One of the most important people involved with the Pittsburgh Steelers over the last three decades is former defensive line coach and assistant head coach John Mitchell. Mitchell, who retired following the 2022 season, spent 28 years with the Steelers and was integral to the development of so many important pieces along Pittsburgh’s defensive line. During the latest episode of Cameron Heyward’s Not Just Football podcast, Heyward was joined by Brett Keisel and Casey Hampton, and they talked about Mitchell’s motivating techniques to young players.
Heyward told a story of Mitchell getting on his case early in his rookie season.
“When I first got here, I got drafted, I walk into the meeting, I was a day late because I had to sign my contract, and nobody was talking to me. I’m like ‘Ok, it is what it is.’ Next practice happens, I’m out my gap, I don’t know what I’m doing, I just got the playbook. He says to me, ’97, you do that shit again, your ass is gonna be looking at Walmart, trying to find Aisle 3 where the plants are.’ And then he told me, ‘I don’t need you to be a playmaker. I got my playmakers. 98, 99, 91, 96.’ And then he just went through the entire team. He was like, ‘If you wanna get on this team, you better go on special teams.'”
Heyward was joining an already talented but aging defensive line room, and in Pittsburgh, he had to earn his place. He didn’t play much as a rookie, only logging 262 defensive snaps, but he did play on special teams as well with 207 special teams snaps. That’s how Heyward first earned his place on the roster, but it wasn’t a unique experience getting chewed out by Mitchell as a rookie. Keisel said that it’s a “driving force” as a young player to hear it from Mitchell.
“That’s the speech he gives everyone. ‘I got my players.’ And honestly, it’s such a driving force for you as a young guy and he’s telling you nothing good,” Keisel said. “It’s like, ‘You gotta get better. You gotta play like these other guys. I know who I got. Watch those guys.’ And he’s gonna push you like you’ve never been pushed before.”
Keisel said he’s “grateful” for how much Mitchell pushed him and helped him reach a level that he “probably didn’t even see in myself.”
Even though he might have gotten on guys, it clearly worked as a motivating factor and helped them realize they couldn’t just walk into Pittsburgh and be “the guy” right off the bat. There are already established veterans in the room, and it takes work for a rookie to reach that level.
For guys like Keisel and Heyward, they did. Heyward became an All-Pro and is still an anchor for Pittsburgh’s defensive line, and Keisel was a rock-solid defensive lineman for some of the best defenses of the 2000s. Without Mitchell putting them in their place early and letting them know there was work to be done for them to see the field, maybe they wouldn’t have developed the same way. Keisel believes Mitchell helped him reach the level he got to in his career but that it also takes a special player to understand the coaching and not get discouraged.
“Some guys, that didn’t work. Like, we’d watch guys actually cry in the meeting rooms,” Keisel said.
While the style of coaching may not have worked for everyone, it worked for the guys who could handle it, and they were the players who became such key pieces to Pittsburgh’s defensive line and their defense as a whole. Even Aaron Smith said he was afraid of Mitchell when he was a young player, but Smith could handle the tough coaching and is now a member of the Steelers Hall of Honor.
Mitchell is a Pittsburgh legend for his work with the Steelers defensive line, and he’s someone who shouldn’t be forgotten about when looking at just how good some of those defenses were over the past 30-plus years.
