{"id":162248,"date":"2026-04-10T10:11:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T10:11:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/162248\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T10:11:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T10:11:21","slug":"he-said-jagoff-christian-kuntz-shares-mike-mccarthys-very-pittsburgh-opening-address-to-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/162248\/","title":{"rendered":"‘He Said Jagoff’: Christian Kuntz Shares Mike McCarthy\u2019s Very Pittsburgh Opening Address To Team"},"content":{"rendered":"

Respect is a currency for coaches, and it\u2019s not automatically earned by newcomers in an NFL building. Phase 1 of offseason workouts<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was our first day of voluntary workouts, and it was Coach McCarthy\u2019s first day of addressing the team,\u201d Christian Kuntz said on The Christian Kuntz Podcast<\/a>. \u201cHe 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 \u2018jagoff,\u2019 he was talking about Kennywood. Muth [Pat Freiermuth] turned around when he said \u2018jagoff,\u2019 and looked at me and I\u2019m smiling ear to ear. I felt like I was listening to my dad teach our team back in little league.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can take the people outta Pittsburgh, but you will never take the Pittsburgh out of people,\u201d Bill Cowher said on Kuntz\u2019s podcast. \u201cThat\u2019s why Mike McCarthy coming back there, he fell right back into being a Yinzer. He is a Yinzer, and that will never change.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCarthy grew up in Greenfield on the east bank of the Monongahela River and had a lifelong dream of coaching his hometown Steelers. It\u2019s a dream he never thought would be realized given Mike Tomlin\u2019s nearly 20-year tenure with an organization that changes head coaches only once every few decades.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Media isn\u2019t 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<\/a> to the voluntary session.<\/p>\n

That points to the excitement level on the team. Everybody loved Mike Tomlin, but there\u2019s something to be said about the blind hope that comes with large-scale change.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great. You\u2019re back in the building, you see all the guys and the new faces\u2026you get a little giddy,\u201d Kuntz said of the atmosphere being back together with the team.<\/p>\n

One reporter noted a \u201cnew feel\u201d in the building<\/a> in the McCarthy era. It\u2019s early, but it sounds like that new feel is resonating with players.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Respect is a currency for coaches, and it\u2019s not automatically earned by newcomers in an NFL building. Phase…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[42166,73245,8203,73,75,74,73246,995],"class_list":{"0":"post-162248","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh","8":"tag-bill-cowher","9":"tag-christian-kuntz","10":"tag-mike-mccarthy","11":"tag-pittsburgh","12":"tag-pittsburgh-headlines","13":"tag-pittsburgh-news","14":"tag-the-christian-kuntz-podcast","15":"tag-trending"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}