Respect is a currency for coaches, and it’s not automatically earned by newcomers in an NFL building. Phase 1 of offseason workouts marks the beginning of that process for a new coaching staff to build rapport and earn trust from all 90 players on the offseason roster. It sounds like Mike McCarthy got off to a good start, and his Pittsburgh roots helped him with the beginnings of the process.

“It was our first day of voluntary workouts, and it was Coach McCarthy’s first day of addressing the team,” Christian Kuntz said on The Christian Kuntz Podcast. “He was probably a little nervous, but he had some juice about him. And I feel like his accent even came out more than it has ever had. He used ‘jagoff,’ he was talking about Kennywood. Muth [Pat Freiermuth] turned around when he said ‘jagoff,’ and looked at me and I’m smiling ear to ear. I felt like I was listening to my dad teach our team back in little league.”

Kuntz, a Pittsburgh native who attended Chartiers Valley High School and later Duquesne, is the perfect person to tell this story. Newcomers to the team like Michael Pittman Jr. may not fully understand, but there are plenty of veterans on the roster with whom his accent would resonate. The uninitiated will be on an accelerated learning curve with McCarthy at the helm.

“You can take the people outta Pittsburgh, but you will never take the Pittsburgh out of people,” Bill Cowher said on Kuntz’s podcast. “That’s why Mike McCarthy coming back there, he fell right back into being a Yinzer. He is a Yinzer, and that will never change.”

McCarthy grew up in Greenfield on the east bank of the Monongahela River and had a lifelong dream of coaching his hometown Steelers. It’s a dream he never thought would be realized given Mike Tomlin’s nearly 20-year tenure with an organization that changes head coaches only once every few decades.

He won over a lot of people with his opening address to the media with a heavy emotional focus on returning home, and it sounds like he did the same with his opening address to the players.

Media isn’t allowed at the initial conditioning workouts, but the team shared video and many of the most notable veterans are in attendance. Derrick Harmon said he was surprised by how many vets showed up to the voluntary session.

That points to the excitement level on the team. Everybody loved Mike Tomlin, but there’s something to be said about the blind hope that comes with large-scale change.

“It’s great. You’re back in the building, you see all the guys and the new faces…you get a little giddy,” Kuntz said of the atmosphere being back together with the team.

One reporter noted a “new feel” in the building in the McCarthy era. It’s early, but it sounds like that new feel is resonating with players.