Hiring a new offensive coordinator will be the biggest decision facing the Pittsburgh Steelers next offseason—unless it’s not. If they have to figure out what to do with head coach Mike Tomlin, that would obviously supersede it. But as things stand, it’s unclear how much control he would have over the hiring of his next coordinator.
Ray Fittipaldo of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette expects it to be limited. “They won’t let Tomlin make this hire”, he wrote during a chat with readers, though as his ensuing sentence indicates, that’s somewhat poor wording. “I think they’ll give him the freedom to make the hire, but only through a list of their preferred candidates”.
So they won’t give him unilateral control over the hiring process. Which actually doesn’t seem to be too much different from their process for hiring a new general manager last year. They put together a list of candidates and went through a round or two first before Tomlin got more involved.
Tomlin did not rush to clean house when he was first hired. He retained Dick LeBeau as defensive coordinator and promoted internal coach Bruce Arians to offensive coordinator. Some reporters would have you believe that Arians’ successor, Todd Haley, was forced on him, and many want to believe that, but frankly, I don’t have enough to go on to say one way or the other.
As best as I know, however, there have been no reports that he wasn’t in charge of hiring Matt Canada or Randy Fichtner, or Keith Butler or Teryl Austin on the other side of the ball. From the outside looking in, it’s really impossible to say. But what is easy to observe is that his hires have really gone nowhere.
“Good head coaches hire talented coaches who want to advance in their careers”, Fittipaldo argued, addressing the “coaching tree” argument, the reality that nobody Tomlin has hired has gone on elsewhere to have success. “We haven’t seen that with Tomlin”.
Will the front office, and owner Art Rooney II, mandate that the Steelers look for a rising candidate for the job, someone who might actually have a conceivable future? The perception is that Rooney doesn’t like to step on Tomlin’s toes if he doesn’t have to.
Given the state of the team, however, one might imagine that he would feel more compelled now to be more assertive. The Steelers are at a critical juncture. Their star players are getting older. Their first-round quarterback is not looking like a franchise cornerstone piece. They have no offensive coordinator. Their head coach is being questioned from all corners like never before.
This could be quite a dramatic offseason. Or Tomlin could just hire running back coach Eddie Faulkner to be his next offensive coordinator, which may well be his preference. I’m sure many fans are ready to move on and find out what happens next after this season is completed—since it’s already all but over.
