Owner Art Rooney II is happy with the size of the Pittsburgh Steelers coaching staff. Former QB Ben Roethlisberger thinks there’s room to grow. Weighing in on Rooney’s Monday press tour, which included him dismissing the need to expand the number of coaches, Roethlisberger sees the value in having more cooks in the kitchen—not that he thinks the Steelers will change.
“Absolutely. There’s a lot of room for that,” Roethlisberger said on his Footbahlin podcast when asked by co-host Spencer Te’o if the team should consider adding. “Expand the strength and conditioning staff. Expand the training staff. Expand equipment staff, all that stuff. But that’s money. And we all know that the Rooneys aren’t putting a lot of extra into that stuff. That’s just, they’ve never done it that way. So we don’t expect that to change.”
In our offseason study we’ve done for the past few years, the Steelers came out with the NFL’s smallest coaching staff with 19 officially listed on their website at the time. That did not include Strength & Conditioning staff or analytics personnel.
Speaking to reporters yesterday, Rooney downplayed the assertion Pittsburgh employs the least, counting 27 on the team. It’s unclear what additional people he included to bridge that eight-person gap. It is likely the S&C staff, of which there are four added stemming from a 2024 overhaul, and potentially unlisted assistants like former linebackers Ryan Shazier and Vince Williams. We know the team has had other coaches unreported in the past, having assistant DBs Coach Gerald Alexander working for the team for a season before being publicly shared on the team’s coaching staff.
Roethlisberger shared the story of once being blown away by other coaching staff sizes, citing a Pro Bowl he attended led by the Houston Texans’ coaching staff.
“I remember sitting in a quarterback meeting room at the Pro Bowl,” he said. “And you had the quarterback coach and there were two or three other coaches in there. And I’m like, they’re coaches. This is unbelievable. And so I think there’s definitely room for that, but the team has to decide they want to do that.”
The Rooneys have a reputation for being cheap with their coaching staff. However, coach salary information isn’t public like player salaries, making it hard to know exactly how much everyone is getting paid and how it relates to the rest of the league. Mike Tomlin is one of the highest-paid head coaches in football, earning $16.7 million on the new three-year extension he signed last June. OC Arthur Smith likely received a raise compared to what previous OC Matt Canada commanded.
The late Dan Rooney once remarked that the team paid “on the high side of fair” for its coaching staff, but it’s unclear if the team still holds that mantra today.
As our most recent study showed, there is no correlation between coaching staff size and team success. That doesn’t mean there’s zero value in adding a key assistant. Ultimately, the right people are better than the sheer number of them. But it’s a path the team is unlikely to explore this season. Instead, their changes are poised to come from swapping out coaches, one positional coach for another, instead of adding on.
