1982 Pittsburgh Steelers season
American football season
The 1982 Pittsburgh Steelers season was the franchise's 50th in the National Football League. The Steelers returned to the playoffs after missing the playoffs for two years. This was also the Steelers 50th Anniversary season. Although the season was shortened as a result of the 1982 strike, the Steelers finished with a strong 6–3 record, good enough for fourth in the AFC as a whole. Although division standings were thrown out as a result of the strike, the Steelers unofficially finished second in the AFC Central, one game behind the defending AFC Champion Cincinnati Bengals.
The 1982 season is best remembered as the final seasons for Hall of Famers Lynn Swann and Jack Ham and the "unofficial" final season of fellow Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw, who would miss much of the 1983 season due to injuries before retiring. On the flip side, it would also be the first year of placekicker Gary Anderson and the first year of the team using a 3–4 defense, a style still used by the team as of 2019.
The Steelers would lose in the first round of the playoffs to the San Diego Chargers, in what would be the last home playoff game for the Steelers for the next ten years.
Personnel
Staff
Roster
Offseason
The 1982 offseason was the start of a slow transition period for the team, as the defensive line was hit with key retirements in "Mean Joe" Greene and L. C. Greenwood. Partially due to the team losing two key players and partially due to the need to go up against a more wide-open NFL, head coach Chuck Noll switched from the traditional 4–3 defensive alignment (four lineman & three linebackers) to the 3–4 (three lineman & four linebackers).
“1982 Pittsburgh Steelers season” enters the record as american football season. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Pittsburgh, Steelers and season can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“1982 Pittsburgh Steelers season” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Pittsburgh, Steelers and season provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4580587. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1982, 1983 and 2019.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “1982 Pittsburgh Steelers season”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow 1982 Pittsburgh Steelers season primary sources, 1982 Pittsburgh Steelers season archive and Pittsburgh research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1982 Pittsburgh Steelers season”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “1982 Pittsburgh Steelers season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.