Mike McCarthy didn’t reserve a table at the city’s finest restaurant after his daylong job interview with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Instead, he went to his parents’ house in Greenfield and ate Aiello’s pizza with his family. To him, that was surely his favorite table in town. As one of five siblings growing up in the home of Joe and Ellen McCarthy, eating together was a family tradition.
“Life was busy with school and sports, but we always made a point to sit down and have dinner as a family,” said McCarthy’s youngest sister, Kellie McCaffrey. “As simple as that sounds, that’s not always easy. But that was a priority for my parents, just to have that special time with everybody each day.”
About 20 family members shared pizza on this day. McCarthy didn’t know yet that he’d be introduced days later as the Steelers’ next head coach, hired to lead a franchise he grew up rooting for. But by all accounts, the 62-year-old was already happy to be home.
“He had a smile on his face because he was around all of his family,” said his brother-in-law, Scott McCaffrey.
“You know, Michael is all about family,” added McCaffrey, who grew up about a block from the McCarthys in Greenfield. “His NFL career has spanned over 30 years, and I think it’s pretty cool how his career has brought the family together at different times. … And it continues to bring the family together.”
Along with head coaching jobs in Green Bay and Dallas, McCarthy had stints as an NFL assistant in Kansas City, New Orleans and San Francisco. He has won a Super Bowl, mentored Pro Bowl quarterbacks and ranks 15th among the league’s winningest coaches.
Those who know McCarthy best — his family and friends — describe him as driven, humble, tough and loyal. But above all, they say, he never forgot where he came from.
“He has always carried Pittsburgh in his heart,” Kellie McCaffrey said. “That’s just the way we were raised, to be authentic and true to yourself.”
‘Authentically him’
His Pittsburgh roots are deeply embedded.
As head coach of the Packers for 13 seasons, McCarthy could’ve adopted the flat “A” or the long “O” ingrained in the upper Midwest dialect. Instead, McCarthy proudly introduced Pittsburghese to that region of the country.
“One hundred percent,” said Steel Valley graduate Luke Getsy, who served four seasons on McCarthy’s coaching staff. “Everybody knows what ‘gutchies’ are up here now.”
It’s old-school Pittsburgh slang for underwear.
Under McCarthy, the Packers assembled a strong Western Pennsylvania contingent with coaches Tom Clements, Alex Van Pelt and Scott McCurley. Washington & Jefferson graduate Joe Philbin was also there and later joined him in Dallas.
Getsy said McCarthy embraced being a “Yinzer,” even if players from, say, California or Florida didn’t immediately understand his colloquialisms.
They’d soon learn.
“Everyone would always tease him,” said former Packers offensive lineman Don Barclay, a Seneca Valley graduate. “His accent never changed even though he lived in Green Bay for all those years. He’d always use the Pittsburghese. You’d look over and see Getsy or Tom Clements or McCurley or Van Pelt and just chuckle.
“Everyone didn’t get it besides us.”
Getsy credited his genuine personality as one reason McCarthy is a good coach. He said McCarthy is no doubt a great teacher and can get players to buy into his ideas but believed that is also a credit to his authenticity.
“The number one thing that is so impressive about him is his humility and consistency and willingness to just be himself,” Getsy said. “He’s authentically him.”
Heightened emotions
At times, McCarthy’s authenticity includes showing his true emotions.
McCarthy got choked up a few words into his introductory news conference, emotions he playfully blamed on the family members who’d filled the first two rows of seats.
“I told you not to sit my family down here,” McCarthy said with a smile. “This is so unfair.”
McCarthy fought back tears.
“This city, this franchise, this fan base means the world to me, because Pittsburgh is my world,” he said. “It’s just awesome to be back here.”
McCarthy’s emotions were surely heightened by the family sitting in front of him but also by who wasn’t. One of his biggest supporters, younger brother Joseph, died in 2015 after collapsing at a North Hills-area gym, leaving behind only four McCarthy siblings: Colleen, Michael, Ellen and Kellie. The brothers were four years apart in age.
