labeled as a special teams assistant.<\/a><\/p>\nMcCarthy\u2019s 21-man group is smaller than his Dallas norm. In 2024, he had 23 coaches. In 2023, he had 24. And in 2022, he had 21, although NFL coaching staffs have grown since then, as you\u2019ll see below. Having 21 coaches back then was larger than it is today.<\/p>\n
Some NFL-wide takeaways. Interestingly, no team has more defensive coaches than offensive ones. In fact, the Houston Texans are the only team to have an equal number: 11 on offense and 11 on defense plus defensive-minded head coach DeMeco Ryans. The other 31 teams, Pittsburgh included, have more offensive coaches than defensive ones.<\/p>\n
No team has more than 11 defensive coaches. Half the league, 16 teams, have at least 12 offensive coaches.<\/p>\n
In the previous four years, the Miami Dolphins tied or outright held the lead for the largest coaching staff. Not anymore. The San Francisco 49ers, Las Vegas Raiders, and Cleveland Browns all have 28 coaches \u2013 the first time any team in our study has grown to 28. Miami dropped from 27 coaches the past four years to 26 under new head coach Jeff Hafley.<\/p>\n
The Browns have the largest upward shift of any team, going from 22 coaches under Kevin Stefanski last year to 28 under Todd Monken this year. The Tennessee Titans and Atlanta Falcons had their staffs reduced by three under their new head coaches.<\/p>\n
Although it isn\u2019t true for Cleveland, teams with younger, newer head coaches generally have larger coaching staffs than older, more veteran ones. First-time head coach Klint Kubiak beefed up the Raiders\u2019 group, for example, while veteran coaches litter the bottom of the list: John Harbaugh with the Giants, Robert Saleh with the Titans (Saleh isn\u2019t old but a second-time HC who has coached since 2002), Todd Bowles with the Buccaneers, Andy Reid with the Chiefs, and McCarthy with the Steelers.<\/p>\n
As we compile annually, here are the league averages by year.<\/p>\n
Year
\nTotal Coaches
\nOffensive Coaches
\nDefensive Coaches
\nST Coaches<\/p>\n
2022
\n21.7
\n9.8
\n8.4
\n2.3<\/p>\n
2023
\n23.0
\n10.8
\n8.8
\n2.3<\/p>\n
2024
\n23.7
\n11.4
\n9.0
\n2.3<\/p>\n
2025
\n23.9
\n11.4
\n9.3
\n2.3<\/p>\n
2026
\n24.5
\n11.6
\n9.5
\n2.3<\/p>\n
For the first time, the coaching staff average has crossed 24. Offensive and defensive coaches continue seeing slow but steady growth. Compared to our 2022 study, teams have nearly two more offensive coaches now and more than one more defensive coach.<\/p>\n
Special teams coaches have remained remarkably steady, although more teams employ three of them this year (11) than last year (nine). If you want to get technical, last year\u2019s special teams number was 2.25, which rounded up to 2.3. This year\u2019s was 2.34, which rounded down to 2.3. So there\u2019s growth, and Pittsburgh\u2019s addition of a second coach helped.<\/p>\n
Using last year\u2019s data, is there any correlation to success? We\u2019ll split it between those with 25 or more and 24 or less.<\/p>\n
25 Or More: 115-105-1 (.523 winning percentage) & 46.2 percent playoff rate
24 Or Less: 155-166-1 (.483 winning percentage) & 42.1 percent playoff rate<\/p>\n
The data points in favor of a larger coaching staff. But the difference isn\u2019t dramatic and still hasn\u2019t been consistent throughout my study. Last year, the smaller coaching staffs won more frequently.<\/p>\n
My repeated conclusion is that a large coaching staff is not especially helpful to winning, nor is a smaller coaching staff detrimental. The quality of the coaches, and of course the players, still means far more than the volume.\u00a0 This should soothe those critical of the Steelers for again having one of the NFL\u2019s smallest groups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As we\u2019ve done every year since 2022, we\u2019re comparing and contrasting the Pittsburgh Steelers\u2019 coaching staff size to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":782063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,149068,593,1241,85,313,16375],"class_list":["post-782062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mike-mccarthy","tag-nfl","tag-pittsburgh-steelers","tag-sports","tag-trending","tag-weekly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782062","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=782062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}