The Pittsburgh Steelers filled their coaching vacancy by tabbing a coach with a recognizable name and plenty of experience.
That experience -- 18 years as a head coach and six more as an offensive coordinator -- sold the Steelers on Mike McCarthy.
"He is someone who has a longer track record than many of the other candidates, a winning track record," Steelers president Art Rooney II said on Sunday, via the team's official site. "He's been a winner everywhere he's been. Probably just as important for our purposes, the quarterbacks that he's worked with have all been very successful. So he has a proven track record of developing top flight quarterbacks. Those are the things that maybe stick out the most."
McCarthy breaks the mold set by the Steelers' previous three coaching hires (Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin), who all presented themselves as young, rising coaches all in their 30s accepting their first head coaching jobs. In fact, after the now 53-year-old Tomlin stepped down, the Steelers replaced Tomlin with a coach nine years his senior -- but with similar head coaching experience (18 years versus Tomlin's 19).
The hire suggests the Steelers aren't interested in installing a young coach with room for league-leading longevity. Pittsburgh is instead seeking leadership, direction and most importantly, an answer for their persistent quarterback conundrum.
A coach hire doesn't solve the puzzle under center but can improve the likelihood a chosen signal-caller becomes their long-term solution. In order to achieve this goal, a team needs to identify and acquire such a player, something the Steelers have yet to do.
A second option exists, though: Convince Aaron Rodgers to delay retirement for another season with the Steelers. It sure seemed like part of Pittsburgh's play when the club hired McCarthy, Rodgers' longtime former coach in Green Bay.
Rooney pushed back on such a sentiment, refuting that the Steelers hired the Pittsburgh native McCarthy in order to sell 42-year-old Rodgers on another year in the Steel City. But it sounds as if they wouldn't mind another go-around with the future Hall of Famer.
"We decided to bring Mike on because we believe that he's the right coach for us at this point to help lead us to a championship," Rooney said. "We don't know what Aaron's plans are right now, and that did not weigh heavily in the decision. We'll see where Aaron is, and we've left the door open, but obviously we all have to sit down and see if that makes sense. So that'll happen sometime in the next month or so.
"But the decision was made based on Mike being the coach we want, and it really had very little to do with whether Aaron is going to be back or not."
McCarthy's history as an offensive coach has consistently produced high-quality performances on that side of the ball, and after struggling to find consistency while possessing the football in recent seasons, hiring McCarthy was a logical solution to the issue.
Whether his initial answer involves Rodgers remains to be seen.
