These are not your father’s Steelers. Or your grandfather’s Steelers.
Per multiple reports, the Steelers plan to hire former Packers and Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy as the team’s next head coach.
The move breaks dramatically with the team’s history, since 1969, of hiring defensive coordinators with no prior head-coaching experience. It also parts ways with their longstanding practice of hiring younger coaches, with the apparent objective of keeping them around for a long time.
Chuck Noll coached the team for 23 years. Bill Cowher had the job for 15 seasons. Mike Tomlin recently resigned after 19 years. Each was a defensive specialist.
McCarthy, who has 18 years of head-coaching experience, has one Super Bowl appearance. It came 15 years ago, when his Packers beat the Steelers. (And it got a street named after him in Green Bay.)
A Pittsburgh native, McCarthy has a regular-season record of 174–112–2 and a postseason record of 11-11. Which gives him 310 more games of head-coaching experience than Noll, Cowher, and Tomlin had, combined, when they got the job.
And while one source called the move an upset on par with Villanova over Georgetown, there were indications that the Steelers would break from their formula of defensive-minded coaches. The game has changed dramatically since the Steelers hired Tomlin, 19 years ago. Offense means more than ever before, as does player safety.
Moving forward, the question will be whether the Steelers can extend their streak of nailing head-coaching hires to four in a row. However it plays out, it’s hard to envision the 62-year-old McCarthy sticking around for as long as Noll, Cowher, or Tomlin did.
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