A former coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers once said, “Don’t seek comfort. Resist comfort. Seeking comfort is a natural human condition. We all want to be comfortable. But if you want special outcomes, you have to become comfortable being uncomfortable.” You’d think a message like this, preached around an organization for two decades would have worn off on others. It did not. Art Rooney II and Omar Khan sought comfort in hiring Mike McCarthy yesterday.
The Pittsburgh native was far and away the safest and most comfortable option to replace the author of the above words, Mike Tomlin. Both Rooney and Khan missed an opportunity to hit the reset button. You kids of the 1980’s likely remember slamming that reset button over and over on your gaming system when things didn’t go right. These two avoided it altogether. All they did was hit the power button and go do something that wasn’t as difficult or as challenging.
A young, new coach would have brought excitement and energy. New ideas and new players would have come aboard too. Most knowledgeable fans would have understood there would be growing pains – an uncomfortable feeling if you will – but those would give way to success. A rough season or two would have garnered higher draft picks and a chance to truly rebuild (oops, bad word I’m told) and get the Pittsburgh Steelers back to being the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The decision to remain comfortable and hire McCarthy is also about “the old boy network” and what happens when non-football people make “football” decisions. Khan, McCarthy and Andy Weidl all worked together in New Orleans more than two decades ago which seemed to heavily factor into this decision. But Khan and especially Rooney are not football people. They are “front office” people who run the day to day operations and own the team. People like this usually thrive by hiring people who know the game and let them make the best decisions. Essentially, they let them do their jobs.
In other words, Rooney and Khan made the comfortable hire in this situation. There will be talk of McCarthy’s work with quarterbacks and high-scoring offenses as reasons for his hiring but don’t be fooled. This was about two guys wanting to be comfortable and wanting to maintain the “competitive status quo” that has existed for a decade despite it leading to nothing.
Sometimes you have to rip the band-aid off and start over. Yes, it’s painful at first but eventually things get better. That however requires discomfort and the Steelers weren’t having any of it.
