The Pittsburgh Steelers are set to hire Mike McCarthy as their next head coach, according to multiple reports on Saturday.

McCarthy is a Pittsburgh native who coached the Pitt Panthers as a graduate assistant and wide receivers coach from 1989-92, but in nearly 30 seasons at the NFL level has never coached for the local NFL team. And now he’s set to come home as the head coach.

With a 174-112-2 career regular-season record (11-11 playoffs) across 18 seasons in Green Bay and Dallas, McCarthy is fundamentally a different hire than the type the Black and Gold have historically made.

Age at hiring
Chuck Noll: 37
Bill Cowher: 34
Mike Tomlin: 34
Mike McCarthy: 62

Career games as a head coach, regular season and playoffs
Chuck Noll: 0
Bill Cowher: 0
Mike Tomlin: 0
Mike McCarthy: 310

None of this is to say McCarthy will be a bad hire in Pittsburgh, but it is an intentional move away from a formula that has led to six Super Bowl victories and near constant contention since Noll’s 1969 hiring.

While Mike Tomlin set the record for the most consecutive non-losing seasons, his teams consistently hit their head on the ceiling in the middle tier of the AFC. Pittsburgh lost their last six playoff games under Tomlin, and last made it to the second weekend of the NFL playoffs in 2017. After winning the Super Bowl in the 2008 season and reaching it in 2010, Tomlin’s next-furthest advancement was the AFC title game in 2016.

Of course, one could say the same about McCarthy, too. He beat Tomlin to win the Super Bowl to end the 2010 season, but did not return to the Big Game thereafter and won but one playoff game in five seasons in Dallas. None of this is to argue that McCarthy is a bad coach or undeserving of this hire, it’s to point out that the bar from improvement from Tomlin is higher than the vast majority of NFL openings. 

McCarthy will also have to fight against NFL gravity: no head coach has ever won Super Bowls with multiple organizations. (Sean Payton is attempting to become the second this season, although he’ll do so with backup quarterback Jarrett Stidham.)

Tomlin’s defenders would argue that his playoff losing streak was actually a compliment — his coaching masked over poor rosters and a decaying franchise. Tomlin dragged teams to the playoffs that had no business being there in the first place, they’d say. 

The McCarthy era in Pittsburgh will put that theory to the test.Â