Tuesday’s press conference to introduce Mike McCarthy as the Pittsburgh Steelers’ new head coach generated two main topics for discussion.
1. His statement that he’d be interested in Aaron Rodgers returning as the team’s quarterback.
2. How much he loves Pittsburgh.
I’m pretty sure you can guess which one of those two things will be more pertinent to the Steelers finally winning a playoff game for the first time in almost a decade.
McCarthy touched on a number of other themes, though, and many of them are worthy of further investigation.
That’s what we’ll focus on during this Friday’s edition of “Football Footnotes.”
• McCarthy made the decree that he will continue to call plays during games as he had done in Dallas and with the Green Bay Packers.
“Definitely. I will call the plays on offense and obviously will run the offense,” McCarthy said. “These coaching staffs, it’s a bigger challenge each and every year. I think there’s more moving parts to it.”
That’s fine. That’s part of the reason teams sometimes want to hire offensive-minded head coaches. Guys such as Andy Reid and Sean McVay call their own plays.
But it limits the pool of who you may be able to find to be your coordinator. If you wanted to call plays, don’t bother applying for Pittsburgh’s job.
For instance, there were some who had the pie-in-the-sky idea that McCarthy could get hired and Los Angeles’ Nate Scheelhaase (a former candidate for McCarthy’s job) could come on board to be the offensive coordinator as a promotion from his passing game coordinator role with the Rams.
That’s not going to happen now if the biggest reason why he was passed over for every other job is apparently the fact that no one seems to feel he is ready without any play-calling experience.
Why would he go from a good offense to a bad offense with no quarterback to be a coordinator who doesn’t call plays? That goes for a lot of young up-and-coming assistants like him.
He’ll never get to call plays in L.A., either, mind you. Not so long as McVay is there. But it is still a better place to be for upward mobility.
If offensive coordinator candidate Scott Tolzien gets the job, we’ll see when, or if, he ever gets that task—or how long he wants to stay in that role. Same for Lunda Wells.
• On the topic of future assistant coaches, I’m seeing a lot of names being thrown around that are former assistants under McCarthy, have Pittsburgh ties or both.
Wells is one example. New wide receivers coach Adam Henry was with McCarthy in Dallas. Tolzien played for McCarthy and coached under him. Reported new defensive coordinator Patrick Graham and candidate Jason Simmons were with McCarthy in Green Bay. Simmons also was a Steeler. Special teams coach possibility Ray “Bubba” Ventrone is from Chartiers Valley. James Campen (offensive line) and Ramon Chinyoung (running backs) are reportedly new additions. They are also McCarthy tree alumni. Mike Tomlin holdovers Tom Arth (QBs) and Scott McCurley (ILBs) are expected to stay on board. They both have McCarthy-era ties to Green Bay.
What’s he doing? Hiring his coaching staff through a group text?
Look, I get it. You tend to hire who you know, and then there is the whole “from da’ Burgh” romance of Western Pennsylvania, Stiller-lovin’ football, n’at.
But we used to crush Tomlin for just hiring and promoting cronies and pushovers to his coaching staff.
Let’s hold McCarthy to the same standa… oops. I should probably stop using that word so much after 19 years … the same level of criticism.
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• I appreciate the fact that McCarthy volunteered that he has been a head coach for 18 years and only had one top-5 defense.
I admit that I didn’t know that nugget. But I’m not surprised to hear it and … yikes!
I got the sense McCarthy advanced that fact in an effort to suggest that he thinks the Steelers’ current defense is quite good. It felt like he was insinuating that if he could bring the offense along at least a little bit in the first year or two, the defense could do enough to win lots of games.
Eh, this defense ain’t top-5 either. The 2025 unit was 26th overall, 29th against the pass, 13th against the run and 17th in points.
Both sides of the ball have a long way to go.
• Speaking of defense — and pandering to Pittsburgh — McCarthy extolled the virtues of the 3-4 defense.
“The defense system has been here since 1992,” McCarthy said. “It came here with Coach (Bill) Cowher and Dom Capers. Always been a fan of it and always felt it was the toughest one to compete against as an offensive coach — part of the reason why I went to it in Green Bay. … Ideally, we want to keep the language the same.”
Maybe McCarthy said that because he thinks it’s something all yinz wanna hear. Cuz, you know, we love our 3-4!
But we loved the 4-3 up until Bill Cowher took over for Chuck Noll. And I wouldn’t be opposed to a change again.
Let’s admit it. It’s not exactly the same old 3-4 it used to be anyway. Especially with how much sub-package is being played these days. Plus, it’s naive to think that T.J. Watt and Alex Highsmith can dominate off the edge like Greg Lloyd and Kevin Green in 1994.
Not with the quick passing games and mobile quarterbacks they face every week, as opposed to back then. They need more capable pass rushers on the interior, too, besides just a soon-to-be-37-year-old Cameron Heyward.
Keeanu Benton started to flash again last season. Derrick Harmon and Yahya Black are coming along against the run after one year. So, I guess there is some clay there to mold.
But glorifying the idea of recreating the “Blitzburgh Blast Furnace” defense and “Quiver and Quake” sounds a little naive to me.
• Finally, McCarthy had this to say about receivers: “This game’s about matchups. Your ability to put your third receiver on the third corner. Hopefully, that’s a favorable matchup. Or move those guys around.”
Yup. Agreed.
Unfortunately, Mike, right now, you only have one wide receiver. And that’s if he is available as opposed to being suspended in December for punching fans with blue hair.
Among the many challenges McCarthy faces, restocking that receiver room is going to be one of them.