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The Steelers Made a Major Mistake With the Mike McCarthy Hire
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- The Steelers Made a Major Mistake With the Mike McCarthy Hire
The last time the Pittsburgh Steelers hired the wrong man to be their head coach, it was January 21, 1966. Lyndon Baines Johnson was the President of the United States, "We Can Work It Out" by the Beatles was the No. 1 song in the country, and "Mary Poppins" was the country's top-grossing film.
That's when, on Vince Lombardi's recommendation, the Steelers hired former Green Bay Packers offensive line coach Bill Austin to be their man . Sadly, Austin was saddled with bad rosters and not enough sway to get the patience needed from the front office for a legitimate rebuild. Austin went 11-28-3 over three seasons, and a Steelers team that had made one playoff game (1947) since 1933 continued what seemed like an eternal roll of failure.
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Hiring Chuck Noll as the new head coach, and selecting North Texas' Joe Greene as the first-round pick in early 1969 (both transactions happened in a 24-hour stretch), were two ways to turn that around. Of course, that happened under Noll, and the success maintained under Bill Cowher, Noll's replacement from 1992-2006, and the success continued under Mike Tomlin, Cowher's replacement from 2007-2025. As you've no doubt heard more times than is really necessary over the years, the Steelers have had three head coaches since Woodstock and the moon landing.
None of those three highly successful head coaches had ever been head coaches before.
Noll was highly regarded because he had been one of Paul Brown's "messenger guards" in the 1950s, bringing in the plays that Brown wanted to call for the Cleveland Browns , and he was the Baltimore Colts' defensive backfield coach from 1966-1968, when the Colts were putting some of the best defenses in pro football history on the field.
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Cowher played linebacker for the Browns from 1980-1984, and he gained a lot of respect as the Kansas City Chiefs ' defensive coordinator from 1989-1991. The Chiefs never ranked lower than eighth in points allowed during Cowher's tenure.
Tomlin had become one of the best defensive coaches in the NFL with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 2001-2005, and with the Minnesota Vikings in 2006, When he took over for Cowher on January 27, 2007, he was as ready for the top role as Noll and Cowher had been.
Three young defensive coaches, three direct hits. Which makes the hire of Mike McCarthy on Saturday so unusual. The 62-year-old McCarthy, born and raised in the Pittsburgh area, compiled a 174-112-2 regular-season record with the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys over 18 seasons, with an 11-11 postseason record, and a 31-25 Packers win over the Steelers in Super Bowl XV. McCarthy is well-known as a quarterback developer, something the Steelers will need no matter who plays the position for them in 2026 and beyond, and hey — the Pittsburgh roots story will play well, right?
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Not really. For the most part, the McCarthy hire is seen as an uninspiring move. How can a guy with this much NFL success, and with such a highly-regarded background as an offensive coach, be seen this way?
Perhaps it's because we're all too familiar with McCarthy's priors.
Yes, McCarthy did bring an NFL version of Rodgers to the fore with his coaching. Coming out of Cal in the first round of the 2005 draft, Rodgers had a lot of mechanical things to work out. Rodgers had a lot of time to do it; he didn't become the Packers' starter until the 2008, which was his fourth NFL season, and McCarthy's third as his head coach. McCarthy went from Brett Favre to Rodgers pretty seamlessly — two quarterbacks who very much wanted to run things their way.
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Which may be why, in the first few seasons of his time with the Packers, McCarthy went from one of the foremost purveyors of the West Coast passing game to one of the most bland play-callers in the league. Staid personnel packages and uninspiring route concepts became the order of the day, and that was the case for years . Maybe that worked for Rodgers, who always wanted to call the shots on the field, and bristled under Matt LaFleur, McCarthy's replacement when LaFleur wanted a more structured offense, but Rodgers has always been a one-off.
It's perhaps telling that the NFL today is mostly made up of variants of the Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay offenses. There is no Mike McCarthy tree there.
Dak Prescott , who McCarthy started coaching in 2020, more than a year after the Packers fired him after Week 12 in the 2018 season, is also a one-off. McCarthy was buttressed heavily by assistant coach talent in Big D over his first few seasons. The Cowboys' ascent under McCarthy started in 2021, when defensive coordinator Dan Quinn replaced Mike Nolan, and offensive coordinator Kellen Moore really came into his own. It continued when Brian Schottenheimer replaced Moore in 2023, and it didn't really fall apart until Quinn became the Washington Commanders ' head coach in 2024. Mike Zimmer was not able to replicate Quinn's success, and after three straight 12-5 seasons from 2021-2023, McCarthy was shown the door.
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So, how did McCarthy convince the Steelers that he was their man? I'm sure he played up his Yinzer roots, and he apparently went out on quite a limb with his quarterback development resume.
With all due respect, we're pretty sure that Joe Montana had things on the ball before he ever encountered McCarthy, who was an offensive quality control coach with the Chiefs in 1993 and 1994, Montana's final two NFL seasons. He didn't become the Chiefs' offensive coordinator until 1995.
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This would not be the first time that McCarthy gilded the lily when it came to his coaching past. When he interviewed with the Cowboys, McCarthy played up a summer of hanging out a Pro Football Focus HQ, insinuating that he was a newer, more modern coach, and that he had watched every play from the Cowboys' 2019 season.
Turns out, that was not the case.
"Well, I mean, I need to confess," McCarthy said in his opening press conference. "I mean, I told Jerry I watched every play of the 2019 season, but I wanted the job. So, I haven't watched every play of the season, but it was just, I mean, you do what you gotta do, right?"
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As for McCarthy's game-management acumen, there are a lot of issues there . Suffice to say that going back to his Green Bay days, McCarthy was never known as the guy you want in charge as the situations become more high-leverage.
And maybe that all works for a Steelers organization that seems to have become more obsessed with high floors and low ceilings than any sort of high-ceiling future. Were that the case, those in charge might have gone with a younger, more schematically and managerially present candidate. Instead, a team that had winning records with negative point differentials in the 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023 seasons appear to want to run it back with a slight uptick on offense. But going from below-average to average is not the paradigm shift this franchise desperately needs.
"He is someone who has a longer track record than many of the other candidates, a winning track record," Steelers president Art Rooney II said of McCarthy. "He's been a winner everywhere he's been. Probably just as important for our purposes, the quarterbacks that he's worked with have all been very successful. So he has a proven track record of developing top flight quarterbacks. Those are the things that maybe stick out the most."
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Even if this move reunites McCarthy with Aaron Rodgers in 2026, we are now dealing with a version of McCarthy who's even more behind the times than he was before, and a version of Rodgers who can still make the occasional splash play, but also can't move and throw like he used to.
The Steelers never took the easy way out when they hired Noll, Cowher, and Tomlin. This hire feels more like a consensus decision to keep the franchise right smack dab in the middle of things.
Perhaps after the McCarthy era produces the kinds of "meh" results one can easily anticipate, the Steelers will realize that they need to start thinking outside the box again.
This story was originally published by Athlon Sports on Jan 25, 2026, where it first appeared in the NFL section. Add Athlon Sports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
