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Mike McCarthy is adding former Pitt and IUP coordinator Frank Cignetti to his staff, according to Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Dulac did not specify what role Cignetti will have on McCarthy’s offensive staff. Tom Arth was retained as the Steelers’ quarterbacks coach, so it could be a senior offensive assistant type of role. It appears that McCarthy will have a big staff than what Mike Tomlin had.
Frank Cignetti is the younger brother of Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti. The older Cignetti led Indiana to an improbable 16-0 season that concluded with a National Championship title. The Cignetti’s dad, Frank Cignetti Sr., was the head coach at IUP from 1986-2005. He also was West Virginia’s HC from 1976-1979.
Frank Cignetti was the offensive coordinator at IUP last season after serving as Pitt’s OC from 2022-2023. Prior to his time at Pitt, he was Boston College’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach from 2020-2021. He served as the Packers’ quarterbacks coach for one season in 2018 under McCarthy. Before that, he was the New York Giants quarterbacks coach from 2016-2017 under fellow IUP grad Ben McAdoo.
Cignetti has mostly worked with the quarterbacks throughout his coaching career. He was a graduate assistant at Pitt with McCarthy in 1989. He also served as the Saints’ quarterbacks coach from 2000-2001 when McCarthy was the OC in New Orleans.
Mike McCarthy is adding former Pitt and IUP coordinator Frank Cignetti Jr. to his offensive staff, per sources. Cignetti was McCarthy’s QB coach in Green Bay in 2018.
— Gerry Dulac (@gerrydulac) February 2, 2026
McCarthy hired several coaches to his staff last week. He has also kept two coaches from Tomlin’s staff in Arth and linebackers coach Scott McCurley. McCarthy planned to keep defensive backs coach Gerald Alexander, but he accepted a defensive pass game coordinator and defensive backs coach position with the Minnesota Vikings.
McCarthy has hired a slew of coaches with ties to Pittsburgh, or at the very least a connection with him in past places that he’s coached.
It was also reported on Monday that the Steelers are expected to hire Danny Crossman as their special teams coordinator. Crossman was a second-team all-America and all-Big East cornerback at Pitt in the late 1980s.
McCarthy and Cignetti were both graduate assistants at Pitt for Crossman’s final year with the Panthers in 1989.
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