Pittsburgh Steelers team president Art Rooney II is open to coaching staff changes. But growing the coaching staff? That’s something unlikely to occur. Evaluating how the team can adjust and improve, Rooney didn’t see the size of the coaching staff as a problem.
“I don’t see that holding us back,” Rooney told reporters Monday via 93. 7 The Fan. “I don’t think that’s our problem.”
Rooney pushed back on the notion that the Steelers have the NFL’s smallestcoaching staff, something our most recent annual study indicated. Based on what the team publicly showed on its website last summer, Pittsburgh had just 19 on-field coaches (excluding analytics coordinators and the strength and conditioning coaches). That was the fewest in football by a clear margin.
During the interview, Rooney said the team has 27 coaches on staff. It’s not entirely clear who he’s counting in that number. There are assistants not listed in any official capacity on the team website. Former linebackers Ryan Shazier and Vince Williams are regular faces throughout the season with Shazier seeming to have a daily role with the team (Williams coaches at Pine-Richland High School, presumably limiting his time with the Steelers).
Though it’s a fair counter to our study, if the same unlisted coaches were applied across the rest of the NFL, the Steelers would likely still find themselves near the bottom of coaching staff size. Still, our study showed there wasn’t a direct correlation between coaching staff size and team success. This year, the inverse was more likely to be true. Teams with smaller coaching staffs were more successful than ones with larger groupings.
It all led Rooney to downplay the idea of adding to Steelers’ coaching staff.
“I wouldn’t dismiss anything other [than] maybe bigger coaching staff,” he said. “I’m not sure that that’s the answer. Our coaching staff has grown, and the size of staffs have continued to grow around the league. I don’t think we’re an outlier as far as that’s concerned.”
It seems like the changes the team makes will be by swapping one coach for another. So far, the team’s yet to make any announcements of which coaches will exit let alone beginning the process of replacing them. With the Senior Bowl starting this week, Pittsburgh feels behind the curve for a team eliminated from the postseason more than two weeks ago.
Still, it’s not uncommon for coaching changes to bleed into February. Last year, QBs coach Tom Arth and WRs coach Zach Azzanni weren’t hired until then. The same held true for OL Coach Pat Meyer when he was brought on board in 2022. And the team could be making moves behind the scenes no one is aware of yet. The Steelers are one of the mostly tight-lipped teams in football, often breaking their own news when it comes to staffing dismissals and additions.
