Bucky Brooks<\/a> identified McCarthy as his \u201clong-shot\u201d candidate to win the league\u2019s Coach of the Year honors in his first season leading the Steelers.<\/p>\n\u201cThis under-appreciated, Super Bowl-winning head coach has a chance to cement his legacy with a strong run in Pittsburgh,\u201d Brooks wrote. \u201cMcCarthy takes over a longtime winner that had plateaued under Mike Tomlin, but the roster still features enough veteran playmakers to make a jump from good to great under new direction. If the veteran coach can get Aaron Rodgers to play like a top-half quarterback in a system that minimizes his deficiencies as a 42-year-old\u2014while simultaneously prodding defensive coordinator Patrick Graham to help the vaunted defense regain its swagger and suffocating style\u2014the Steelers will make plenty of noise as contenders.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Brooks stopped short of calling McCarthy a favorite for the award, the selection is an indication that the Steelers have at least someone in the national media world who thinks they\u2019ll be a factor in the AFC North.<\/p>\n
If McCarthy can guide the Steelers back into legitimate Super Bowl contention while maximizing the final chapter of Aaron Rodgers\u2019 career, he\u2019ll likely find himself firmly in the Coach of the Year conversation. More importantly for ownership, it would signal that a new era has gotten off to exactly the start the organization envisioned.<\/p>\n
Let us know what you think in the comments. Be sure to bookmark Behind the Steel Curtain for all the latest news, breakdowns, and more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Believe it or not, despite nearly two decades of sustained success, former Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin never…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,364713,356288,342336,85],"class_list":["post-765359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nfl","tag-pittsburgh-steelers-analysis","tag-pittsburgh-steelers-commentary","tag-pittsburgh-steelers-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}