“It affected all of us,” Kellie McCaffrey said. “It was heartbreaking. It was not something that you expect. But I think it also drives all of us to keep his memory alive, and we’re always wanting to make him proud.”
Joseph McCarthy was among the family members in Dallas 15 years ago when the Packers won Super Bowl XLV over the Steelers. He was most confident that his older brother’s team would win.
“I was nervous in my stomach, but Joey said: ‘This is Michael’s time,’” Scott McCaffrey recalled. “It didn’t work out for the Steelers, but it did for the Packers and the cheeseheads and the McCarthy family.”
Multisport star in high school
The 1981 yearbook for Bishop Boyle, formerly a small Catholic high school in Homestead, includes a black-and-white photo of senior Michael McCarthy wearing a dark jacket and a striped tie.
The football world knows him as Mike, but around the McCarthy family, he’s Michael.
The bio underneath mentions his plans to major in engineering in college. His favorite class was gym. His extracurricular activities included basketball, football, baseball, golf, red cross and ski club.
Those familiar only with his decades of coaching might be surprised by his athletic abilities.
“I think that gets lost,” said Kellie. “He is a coach, but he was a very good athlete. A standout baseball player, standout basketball player, but, you know, football was his calling.”
In the yearbook, he listed his most memorable moment as going to the state basketball championships. At that time, Bishop Boyle was known far more for basketball than football — and for good reason.
“We were really good in basketball. We were really bad in football,” said classmate Tim Butler, whose late father, Jack, was a Steelers cornerback enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Bishop Boyle reached the WPIAL basketball semifinals in McCarthy’s senior year. The Lancers won WPIAL and PIAA titles a year after he graduated.
“We were like a powerhouse on the basketball side, but football was not so great,” Butler said. “Our senior year, we won two games. Mike was a tight end and defensive end. He was good. Much better than everybody on our team. As a whole, our team wasn’t that great, but we had a lot of fun playing.”
He said McCarthy was a good receiver who could’ve handled any position on the field.
After high school, McCarthy played football for one season at Scottsdale (Ariz.) Community College before enrolling at Baker University, an NAIA school in Baldwin, Kan. He was a tight end and team captain his senior year when Baker finished as runner-up for a national championship.
“He’s been a leader all his life, and he always lived by example,” said Ed McCallister, another of McCarthy’s Bishop Boyle teammates. “Mike was one of those guys, he didn’t have a lot to say, necessarily, but if you had a pickup game, you wanted him on your team. He was a fierce competitor.”
McCarthy’s all-conference college career led to a couple of graduate assistant opportunities, first at Fort Hays State and later Pitt, where he eventually earned a paid position. In 1993, McCarthy jumped to the NFL level as a quality control coach in Kansas City, working under Marty Schottenheimer and with quarterback Joe Montana.
“Even back in high school, you could tell that he would become a coach,” Butler said. “He’d have to know the other team’s defenses or offenses. Stuff that, in high school, we never even thought of. We just thought about running our plays, but Mike was always concerned about what the other teams were doing and how they were lining up against us.”
Bishop Boyle competed in the tough Eastern 8 football conference with Clairton, Riverview and Duquesne, among others. Located on East Ninth Avenue, the school closed in 1987.
‘Just pure joy’
The idea of McCarthy someday coaching the Steelers always seemed too far-fetched to even imagine, said his family. Mike Tomlin didn’t appear to be going anywhere, and the Steelers traditionally hired young head coaches.
But then Tomlin resigned after 19 seasons, opening a door for McCarthy to interview. The Steelers hired him 11 days later.
For McCarthy’s parents, that was “just pure joy,” said Kellie.
“It still seems a bit surreal, but he’s really always carried Pittsburgh in his heart,” she said. “So, we’re just so excited.”
After his emotional homecoming introduction at Acrisure Stadium, the family who’d accompanied him there gathered back at Joe and Ellen McCarthy’s house that night for more pizza.
“It’s still odd to think of, knowing that Michael’s going to be head coach of the Steelers,” Scott McCaffrey said. “It’s just a very proudful moment as well. The family couldn’t be happier because Michael’s home.”