Boy, is Art Rooney II desperate to win a playoff game.
He should be.
By the standard of the family business, Rooney’s tenure as its steward has been disappointing in every way beyond profit. (The Steelers are too big to really fail. Lucky for Rooney.)
Now, in an effort to accomplish the minimal, the Steelers’ owner has laid the groundwork to do no better than the minimal for years to come.
Mike Tomlin quit. Rooney had a chance at a new beginning and could have affected such by following a familiar pattern: Hire a bright, promising assistant coach in the ascension of his career. It worked with Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher and Tomlin. Noll was 37, Cowher and Tomlin both 34.
Mike McCarthy is 62, nine years older than Tomlin is now.
McCarthy is an older version of Tomlin. Offensive-minded, good with quarterbacks but a very similar resume. A rough equivalency.
Old men don’t do resets. They don’t plan for the long term.
Hiring McCarthy means running it back, but without Tomlin.
Keep veterans, sign more vets, don’t trust too many young players, assemble an elderly coaching staff, old-school ideas prevail. Convince yourself the Steelers are close when they’re not. (Did it look like they were close in that playoff loss to Houston? The Texans soiled the bed for three quarters and still won by 24.)
Beg Aaron Rodgers to return. No deadline. He can take all summer to decide. No hurry, Aaron. See if a better team is interested. (Rodgers definitely will.) Talk it over with your wife.
It is — and will be — boring beyond comprehension. The Steelers have been deadly dull for years.
Rooney didn’t even wait to interview the Los Angeles Rams assistants in person: Defensive coordinator Chris Shula and passing-game coordinator Nathan Scheelhaase.
Seems lazy given that McCarthy was highly unlikely to get hired elsewhere. (Or perhaps Shula and Scheelhaase would have wanted to overhaul the Steelers’ ancient methodology, to be more analytics-driven. That might have made the Steelers balk, then made Shula and Scheelhaase withdraw.)
McCarthy isn’t a bad coach.
McCarthy won a Super Bowl with Green Bay in 2011; Rodgers was at quarterback when McCarthy’s Packers beat the Steelers. He won 12 games with Dallas three seasons in a row. His winning percentage in the playoffs is higher than Tomlin’s: .500 to .400.
But hiring McCarthy has zero feel of moving forward.
It feels like digging the hole deeper.
It super-serves the cause of now, and of veterans like Cam Heyward and T.J. Watt who are somehow perceived as victims that deserve better even though they were on the field for all those playoff losses.
If Rodgers doesn’t return, some other fossil will be recycled at quarterback. If the Steelers draft a quarterback this year or next, McCarthy might be able to develop him but will be busier trying to win now with what he’s got.
Defenders of the hire say that McCarthy won’t be around long. If that’s true, why hire him at all?
To win a playoff game, that’s why.
To finally win in the postseason after nine seasons of not.
That’s the Steelers’ primary organizational goal now.
It used to be to win a Super Bowl, and the franchise still pays lip service to that.
But for Rooney, winning a playoff game has become equivalent to winning the Super Bowl. That’s why Rodgers was brought in. That’s why McCarthy was hired.
Only Rooney knows if it’s an obsession. But it sure looks that way. (That streak of no losing seasons probably figures in, too.)
Rooney is the problem.
His grandfather was the founder. His father and uncle were architects of a dynasty.
Rooney wants to be his dad, but isn’t coming close.
He’s Fredo Corleone.
He’s the one Rooney who can’t.