Why didn’t the Pittsburgh Steelers interview more candidates for offensive coordinator?
The Steelers formally announced interviews with only three candidates for offensive coordinator by the time they settled on Arthur Smith. Smith was the last of them. They also interviewed Thomas Brown early on, and Jerrod Johnson. Both are connected to the Sean McVay or Kyle Shanahan coaching trees.
Smith is the outlier. He is the experienced coordinator, which is precisely what head coach Mike Tomlin said he wanted. He wore no obvious ties to established coaching trees currently in vogue. Rather, he spent his career rising the ranks of the Tennessee Titans organization, Mike Munchak the first to hire him there.
Reports indicated the Steelers also wanted to interview another McVay product for offensive coordinator. Zac Robinson ultimately decided to follow good friend Raheem Morris to Atlanta when he got the Falcons job.
That’s two of four known candidates having worked under McVay, who has branched out quite a coaching tree in his young career. While not all of his former assistants have been uniformly successful, the pattern is not a coincidence.
Steelers owner Art Rooney II talked about the McVay and Kyle Shanahan coaching trees earlier this week. “It’s a successful system”, he said. “Those guys have had a lot of success, and their approach to offensive football has been pretty impressive. I’m not gonna say we’re only gonna talk to people that come off of that tree, but certainly worth talking to those guys”.
Thanks to Zac Taylor with the Cincinnati Bengals, the Steelers had gotten an up-close look at what a McVay protégé can do as they mined the ranks of candidates for their next offensive coordinator.
Yet of the four candidates connected with the Steelers, only one of them, Smith, really fit what they laid out. Rooney also said that he wanted an offensive coordinator to work with their roster, basically not blowing it up.
Pittsburgh is not an organization that rushes the major decisions. Yet this somehow almost feels a bit premature. Perhaps that is partly because many are unsatisfied with the result that the search ultimately yielded. Alex Kozora found himself initially merely “whelmed” by the hire.
I thought it was noteworthy that Rooney expressed the possibility head coach Mike Tomlin and general manager Omar Khan might conduct some of this business at the Senior Bowl. He suggested as much in speaking to reporters on Monday. Yet the next day, by noon, you have reports that they are working toward hiring Smith.
So why didn’t they interview more candidates? Rooney said this after they interviewed Smith. Maybe Tomlin found him more impressive than Rooney understood at the time of those remarks.
The Steelers’ 2023 season has been put out of its misery, ending as so many have before in recent years: a disappointing, blowout playoff loss. The only change-up lately is when they miss the playoffs altogether. But with the Buffalo Bills stamping them out in the Wildcard Round, they have another long offseason to look forward to.
The biggest question hanging over the team is the quarterback question. Is Kenny Pickett the guy? Will he get another season’s reprieve without a serious challenge? How will the team address the depth chart? Do they re-sign Mason Rudolph, one of few significant unrestricted free agents?
The Steelers are swirling with more questions this offseason than usual, frankly, though the major free agent list is less substantial than usual. It’s just a matter of…what happens next? Where do they go from here? How do they find the way forward?
