The Pittsburgh Steelers went all in on a veteran-heavy roster this offseason. And then they hired a 61-year-old head coach to run it.
Mike McCarthy is back in the NFL after a year away, taking over for Mike Tomlin in Pittsburgh. And he inherits a team that looks like a retirement home for former All-Pros.
Aaron Rodgers came back for another year after flirting with retirement. Jalen Ramsey and Cameron Heyward are still playing at a high level but neither is young. T.J. Watt is coming off the worst season of his career since his rookie year. The roster is loaded with names that would have scared you in 2020.
The balancing act nobody talks about
The obvious challenge for McCarthy isn’t X’s and O’s. It’s managing egos and reps. How do you install a new program when most of your best players have already seen everything?
Albert Breer of SI.com laid it out pretty clearly. He wrote that McCarthy has to strike a balance between managing older players and establishing his own system. Year one is usually when a coach comes in hot and sets a tone. But you can’t run a 36-year-old quarterback or a 34-year-old defensive tackle into the ground during August.
McCarthy has done this before. He coached Rodgers in Green Bay. He’s had veteran teams. Breer pointed out that McCarthy has always adapted to whatever situation he walks into. So he should have a plan for keeping Rodgers, Watt, Ramsey and Heyward fresh for Week 1.
The tricky part is making sure the rest of the team doesn’t see that as special treatment. If your stars get every Wednesday off, what message does that send to the 25-year-old trying to earn a roster spot?
McCarthy’s track record says he can handle it
McCarthy has been a head coach for all but two seasons since 2006. He won Super Bowl XLV with the Packers. He knows how to manage a room full of grown men who already have money and resumes.
But this isn’t Green Bay. It’s Pittsburgh, where Tomlin kept the ship steady for 19 years without ever having a losing season. That level of consistency is hard to replace, even if the results had gone stale lately. The Steelers have been competitive but never truly dangerous in recent years.
McCarthy’s job is to get them over that hump while the window is still cracked open. Rodgers probably only has one more year. Heyward might be done after this season. Ramsey is in his 30s now. If this doesn’t work, there’s no rebuild waiting in the wings. It’s just a teardown.
And that’s where McCarthy’s test really lives. Not in play-calling or practice schedules. In managing the tension between the present and the future. Between letting stars rest and pushing everyone else to buy in. Between respecting what these guys have done and making them prove it all over again.
The Steelers are betting McCarthy can do both. We’ll find out in September.
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