The Pittsburgh Steelers have a brand-new quarterback room, one shaped and led by Russell Wilson and Justin Fields. They’ll be coached by a new face, too. Of the several coaching staff changes the team made this offseason, Tom Arth was tabbed as the Steelers’ new quarterbacks coach. A relatively fresh face in the NFL, only coaching in the league since 2022, he’ll be a critical component to reviving Wilson’s career while taking Fields from potential to production.
New to Pittsburgh, Arth’s name is synonymous with John Carroll. A D-III football program, it won’t be on your television most Saturdays, but you’ll feel the school’s influence every Sunday. If Miami (Fla.) was once dubbed DB U and Ohio State a modern day WR U, then John Carroll is Coach U. This isn’t a coaching tree – it’s a coaching forest. Don Shula, Josh McDaniels, Dave Ragone, and Arth are just some of its alumni.
Before becoming a coach, Arth was a stellar quarterback and once named the greatest player in program history. After an NFL stint that included being teammates with Peyton Manning and spending time in NFL Europe, he returned to John Carroll, hanging up his cleats for a coach’s headset.
It was there he coached the likes of LB Chris Rizzo and QB Anthony Moeglin, two men who became just as impressed with Arth the person as they were the coach.
“Coach really did spend a lot of time pouring into us as young men,” Rizzo tells me in a recent interview. “He put good people around us that were gonna give us more than just football. And on top of it all, he lived it. He lived it out in front of us. I think that was one of the most influential pieces is that there’s a lot of guys who say and bring a lot of guys in. And there are people out there who are, ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ kind of guys. Coach was never that. Coach was always a leader by example and a model of what he wanted us to be.”
After spending several seasons as an offensive coach, Arth became the school’s head coach in 2013. In his four years in that role, he posted a sparkling 40-8 record. His squad pulled off the stunner of 2016, ending Mount Union’s 112-game winning streak with a 31-28 victory, handing the Purple Raiders their first regular season loss since 2005.Â
“He always had a really good way of balancing the intensity of what we were about to experience with a message of love for your teammates,” says Moeglin, the quarterback responsible for throwing the game-winner to beat Mount Union “Love for one another. Because that’s what it takes. It takes a group of guys who are committed to each other, committed to winning that football game and doing everything they can. Not doing it for themselves, doing it for their teammate, doing it for their brother.
“There’s one [pre-game speech] in particular against Mount Union where somebody caught it on video, and I watch it every once in a while. To this day, it gives me chills, the hair stands up on the back of my neck. Because it just gets you, it snaps you back into that moment.”
Like Arth, Moeglin grew up in the northeast Ohio region. Blue-collar tough, he tore every conceivable ligament in his shoulder making a tackle his senior year of high school. Undeterred, he played out his basketball and baseball seasons, popping his shoulder into place when need be, before undergoing surgery. Despite the injury, John Carroll kept recruiting him, and he redshirted in 2015, learning the system while getting healthy.
Though on a much smaller scale, like the Steelers, John Carroll had a quarterback battle in 2016. Moeglin won the job. The initial results weren’t promising. Through two games, he had completed less than half his passes and thrown five picks. But Arth kept him steady and boosted his quarterback’s confidence when it was needed the most.
“Coach, he’s got a really good way of just building you up. Just pumping you with confidence if things are going good,” Moeglin said. “He kind of accelerates that if things are going bad. He’s got a really good way of just keeping you confident, speaking to each player. He knows his players really well. And for me it was, giving me that positivity. Telling me that I could do this. That I wasn’t in over my head and all those things to kind of keep me going.”
Arth’s steadiness paid off. The third week, Moeglin completed over 80 percent of his passes in a blowout win over Heidelberg. The game after, Moeglin was Manning incarnated on an Ohio field, tossing six touchdowns in a 62-7 win over Wilmington. John Carroll finished 12-2 before falling in the semifinals.
Rizzo has the perspective of playing and coaching during Arth’s tenure. Transitioning to the latter as a linebacker and tight ends coach, Rizzo understood the NFL-like process Arth brought to the school, giving its building a distinct edge.
“Everything was practiced like pros. I’ll never forget the amount of the amount of NFL tape and learning that we had an opportunity to get to as a Division III player…For us, as a player, there was a professional atmosphere. You were expected to know what you were doing. You were working on a good time clock. Everything in practice had a purpose. In the classroom as a player, detailed notetaking. Study in the offseason, study in the in-season.
“The amount of detail that coach wanted in these things, the amount of attention to the small details really gave you the idea that, hey man, this is something a little bit different than you were kind of signing up for. As a player, you don’t always necessarily get to see the behind-the-scenes, the hours of tape. Even down to the scout cards, the film breakdown, I don’t necessarily think he was trying to create a professional environment. I think that’s just something that Coach always existed in and always held himself to. And then that was just the way he did things.”
From a quarterback perspective, Moeglin agreed.
