first of two Super Bowls.

It’s not often coaches are brought back onto a staff they had left, but “(Noll) just had so much respect for Rad’s football knowledge,” Gordon said.

“He was his own man, but the offensive linemen loved him because he was so smart in assigning what they had to do on each individual play.”

Gordon remembers Radakovich as “a different breed of cat … somewhat of a scatterbrain.”

“The rumor is one time he came home from practice, goes in the house. He’s sitting in the kitchen. Some woman says to him, ‘What are you doing in here? This isn’t your house. Your house is next door.’ ”

But there was so much more to Radakovich, who was at his best on a football field.

Ham wrote this in the foreword to Radakovich’s 2012 autobiography “Bad Rad: Football Nomad:” “He was by far the best technique coach I ever saw, and I am indebted to him. I have more respect for Rad as a coach than anybody I’ve been around, and I’ve been around a lot of them.”

After leaving the Steelers, Radokovich spent time with seven other NFL teams, including the Los Angeles Rams when they played the Steelers in Super Bowl XIV after the 1979 season.

He helped former Robert Morris coach Joe Walton start the Colonials’ program in 1994, left, came back in 1996 and stayed through the 2007 season.

Later, he spent six seasons at Westminster, including 2019.

Love for the game was a thread common to many of Noll’s assistants.

Widenhofer, who was born in Butler, had three stops before and seven after his time in Pittsburgh. He was head coach of the USFL’s Oklahoma Outlaws and in college with Missouri and Vanderbilt. Tom Moore, wide receivers coach and offensive coordinator, is still active at the age of 81 as a consultant for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

“When I was a kid, even before high school,” Hoak said, “all I wanted to do was play football. Everything fell just right for me.”

His grandson, Michael Shuster, might complete the circle of life.

Hoak traveled to every game when Shuster played quarterback at Camp Hill High School, outside Harrisburg. Now, he said Shuster, who was a walk-on quarterback at Penn State, wants to pursue a coaching career after he graduates.

If he paid attention growing up, Shuster probably learned a lot.

Hoak was the Steelers’ running backs coach who tutored Hall of Famers Franco Harris and Jerome Bettis. In practice, Perles, the defensive line coach and architect of the Steelers’ stunt 4-3 defense, would demand Hoak’s men give him their best shot.

“Every time I beat it, he went back to the drawing board and he made some kind of adjustment to take care of that play,” Hoak said. “That’s the way the stunt 4-3 came about.”

Perles’ scheme held O.J. Simpson to 49 yards rushing in a 1974 playoff victory against the Buffalo Bills. Subsequently, in the AFC Championship Game and Super Bowl IX, the Oakland Raiders and Minnesota Vikings averaged less than 1 yard per carry.

“We were doing things other teams weren’t doing,” Hoak said.

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