On Monday afternoon, Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that the Steelers are parting ways with WR coach Frisman Jackson. Jackson had spent the last two seasons with the Steelers but with a number of effort-related issues coming from that position group in the 2023 season, it makes sense to move on an get a fresh perspective leading that room. One possible candidate to consider could be former Steelers WR Hines Ward.
Ward was the head coach of the San Antonio Brahmas in the XFL for the 2023 season but was recently let go as the XFL and the USFL merged to form the UFL. Ward could be just the medicine that the doctor ordered to instill the “Steeler Way” back into the wide receiver room.
Ward spent his entire 14-season career with the Steelers and made a name for himself as a hard-nosed, high-effort player who relished the dirty work of being a receiver in the NFL. His punishing blocks changed the rules of the game. He has been a semifinalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame eight times and would command a lot of respect from his receivers if he became the hire.
Ward began his coaching career in 2017 as an offensive intern with the Steelers and has since held a few different coaching positions across college, NFL, and XFL teams. He was a New York Jets offensive assistant from 2019-20, Florida Atlantic’s wide receivers coach in 2021 and then the head coach of the Brahmas in 2023. He also briefly served as an executive in the Alliance of American Football as its head of football development in 2019.
He was in the running to become Texas Southern’s head coach earlier this offseason, but the school went in another direction. That means, as of now, Ward is a coaching free agent and would make a lot of sense to bring to Pittsburgh. After he retired and served as an offensive intern, Aditi Kinkhabwala reported that the Steelers nearly made him their wide receiver coach. The story there was that Ward wanted to be able to hold every player accountable, but Antonio Brown served as a roadblock in making that happen. Here are Kinkhabwala’s words from that time while appearing on 93.7 The Fan:
“It didn’t happen because Hines was telling me then he wanted to have final say; he wanted to be able to hold everybody accountable the way that he wanted to. And at that point, AB already had his own rules. And Hines had gone to Mike Tomlin and said, ‘I can’t do this unless I get to make the rules, unless everybody adheres to what I want and how I want it done’. And AB was already past that.”
The discipline and accountability that Kinkhabwala’s report indicated is exactly what the Steelers’ WR room needs at this point with a lot of talent, but a lot of maturity issues. Given Ward’s obvious connections to the team, and the reports that he almost became the WR coach at one point in time, Hines Ward will definitely be a name linked to the Steelers’ new coaching vacancy in the coming days and weeks.
