The Pittsburgh Steelers are embracing an offense made famous decades ago by Bill Walsh, but new offensive coordinator Brian Angelichio pointed out how West Coast schemes nowadays can look very different.
The offense Kevin O’Connell runs in Minnesota differs from Sean McVay’s in Los Angeles or Kyle Shanahan’s in San Francisco. Steelers coach Mike McCarthy used a version of the offense in Green Bay and another in Dallas.
But looks can be deceiving.
“It’s really all the same,” Angelichio said Friday at an introductory press conference. “I worked with Kyle Shanahan in Cleveland and then obviously with Kevin. So, it’s all the West Coast offense. … It’s all about making the quarterback successful. Everybody’s just had their little different spin on it.”
Angelichio and McCarthy coached together for three seasons in Green Bay. They’re now installing an offense here that traces back to Walsh and the Super Bowl-winning San Francisco 49ers of the 1980s.
But Angelichio said modern West Coast offenses can differ in ways from Walsh’s, especially in personnel.
“Sean was doing it out of 11 personnel (with one running back and one tight end). Kyle’s still doing it out of 21 personnel (with two running backs and one tight end),” Angelichio said. “In Minnesota, we were doing it out of 21, 12, 11. But the concepts are the concepts. They may have changed the names, but it’s progression-based offense. It’s making it comfortable for the quarterback.
“It’s having alerts, cans, kills, whatever, to try to get a premier play,” he added. “But it’s all the same, and the origin’s the same. Everybody’s just taking their spin off of it. And certainly, everybody’s been successful. I think they all got Super Bowls.”
Angelichio, 53, is a first-time offensive coordinator yet won’t be calling plays. Those duties belong to McCarthy, who also called plays in Green Bay and Dallas. But Angelichio and the other offensive assistants will handle game planning throughout the week.
“Obviously, Mike will call the plays, and then he’ll be involved in the meetings as much as he can,” Angelichio said. “There’s not something that we do as an offense that Mike hasn’t gotten in front of him at some point. We’ll obviously forge on, make decisions, and he’ll be aware of the decisions we made.
“If they’re decisions that he’s not comfortable with or he sees a different way, we’ll obviously work together to get the best results. That’s really what you want on any offensive staff.”
Angelichio spent the past four seasons with the Vikings as passing game coordinator and tight ends coach under O’Connell, who is considered among the NFL’s top young offensive minds. O’Connell won Super Bowl LVI running the Rams offense for McVay.
Angelichio was asked whether he brought any secret sauce with him from Minnesota.
“Well, I think you’ve got to have good players,” he said. “It helps when you’ve got (receiver) Justin Jefferson. I think, it’s like with everyone, you’re just trying to develop a scheme that is quarterback-friendly. You’ll hear Coach McCarthy say this all the time, and this is Coach McCarthy’s philosophy: ‘Everything goes through the quarterback.’”
The Steelers’ quarterback job remains unsettled with Aaron Rodgers’ future apparently still undecided. The team has a three-day voluntary minicamp starting Monday.
Angelichio said the Steelers haven’t yet identified their “twist” to the West Coast offense. That’ll be decided in the coming weeks. He predicted that the team’s tight ends — Pat Freiermuth and Darnell Washington — could play a role in that customization.
“Our spin on offense, we’ll figure that as we go through OTAs, but it is going to be based around the quarterback,” he said. “It is going to be based around what our players do well. It’s going to be based around the personnel groupings that we can use to exploit the defense.”