Mike McCarthy’s Hire in Pittsburgh Makes a Lot of Sense—If You Examine the Facts

The former Packers and Cowboys coach has a history of success similar to that of one of the coaches in the AFC championship.

Former Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy takes over for Mike Tomlin in Pittsburgh | Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

Candidate A is 62 years old and in his second act as an NFL head coach. Before arriving at his current location, he was with his previous team from 2006 to ’21, amassing 152 wins over 15 seasons, eight playoff appearances and one Super Bowl, which he won alongside a shoo-in Hall of Fame quarterback. 

Candidate B begins his third stint as an NFL head coach today. He is 62 years old, and in his 16 seasons coaching between 2006 to ’21 (the same time frame as candidate A, who lost a year due to a league suspension), he logged 155 wins, 11 playoff appearances and one Super Bowl, which he won alongside a shoo-in Hall of Fame quarterback.  

The reception to candidate A’s hiring was one of unanimous praise. An immediate assurance that he would turn his current team around—a notion that has been proved correct. Quickly, the team turned over the quarterback position, loaded up a defense, made quality coordinator hires and dug the team out of the divisional basement. 

The reception to candidate B’s hiring on Saturday has been nearly unanimous confusion, even though both candidates have roughly identical winning percentages, total wins, playoff success and a track record of turning teams around. 

The Steelers, who hired Candidate B on Saturday (Mike McCarthy), are breaking a long-term precedent in their own hiring practices in the hopes that his success mirrors that of Candidate A, Sean Payton. They are also, in my estimation, doing something wise in realizing that the only significant difference between Payton and McCarthy is that one coach is a little more skilled at making us believe he is great at his job. The Steelers always favored an understated approach anyway. 

While the story of the moment is that Pittsburgh eschewed its decades-old formula of hiring a defensive head coach in his early thirties—this process led the team to Super Bowl winners Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin—I’m more focused on the fact that one smart team has opted not to take the narrative bait on McCarthy and to explore the facts at our disposal: that he is the 15th-winningest coach in NFL history. That he has a .608 winning percentage, better than that of Bill Parcells, Mike Shanahan, Tom Coughlin, Mike Holmgren, Mike Ditka and Jon Gruden. That, between 2016 and ’18 (when EPA tracking data became mainstream enough to sort and track), McCarthy, like Payton, also had a top-seven offense in terms of expected points added per play. That, in 2023 and ’24 (the years when McCarthy was in Dallas and Payton was in Denver), the Cowboys were better across nearly all measurable offensive statistics. 

For some reason, when McCarthy is lobbed as a head coaching candidate, it causes a fan base to recoil. Again, my guess is that McCarthy simply lacks the public finesse that Payton undoubtedly has. While Payton’s milieu is a bit more villainous, it’s aligned with the personality traits that one would expect of an offensive genius. McCarthy, be it his Yinzer accent, background as a bartender and college tight end, or his gentle-hearted nature at the podium, comes off more as someone who is along for the ride. Even though coaches who have worked for him, padded his plays and operated his offense, insist that is absolutely not the case. 

Although it’s no guarantee of success, the Steelers were battling some rocky terrain. For one, the dynamics of the league have shifted drastically since the Steelers last hired a head coach. While this would have seemed to be the ideal class to score another young, ascending defensive coach, the reality is that Pittsburgh's offensive output has been threadbare since Ben Roethlisberger was in the prime of his career.   

Second, much like the Patriots opted for a charismatic Cam Newton to be the bridge between Tom Brady and the next young, drafted Patriots quarterback, the Steelers are smart in considering that McCarthy can more easily handle both the weight of an absurd streak of seasons at .500 or above and the brutality of the AFC North. 

McCarthy can draw good coordinators, most recently sending off both Kellen Moore to win a Super Bowl in Philadelphia (he joined the Chargers first) and eventually land a head coaching job in New Orleans, and Dan Quinn to a gig in Washington, where he took the Commanders to the conference championship in 2024. He can parse the mercurial world of high-end quarterbacks—and maybe convince a near-retirement Aaron Rodgers to explore the possibility of a bridge season in Pittsburgh. And, he will raise the floor of an offense that has been left to wither by decades of defense-first philosophy. In 24 years as a play-caller or head coach, McCarthy has had 14 seasons in which he finished with a top-15 passing offense in net yards per attempt. The Steelers did that only 10 times in Tomlin’s tenure—all of which occurred with Roethlisberger under center. 

The rest of it—that McCarthy is native to Pittsburgh and may be able to better pacify a wildly provincial fan base staring down a pretty gruelling rebuild—is simply whipped topping. 

But in looking at Denver’s roster when Payton arrived and Pittsburgh’s now that McCarthy is there, I’d ask you why—really, why—did one rebuild seem so much more certain? And now that we’ve taken a look at the facts, doesn’t this seem a little more exciting than we’re giving it credit for?

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