While we don’t have all the answers yet for the Pittsburgh Steelers heading into the 2024 season—or hardly any—we do know some of the questions. Some have become even bigger, but one that stands out is the question of who the offensive coordinator is going to be, even if only because there has to be a new one. They fired the old one.
That would be Matt Canada, fired after about two and a half seasons on the job, the first time the organization has ever fired a coach in-season. Running backs coach Eddie Faulkner served as interim offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Mike Sullivan called the plays.
Former Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger has experience working with both and has a number of times thrown his support behind Sullivan, doing so again last night. He also mentioned former teammate Byron Leftwich, who had success with Tom Brady in Tampa Bay. But there is a new name in the mix—current Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy, whom many anticipate will be fired.
“He is a Pittsburgh guy, and someone talked about maybe him being the OC”, Roethlisberger said on his Footbahlin podcast. “I think he’s a brilliant mind, he’d be awesome, but I don’t know. As a head coach guy, like Tomlin’s a head coach, sometimes having two head-coach personalities, some guys it just doesn’t work. Just think that’s an interesting one”.
It is an interesting one, and it is also interesting to point out that head coach Mike Tomlin once had three former head coaches on his staff all at the same time. They only overlapped for one season, but in 2014, he had Todd Haley as his offensive coordinator, Dick LeBeau as his defensive coordinator, and Mike Munchak as his offensive line coach.
Now, none of them were smash successes as head coach, to be sure. LeBeau had a three-year stint with the Cincinnati Bengals in the early 2000s, during which he went 12-33. Haley was the head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs for three seasons in 2009-11, going 19-26. Munchak was the Tennessee Titans’ head coach for three seasons in 2011-13, going 22-26. Only Haley reached the postseason once.
All of them had very successful coaching careers outside of their head-coaching stints, to be sure, particularly LeBeau, and Munchak as one of the great offensive line coaches of this generation. Haley as the Steelers’ offensive coordinator presided over their most prolific offense in team history.
But McCarthy, to be fair, is a different story. He has been a head coach for 17 seasons and has an all-time .620 winning percentage. He won the Super Bowl with QB Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers in 2010 — over the Steelers — and has an 11-11 playoff record.
In his four seasons as the Cowboys’ head coach, he has gone to the playoffs three times, posting the same 12-5 record three years in a row (QB Dak Prescott missed most of the 2020 season). But he is now 1-3 in the postseason and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones isn’t known as the most patient man in the world.
McCarthy was the offensive coordinator of the New Orleans Saints from 2000-05 before getting the Packers’ head-coaching job. He’s never moved back down to the coordinator rung since then, even after being fired in 2019, instead taking the year off.
Now 60 years old, assuming he’s fired, would he potentially feel differently about a demotion in status? I would doubt it, at least on the grounds that I think there are enough job openings for head coach to assume it’s reasonable he may land one of them. But if he still wants to emulate Chuck Noll, Pittsburgh might not be a bad place to do it.
