One reason why sweeping Pittsburgh Steelers coaching changes didn’t occur in 2025 is because they happened the year prior. In 2024, the team overhauled large portions of its coaching and scouting staff. Among those moves was the addition of new head Strength & Conditioning coach Phil Matusz, replacing long-time Steeler Marcel Pastoor. A year later, it’s looking like one of the worst hires Mike Tomlin has made.
That’s shown in the Steelers’ 2025 NFLPA report card reflective of the 2024 season. Strength and Conditioning staff is one of several sections graded. In the 2024 release under the previous staff, Pittsburgh received middling marks, a B-plus but 20th overall. In the 2025 edition, those grades tanked. The Steelers received a C-minus, the worst in football.
The specific complaints are even more troubling.
In 2024, 95 percent of players surveyed felt they received an individualized plan from the S&C staff. That ranked ninth. In 2025, just 75 percent of players felt that way dropping them to 31st.
In 2024, respondents felt the staff “moderately” helped them, placing 23rd league-wide. In 2025, that downgraded to “slightly” and ranked dead-last.
Reviewing the season, it’s easy to see why. Under Matusz, the Steelers implemented a new pre-training camp conditioning test beat writers would later say was unlike anything they had seen before in Latrobe. Part of the test required all players, including quarterbacks, to push a sled. Russell Wilson suffered a calf injury during the test, one that would linger throughout the summer and cause him to miss the first six games of the 2024 season.
“We were just pushing this heavy sled as fast as we could, just doing this workout testing thing we were doing. It was unfortunate,” Wilson later said of how the injury occurred.
After a rash of soft tissue injuries to end the season, Mike Tomlin noted during his year-end press conference the team was looking for ways to stay healthier throughout the year.
“How can we keep our team healthier was a discussion that happened yesterday, for example,” Tomlin said on January 14. “We experienced a rash of soft tissue injuries this year that was impactful.”
DL Larry Ogunjobi, QB Justin Fields, CB Joey Porter Jr., WR George Pickens, and SS DeShon Elliott were all players who missed time late in the season. Most dealt with soft-tissue injuries.
In addition to Matusz, the team hired several other members to fill out their S&C staff. Pittsburgh brought back Justus Galac in an assistant role, the same he held with the team from July 2021 to January 2022, per his LinkedIn page. The Steelers also hired Roderick Moore, listed as the team’s Coordinator of Sports Science/Strength and Conditioning, following Arthur Smith from Atlanta to Pittsburgh. Long-time coordinator Garrett Giemont remains on staff, listed as a Senior Conditioning Coordinator but presumably in a reduced role after Pastoor took over the team’s lead role in March of 2021.
Matusz appeared to have a prior relationship with Tomlin. Before coming to Pittsburgh, he served as the Strength and Conditioning coach at Boston College from 2020-2023. It’s the same school one of Tomlin’s sons, Dino Tomlin, transferred to ahead of the 2022 season. Prior to Boston College, Matusz spent six years at Ohio State. He’s a Western Pennsylvania native who grew up in Greenville, north of Pittsburgh.
According to the team’s website, Matusz is still on-staff as the Steelers’ head Strength and Conditioning Coach and there’s been no changes to the staff as a whole on the Steelers’ front office page. But based on how his first year went and the miserable grades he and his staff received, things will need to quickly improve in 2025.
