The Pittsburgh Steelers are embracing an offense made famous decades ago by Bill Walsh, but new offensive coordinator Brian Angelichio pointed out how West Coast schemes nowadays can look very different.<\/p>\n
The offense Kevin O\u2019Connell runs in Minnesota differs from Sean McVay\u2019s in Los Angeles or Kyle Shanahan\u2019s in San Francisco. Steelers coach Mike McCarthy used a version of the offense in Green Bay and another in Dallas.<\/p>\n
But looks can be deceiving.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really all the same,\u201d Angelichio said Friday at an introductory press conference. \u201cI worked with Kyle Shanahan in Cleveland and then obviously with Kevin. So, it\u2019s all the West Coast offense. \u2026 It\u2019s all about making the quarterback successful. Everybody\u2019s just had their little different spin on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Angelichio and McCarthy coached together for three seasons in Green Bay. They\u2019re now installing an offense here that traces back to Walsh and the Super Bowl-winning San Francisco 49ers of the 1980s.<\/p>\n
But Angelichio said modern West Coast offenses can differ in ways from Walsh\u2019s, especially in personnel.<\/p>\n
\u201cSean was doing it out of 11 personnel (with one running back and one tight end). Kyle\u2019s still doing it out of 21 personnel (with two running backs and one tight end),\u201d Angelichio said. \u201cIn Minnesota, we were doing it out of 21, 12, 11. But the concepts are the concepts. They may have changed the names, but it\u2019s progression-based offense. It\u2019s making it comfortable for the quarterback.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s having alerts, cans, kills, whatever, to try to get a premier play,\u201d he added. \u201cBut it\u2019s all the same, and the origin\u2019s the same. Everybody\u2019s just taking their spin off of it. And certainly, everybody\u2019s been successful. I think they all got Super Bowls.\u201d<\/p>\n
Angelichio, 53, is a first-time offensive coordinator yet won\u2019t be calling plays. Those duties belong to McCarthy, who also called plays in Green Bay and Dallas. But Angelichio and the other offensive assistants will handle game planning throughout the week.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, Mike will call the plays, and then he\u2019ll be involved in the meetings as much as he can,\u201d Angelichio said. \u201cThere\u2019s not something that we do as an offense that Mike hasn\u2019t gotten in front of him at some point. We\u2019ll obviously forge on, make decisions, and he\u2019ll be aware of the decisions we made.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they\u2019re decisions that he\u2019s not comfortable with or he sees a different way, we\u2019ll obviously work together to get the best results. That\u2019s really what you want on any offensive staff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Angelichio spent the past four seasons with the Vikings as passing game coordinator and tight ends coach under O\u2019Connell, who is considered among the NFL\u2019s top young offensive minds. O\u2019Connell won Super Bowl LVI running the Rams offense for McVay.<\/p>\n
Angelichio was asked whether he brought any secret sauce with him from Minnesota.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I think you\u2019ve got to have good players,\u201d he said. \u201cIt helps when you\u2019ve got (receiver) Justin Jefferson. I think, it\u2019s like with everyone, you\u2019re just trying to develop a scheme that is quarterback-friendly. You\u2019ll hear Coach McCarthy say this all the time, and this is Coach McCarthy\u2019s philosophy: \u2018Everything goes through the quarterback.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The Steelers\u2019 quarterback job remains unsettled with Aaron Rodgers\u2019 future apparently still undecided. The team has a three-day voluntary minicamp starting Monday.<\/p>\n
Angelichio said the Steelers haven\u2019t yet identified their \u201ctwist\u201d to the West Coast offense. That\u2019ll be decided in the coming weeks. He predicted that the team\u2019s tight ends \u2014 Pat Freiermuth and Darnell Washington \u2014 could play a role in that customization.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur spin on offense, we\u2019ll figure that as we go through OTAs, but it is going to be based around the quarterback,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is going to be based around what our players do well. It\u2019s going to be based around the personnel groupings that we can use to exploit the defense.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pittsburgh Steelers are embracing an offense made famous decades ago by Bill Walsh, but new offensive coordinator…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-169011","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh","8":"tag-pittsburgh","9":"tag-pittsburgh-headlines","10":"tag-pittsburgh-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169011","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=169011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}