Hey Steelers Fans. Welcome to Monday.
The Kickoff
Wherever you are, I hope you’re staying warm…
Pittsburgh Steelers Team President Art Rooney II will never be his grandfather and he’ll never be his father. I’m pretty sure he understands this but there are times when I’m not real sure. In terms of what transpired over the weekend, there’s no question he’s his own man. Butting 50 years of tradition in terms of hiring head coaches has left little doubt that he’s carving his own path. Despite my own displeasure with Mike McCarthy’s hiring, there’s always the chance it could work. We can only sit back and find out right? ARII did an interview with Steelers.com yesterday and frankly it couldn’t have gone worse. I mean, it could have, but this one was pretty ugly.
“He is someone who has a longer track record than many of the other candidates, a winning track record,” said Rooney. “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.”
Granted, Mike Tomlin wasn’t fired. He left on his own, but McCarthy being called a “winner” is the same as calling Tomlin one or John Harbaugh or Sean Payton. They each have one Super Bowl victory and many missed opportunities. Going from Tomlin to McCarthy might not be the ‘flex’ he thinks it is. As far as working with young QBs, yeah, there’s some truth to that I’m not sure McCarthy has ever had a QB situation this poor.
“We wound up bringing in three guys for in-person interviews – Brian Flores, Mike McCarthy, and Anthony Weaver – and then we sat down and talked about whether we had our man, or if we wanted to bring in more people for in-person interviews,” said Rooney. “We decided that Mike was the man for the job, and so we went ahead and offered him the job on Saturday.”
Three in-person interviews? What was the rush? The Steelers could be sitting down to interview Chris Shula, Nate Scheelhaase or Klay Kubiak today but apparently having someone in place for the Senior Bowl was more important. Can you see my eyes rolling? That’s a horrible excuse to not be patient in this situation. This is further proof that McCarthy was their guy all along. The ‘old boy network’ striking again.
When Bob Labriola of Steelers.com told ARII that the response from Steelers Nation was “largely negative,” the response was, “We’re really not worried about winning the initial press conference. It’s about picking the coach we believe will help us win games,” said Rooney, “and social media really doesn’t enter into it. And none of that will matter once we’re starting to play games. The message for our fans is we’re very excited. We think we have a coach who is well-equipped to lead us into the next winning phase of Steelers football, and that’s what it’s all about. I think they’re going to love Coach Mike.”
Why are we going to love him? Because he’s from Pittsburgh? Sure, the main goal of any franchise is to win games but this was an opportunity to start over and instead, ARII is choosing the status quo of being “competitive.” He’s clueless…
Random Reads
Congrats to the Seahawks and Patriots. Both the Rams and Broncos made decisions to go for first downs rather than take three points and in each case, those decisions largely led to them losing. It’s a new day in football with teams giving up points as often as they do now… I guess if there’s any positive news it’s that you can get to a Super Bowl within just a few years of being pretty average… It was good to see former Steeler Kevin Dotson play so well for the Rams. What a missed opportunity for the Steelers. Had they just left him at his natural right guard position he would probably still be here… There was a ray of sunshine for us this weekend when it was announced that Arthur Smith was going to be the new offensive coordinator at Ohio State. McCarthy calls his own plays but who he brings in as his OC is still very important moving forward… One other “must have” for me? A new offensive line coach with an outstanding resume.
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