There still has been no definite word as to whether or not Pittsburgh Steelers defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau will be back in 2014, but during a Thursday morning interview on DVE Radio, team president Art Rooney II said he believes that he will and doesn’t think that the 76 year-old defensive mastermind has lost his touch, even though his unit had problems stopping the run and big plays this past season.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s really a question of does Dick want to continue to coach or not and I know Mike’s [Tomlin] having those conversations, but it’s not a performance issue,” said Rooney of LeBeau. “Dick LeBeau may go down as the greatest defensive coordinator that the league has ever seen and I don’t think the issues that we had this year were something where all of a sudden he forgot how to coach. It’s funny how people come to those conclusions sometime.
“I really think that there’s some personnel issues we need to address on defense and I think we’ll be able to do that. And as I say, I think that Dick and Mike are going to be having their conversations over the next week or two about really does coach LeBeau want to come back for another year and I’m kind of expecting that he will. But again, that’s a conversation that’s working its way through.”
At the end of the season, LeBeau gave no signs that he was ready to leave the NFL to play more golf and unless Tomlin thinks he needs to move on from him, I fully expect he’ll be back to finish out the transition from old to young on the defensive side of the football.