“Everything was very, very structured. It was run like a professional program and that was really cool. And then beyond that, Tuesday through Friday were gonna be harder than Saturday. It was, ‘We’re gonna go hard in practice. We’re gonna put you in tough positions, hard positions to succeed and see what you can do.’ Because when your preparation’s tougher than the actual game, you tend to succeed.”
Despite the NFL environment shaped by his time in the league, Arth didn’t brag about his football story. Sure, there were acknowledgments of it in his office, photos of him and Manning together. But his focus wasn’t on wielding his NFL credentials to shut down arguments. It was merely imparting the knowledge he gained to his staff and players. The rare NFL mention was players poking fun of his NFL Blitz rating, the lowest in the video game.
Forward thinking, Arth wasn’t just cognizant of winning on the field. He once brought in an etiquette coach to help his players brush up on their dinner manners. And a decade ago, when Twitter wasn’t nearly as prominent as today, he asked a social media specialist to speak one day, outlining the importance of building your name the right way.
Arth’s success quickly got him noticed. UT-Chattanooga hired him as its head coach in 2017 and two years later, he was in the FBS running Akron, endorsed by Peyton Manning for the job. He didn’t find the same success there, the Zips a historically tough program to win at, but it spoke to the high regard everyone who meets Arth holds him.
Whether it’s a D-III quarterback like Moeglin, a Super Bowl winner in Wilson, or first round pick in Fields, Arth’s teaching remains the same. Fundamentals are key and good quarterback play comes from the ground up.
“His biggest thing is making sure you have good footwork,” Moeglin explained. “Really every day, it’s the same kind of footwork drills. And it’s funny, I was watching some OTA clips of Justin Fields and Russell Wilson, and I was like, ‘Oh, I remember all those, all the things that they were doing was the same stuff that I was doing.’…His fundamentals and one of those big ones is making sure your feet are perfect. So [at practice], you’ll see those guys repping all sorts of types of different kind of footwork drills, making sure your shoulders and your eyes move with your feet. Because if your feet aren’t there, you don’t have a good base, you tend to be inaccurate.
“His biggest thing is making sure your base is strong. You should be able to stand shoulder width apart and not be able to move you off your spot. Be able to push in your chest, a light push in the back, make sure your base is really, really strong so that you can explode from there. Because your arm strength is really driven through your lower half. And if you have good base and you’re on balance, you have good arm strength, but you can be strong in the pocket. So that was his biggest thing is making sure that base was strong.”
The mark of a good coach is clear. Maximizing a player’s talent by way of being a teacher. For those who have been around him, Arth leads with that kind of heart.
“He’s a really good teacher,” Rizzo said. “I remember I’d pop into his office to do some of the diagrams or some of the playbook drawings as a young coach. And there was never any question that was too stupid. There was always a ‘Why?’ There was always an extraordinarily tangible piece that he was able to link to your learning process as a coach and a player. So, yes, he’s extraordinarily smart. His X’s and O’s are good, but the guy’s a really good teacher. And he’s a really strong and passionate learner as well.”
Fiery on gamedays, Rizzo and Moeglin spoke to Arth’s intense competitive drive. The urge to create competition for himself and for those he’s leading, an ideal atmosphere for a quarterback competition the team is framing as open between Wilson and Fields.
“He’s competing not just to be the best quarterback’s coach,” Rizzo said. “He’s not competing just to be the best assistant coach. The guy is competing in all facets of what he does. Whether it’s competing to know the playbook the best, add value, watch film, whether it’s competing about creating competition among his room. He used to tell us all the time that competition breeds excellence…So you have a competitor in that quarterback’s room. You have a guy that regardless of situation or circumstance, he’s gonna go tooth and nail for you.”
Once together on John Carroll’s campus, the trio have gone their separate ways. Arth is in Pittsburgh for his first season with the Steelers. Rizzo is nearby, entering his second year as the head coach of a promising North Catholic squad. Moeglin works for Thunder Tech, a marketing firm. In a reminder of the type of accomplished people the school produces, the company’s CEO is a John Carroll alum.
But when they get together, the memories from a decade ago flood back. Even if their encounters are total happenstance, as Arth’s was with Moeglin earlier this summer.
“About a month ago, I was flying out to the West Coast for work, and I passed him in the Denver airport. And he texted me. And I’m not kidding you, I was on one of those [moving walkways]. I had my head down. All of a sudden I see Coach Arth’s name and he starts calling me and I’m like, ‘What in the heck?’ I answer and he goes, ‘Hey dude, are you in the Denver airport?’ And we turned and we talked for 25 minutes. Just catching up on life.”
For Arth, Wednesday’s report date won’t be his first trip to Latrobe. Twice, St. Vincent College played Arth’s John Carroll squad, a home-and-home series in 2014 and 2015. Arth’s team won both, including a 26-3 win in Latrobe to open the 2015 season. He hopes tenure as a Steelers coach gets off to the same promising start.
“From a coaching perspective, one of my favorite parts about him is he’s so smart,” Moeglin said. “And he’s so competitive. You’ll see that, and it’s gonna match up with Russell and with Justin very, very well. Coach wants to win more than anybody else, and he’ll do anything he can to make sure Pittsburgh wins.”
