The Pittsburgh Steelers kicked off their offensive coordinator search this week with a reported request to interview Los Angeles Rams pass-game coordinator Zac Robinson. The next day, NFL insider Peter King stated that the Steelers would be talking to former Arizona Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury about the position. Both guys will be in-demand candidates this hiring cycle due to their backgrounds and experience working with top quarterbacks in the league with success.
With the two reported names so far, the Steelers seem open to doing things differently than they have in the past. Former Steelers pro personnel coordinator and former Buffalo Bills GM Doug Whaley appeared on 93.7 The Fan’s Morning Show and discussed the coordinator search in Pittsburgh.
“I do like that they are willing to open it up, and obviously they are going to investigate the hot lineage of coaching right now. Anybody coming from that coaching tree, they’ve obviously proven to be very successful as head coaches,” Whaley said of the Steelers requesting to interview Robinson.
He has worked under Sean McVay since 2019, and that coaching tree includes a number of head coaches around the league such as Matt LaFleur of the Green Bay Packers, Zac Taylor of the Cincinnati Bengals, and Kevin O’Connell of the Minnesota Vikings. Getting the next branch of that coaching tree in Pittsburgh is obviously an intriguing proposition. Whaley cautioned you must look at things from both sides of the equation, however.
“I always look at it from both sides,” Whaley said. “If I’m Zac Robinson and I’m on, what—10 to 15 teams’ radar? First of all…who’s gonna give me the most money? Ain’t gonna be the Steelers. And where am I gonna have a direction to my next step, which is the head coach. Name me one person that’s coming outta Pittsburgh.”
Coordinator contracts aren’t generally made public, so it is difficult to speak to how competitive—or not—the Steelers’ pay scale is for that role. Keep in mind that Whaley was in the Pittsburgh front office and has some of that information as a former team insider. His second point about the path to becoming a head coach through Pittsburgh is a legitimate concern. In all of Tomlin’s 17 years as head coach, the only coordinator to go on and become a head coach is Bruce Arians, and he didn’t exactly leave Pittsburgh on his own terms.
So, if you are Robinson, do you want to come to a team that might not pay as much as others and also doesn’t have a track record of launching coordinators into higher roles?
There are currently eight offensive coordinator vacancies in the NFL. Each team is going to have its pros and cons for each candidate, but almost all of those teams have a better quarterback situation than Pittsburgh currently does. Will a coordinator want to step in and try to fix a quarterback’s career on top of fixing the offense as a whole? These are all factors that will be weighed by candidates as the Steelers continue their search. The highly sought-after candidates could be difficult to sell on coming to Pittsburgh.
“They’re gonna have to overpay for ’em and offer ’em the world,” Whaley said. “That’s why this is the most interesting hire and will point the direction of this franchise and their thought process going forward when they hire this OC.”
