01/24/26 02:28:00
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01/24 14:26 CST Steelers and Mike McCarthy have reached a verbal agreement for
McCarthy to coach his hometown team
Steelers and Mike McCarthy have reached a verbal agreement for McCarthy to
coach his hometown team
By WILL GRAVES
AP Sports Writer
PITTSBURGH (AP) --- Mike McCarthy is coming home.
The Pittsburgh Steelers announced Saturday the club has reached a verbal
agreement with McCarthy to replace Mike Tomlin as head coach.
McCarthy grew up in the Greenfield neighborhood, just a couple of miles away
from the team's practice facility on the city's South Side.
The 62-year-old McCarthy is 185--123--2 (playoffs included) across 18 seasons,
13 with Green Bay --- which beat the Steelers in the Super Bowl following the
2010 season --- and five with Dallas.
His potential hire is just the fourth by the Steelers since 1969 and a marked
departure from his predecessors, Tomlin and Hall of Famers Chuck Noll and Bill
Cowher.
All three were largely unknown assistants/coordinators. McCarthy is hardly that.
McCarthy would replace Tomlin, who stepped down earlier this month after his
19th season ended with a seventh straight playoff loss, this one at home to the
Houston Texans. Tomlin's surprise departure came as he was under contract for
2026 with a club option for 2027.
The Steelers took a methodical approach, interviewing nearly a dozen candidates
that spanned a wide spectrum of experience, from Minnesota Vikings defensive
coordinator Brian Flores (who spent 2022 as a defensive assistant on Tomlin's
staff) to Chargers defensive coordinator Jesse Minter, who was hired by the
Baltimore Ravens on Thursday to replace John Harbaugh.
They ultimately landed on McCarthy, who takes over a team that has been stuck
in a purgatory of sorts for going on a decade.
Tomlin's nearly two-decade tenure included 193 regular-season victories ---
tied with Noll for the most in franchise history --- and the team's sixth Super
Bowl. Perhaps most remarkably, Pittsburgh didn't have a losing season with
Tomlin on the sideline.
That startling consistency, however, did not always translate to postseason
success. Pittsburgh has been one-and-done in each of its last six playoff
appearances, all of them double-digit losses.
In some ways, the Steelers have been victims of their own success. They have
frequently been drafting in the high teens and low-20s, not exactly a prime
position to find a franchise quarterback. It didn't help that they chose not to
draft Ben Roethlisberger's replacement in his final seasons, then whiffed badly
on Kenny Pickett, who flamed out in less than two years after being taken in
the first round of the 2022 draft.
It's led to a revolving door at the most important position on the field. If
Aaron Rodgers, who will be a free agent in March, doesn't return for a 22nd
season, the Steelers will have their sixth different Week 1 quarterback in six
years. McCarthy's arrival, however, would seemingly open the door for the
42-year-old Rodgers to come back.
Rodgers said earlier this month he believes he would have at least a couple of
options if he chose to run it back one more time, and his long partnership with
McCarthy in Green Bay included a Super Bowl victory over Tomlin and the
Steelers. Pittsburgh will have the 21st pick when a draft that appears to be
thin in quality options at quarterback descends on the Steel City in late April.
There's a very real chance the Steelers, who currently only have veteran backup
Mason Rudolph and 2025 sixth-round pick Will Howard under contract for next
season, will kick the can down the road again and address a handful of other
positions of need in the draft, namely wide receiver and cornerback.
Regardless, president Art Rooney II brushed off the idea of the Steelers
rebuilding.
"I don't like that word that much," Rooney said the day after Tomlin resigned.
"We'll try to compete day one if we can."
McCarthy's potential arrival would indicate that's still the plan.
His hire would also give McCarthy a chance to burnish a resume that stalled a
bit after guiding the Packers from a wild-card berth to the franchise's fifth
Super Bowl in 2010.
McCarthy is just 6-9 in the playoffs since the confetti fell at AT&T Stadium.
That includes a 1-2 mark with the Cowboys, where he posted three straight
12-win seasons from 2021-23 before being fired after Dallas tumbled to 7-10 in
2024 thanks in large part to an injury to quarterback Dak Prescott that limited
him to just eight games.
The one thing McCarthy --- who early in his career was a graduate assistant at
the University of Pittsburgh (which now shares a building with the Steelers)
--- has consistently done is put together offenses that can move the ball.
McCarthy-coached teams have finished in the top 10 in yards in 12 of his 18
seasons, though his first years in both Green Bay in 2006 and Dallas in 2020
were sluggish.
The Steelers have been stuck in a transition period on offense for a solid
half-decade. That transition may soon move to an expensive and aging defense
that has potential Hall of Famers at every level (defensive tackle Cam Heyward,
linebacker T.J. Watt and defensive back Jalen Ramsey), all in their 30s.
McCarthy would be the first Steelers hire with previous NFL head coaching
experience since Mike Nixon in 1965. Nixon lasted just one season in Pittsburgh
and was fired after going 2-12. Nixon was replaced by Bill Austin, who made it
three years before Pittsburgh hired Noll, a decision that transformed the
franchise from a laughingstock into one of the league's most successful and
stable teams.
Noll and his four Super Bowls set a standard of excellence that Cowher and
Tomlin maintained in their own unique ways.
That standard, however, had slipped of late. McCarthy's mandate will be
returning some of the luster to a team that hasn't won a playoff game since the
final days of the Barack Obama administration.
It will also provide a test of sorts for the hometown boy who made good, who
now gets to find out whether you can truly go home again.
___
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