Mike McCarthy is leading a new team. He\u2019s coming back to his hometown of Pittsburgh. He\u2019s taking over a Steelers franchise that hadn\u2019t made a coaching change in almost two decades.<\/p>\n
Given all that, a little break can go a long way.<\/p>\n
From a personal standpoint, McCarthy feels like he got one with the preseason schedule yielding two home games.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was great to have two games here already,\u201d McCarthy said. \u201cI\u2019m ready to compete. I\u2019m ready for the regular season and looking forward to getting it on in real time.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a 62-year-old guy who has coached 288 regular-season NFL games (and 22 more in the postseason), you might think that trudging through two preseason contests in August would be nothing but rudimentary.<\/p>\n
Not for McCarthy. Not coaching for the first time in Pittsburgh. Not for a guy who views football Sundays on the North Side as sacred events.<\/p>\n
For him, those two preseason games against the Green Bay Packers and the New York Jets were crucial.<\/p>\n
To get a sense of the logistics. To get settled in the home locker room. To remind himself of the best route to take to Acrisure Stadium. Get a feel for where the play clock is. Where his parking spot is. The wind. How early to get out for warmups. Leaving tickets for friends and family members.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving two opportunities of showing up at the stadium, going through the mechanics of what game day looks like, I think there\u2019s definitely been a benefit,\u201d McCarthy said.<\/p>\n
As a native of Greenfield, though, it was more than that. It was going through the emotional component of putting on the headset and wearing Black and Gold for the first time.<\/p>\n
It was soaking up the realization that he was in charge of this franchise, in his city, a couple of times before the games began to count.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is heavy, being here. You ride the streets that you grew up (on), that you walked on,\u201d McCarthy said. \u201cSo many great memories here. Some memories are heavy. That\u2019s real. I\u2019m at the point in my life, at this age, I reflect more than I did 10, 15 years ago. That\u2019s all part of it. So I\u2019ve had time to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most of McCarthy\u2019s players grew up in other places. That hasn\u2019t stopped him from trying to make them feel the same connection to this city that he has.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think history is important. There\u2019s nothing like the history of the city of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Steelers,\u201d McCarthy added. \u201cSpent some time on that (Monday) in the team meeting. Hopefully it resonated with the players.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a few on the roster who did grow up in the region, it certainly did.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoosebumps,\u201d long snapper Christian Kuntz said. \u201cHe\u2019s talking about the history of Pittsburgh. It fired me up. It definitely hits home that Coach McCarthy is here \u2014 with his accent. He\u2019s bringing out the Pittsburgh for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kuntz is an alum of Duquesne and Chartiers Valley. For him and North Allegheny\u2019s Joey Porter Jr., they\u2019ve both had a few years of experience walking onto the Acrisure Stadium grass and seeing 67,000 Terrible Towels swirling in the stands.<\/p>\n
But Mt. Lebanon\u2019s Eli Heidenreich and Gateway\u2019s Jaquan Brisker will be right there with McCarthy going through the regular-season experience as Steelers for the first time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were definitely some nerves associated with this being the team that I cheered for my whole life,\u201d Heidenreich said of the preseason games. \u201cI want to go out there and represent well. Absolutely there are some nerves associated with that. Like anything else, getting just a little of that experience, just a tiny amount, makes you feel a little more confident.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heidenreich is a rookie out of Navy. Brisker was signed in free agency in March after spending his first four NFL seasons in Chicago. After being held out of the preseason games, Brisker hasn\u2019t even had the benefit of going through the motions in the preseason yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou might see me jump out of the stadium,\u201d Brisker said. \u201cI just have to be calm and just chill. That\u2019s what I have learned from the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brisker employed the same strategy as his coach. He has about 30 people coming to the game. A box he checked on his \u201cto do\u201d list Monday morning was to take care of all those moving parts so he could focus on the football aspect of playing the Atlanta Falcons the rest of the week.<\/p>\n
That angle of being a Steeler and being woven back into the community that raised you is one that McCarthy takes seriously.<\/p>\n
\u201cResponsibility that myself and everybody has to this organization \u2014 really, for the players and coaches before us. Trust me, that lays on me every single day. It\u2019s important. It makes me jump out of bed,\u201d McCarthy said.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019ll definitely be ready to go Sunday.\u201d<\/p>\n
For McCarthy\u2019s benefit, hopefully all of his players are as well.<\/p>\n
Whether they are Pittsburgh-born or not. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mike McCarthy is leading a new team. He\u2019s coming back to his hometown of Pittsburgh. He\u2019s taking over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-283198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283198","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=283198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}