The Steelers’ decision to hire Mike McCarthy as the franchise’s new head coach is every bit as uninspired as it is tone-deaf.
Those are two of the nicest phrases I can use to describe it.
Owner Art Rooney II and general manager Omar Khan couldn’t have waited until after Sunday’s NFC Championship game to speak with Los Angeles Rams assistant coaches Chris Shula and Nathan Scheelhaase in person? Was some other team really going to snatch up the 62-year-old McCarthy before Tuesday or Wednesday?
Even if they were left flat by either of the Rams coaches and someone else had shockingly scooped up McCarthy, they couldn’t have pivoted to Anthony Weaver or former Steelers assistant Brian Flores? Or tried harder to tempt Klay Kubiak into keeping his hat in the ring?
Kubiak withdrew his name from coaching consideration around the same time as word of McCarthy getting hired in Pittsburgh emerged. Maybe that’s because he heard that McCarthy was being hired. Or maybe he was the only other candidate the Steelers were interested in interviewing.
I suppose the Rams’ coaches could’ve let it be known they weren’t interested, or the Steelers were underwhelmed by their initial video interviews.
In a way, if we find out the Steelers went with McCarthy because none of those other guys wanted the gig in Pittsburgh, that may be even more depressing.
Until those details are cleared up by the parties involved, the hiring of McCarthy has somehow come off looking hurried and preemptive, while simultaneously settling for something familiar and comfortable.
As a friend of mine texted in a group chat of frustrated Steelers fans Saturday afternoon, “It’s like Art hurried out to Giant Eagle before the snowstorm Sunday to buy bread, toilet paper and a head coach.”
Don’t forget the milk. Gotta get the milk, too, Art.
Indeed, the Steelers news dumped before the snow dump. Maybe that’s because they wanted to bury this hire under an avalanche of headlines about the blizzard that hit the region Sunday.
It’s possible the Steelers were aware of how negatively the news of McCarthy taking over for Mike Tomlin would be portrayed.
Steelers fans getting Mike McCarthy after 2 decades of Mike Tomlin pic.twitter.com/7IlPq6fLdp
— NFL Memes (@NFLMemes) January 24, 2026
The Steelers settling for Mike McCarthy pic.twitter.com/LQhUu6M2z7
— Simpsons NFL (@TheSimpsonsNFL) January 24, 2026
The Steelers moving from Tomlin to McCarthy. pic.twitter.com/31f7clzRio
— Penguins Jesus (@PenguinsJesus) January 24, 2026
Yet Rooney wasn’t so inspired as to avoid hiring McCarthy in the first place.
If you look at the resumes of Tomlin and McCarthy over the past 15 years, they are remarkably similar. They are layered with lots of regular-season success, but pockmarked by postseason disappointment and underachievement since they faced each other in Super Bowl XLV at the end of the 2010-11 season.
That’s why the online reaction was so negative when McCarthy was named. It just feels like the Steelers are headed for more of the same.
After 15 years of “good, not great,” fans yearned for something new. With Tomlin, his coordinators and Aaron Rodgers gone, something fresh was on the horizon.
Instead, Tomlin 2.0 is coming. It’s fair to wonder if a 42-year-old Rodgers may even come back now that his former coach from Green Bay is leading the team.
It reeks of Rooney striving for 10-7 again. It stinks of the franchise being scared to wade into unfamiliar waters and instead accepting a comfortable place on the fringes of AFC playoff contention.
That phrase “The standard is the standard,” which was literally bolted on the wall outside the team’s locker room, needs to be retired with Tomlin.
Not just because he coined it in the first place, but because its meaning has been reduced to nothing more than an ironic punchline. That’s due to Rooney’s unending quest to have that standard lowered to a level of nothing more than acceptable, above average results.
McCarthy’s last few years in Dallas and Green Bay, prior to his 2025 sabbatical, are very much in line with that trend.
It’s clearly not what Rooney’s fanbase wanted. But he’s not paying attention to that. He’s petrified of ever having a losing season that might result in the need for an organizational reset. He’s content to maintain mediocrity in perpetuity.
Rooney will probably argue that this hire is breaking the mold. Tomlin, Bill Cowher and Chuck Noll were all in their mid-30s, first-time coaches on the defensive side of the ball. McCarthy is an offensive mind in his 60s and has twice served as an NFL head coach.
True. I acknowledged that about McCarthy as a potential candidate in the past. But he’s also a recycled coach who has been out of the business for a year (who just so happened to work with Khan 20 years ago in New Orleans) and had one playoff win in his last seven seasons before that. Plus, I’m not sure the entire sea of prospects was thoroughly navigated before making this choice.
Not to mention, do we really think McCarthy would’ve even gotten a phone call if he wasn’t from Pittsburgh? If McCarthy hailed from Greenville, S.C., instead of Greenfield, the Steelers still have a coaching vacancy, and McCarthy is holding out hope for another job.
But, hey, whereas Tomlin had his “Tomlinisms,” McCarthy can speak Yinzer and knows the back roads to the practice facility. How — or why — any of the colloquial charm matters, only Rooney can explain.
Which he won’t. He doesn’t need to. It’s his team. It’s his organizational goal.
That mission statement is clearer now than ever after hiring McCarthy: “The status quo is the status quo.”
I’m sure that’ll look great outside the locker room door.
