The football offseason may be a marathon, but Mike McCarthy’s first with the Steelers has begun at a sprinter’s pace. Hired on January 24, he has been full speed ahead for the past two months. With the draft coming up and the first phase of the offseason program around the corner, he admits getting everything situated hasn’t been easy.
McCarthy noted that the Steelers’ coaching staff is heavily involved in the draft scouting process. But they still have other duties to the players already on the roster, and Phase 1 of the offseason program is nearly here. Now, Phase 1 doesn’t include on-field player interaction with coaches, but it will be here soon enough. For the time being, he’s just trying to have all of his coaches prepared for when the players arrive.
“There’s just so much to do. I’m an old school believer”, McCarthy told the Steelers’ website about the offseason thus far. “You go back and we put page one of the playbook in, we talk about the huddle, put the ball in play, cadence. We don’t just take the old playbook. It would have been very easy for me to just put the playbook in the middle of the table and say, ‘This is what we’re running. That’s not what we did’”.
One aspect Mike McCarthy already touched on previously was keeping the same terminology the Steelers were already using. Here, he admitted it was easier to do on defense than it has been on offense. “We are trying to keep some things that work for us as a coaching staff that are in place there and just try to keep the newness to a minimum”.
“That’s time consuming, is my point”, he added. “The coaching staff, they’ve been grinding. This next month is going to be a lot of fun, but we’ll basically spend our day between trying to get the players acclimated with our systems, and we’ll be in the draft meetings in the afternoon”.
Because Mike McCarthy is a new head coach, the Steelers begin Phase 1 of the offseason program on April 2. Given that today is April 2, we can reasonably deduce that isn’t very far away at all. The first phase only includes classroom work for player-coach interaction, but that’s what he was talking about.
McCarthy has been coaching for a long time, so it’s not surprise he intends to bring an “old school” approach to the Steelers’ offseason. This will also be one of the most radical offensive installs in years in Pittsburgh, so that’s a major factor. After all, Mike Tomlin was the head coach for 19 years and most of his offensive coordinators came from the same tree.
Of course, it’s also worth reminding that the offseason program up to this point is entirely voluntary. Most players show up, but nobody is required to be there before mandatory minicamp in June. I’m sure McCarthy is counting on robust attendance from his new Steelers players, though, as they’ve got a lot to get through this offseason, and not a lot of time in which to do it.
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