Wow. I really did not expect this amount of vitriol for the McCarthy hire. 18 pages and counting. Clearly, I am in the vast minority here, but I'll try to explain why I like this decision, and walk some of you fruitie pies back off the ledge:
1) Offensive success. McCarthy has been an NFL head coach for 18 seasons. He's had a top ten scoring offense on 12 occasions, a full two-thirds of the time. All but 2 of those 12 were top five, so he's had a top five scoring offense more than half of the time. FOUR of those were THE NUMBER ONE TOTAL OFFENSE in the entire league. Those are just ridiculous ratios of success -- weren't most of you crying about the Steelers needing to improve offensively?
2) Experience. McCarthy paid his dues as he rose through the coaching ranks. He was an offensive quality control guy for 2 seasons when he broke into the NFL at age 30. He spent the next 5 years as a QB coach. He spent another 6 as an offensive coordinator before getting a head coaching job at age 43. He understands the quarterback position. Yeah, the guy is 62 years old. So what? Dick Vermeil was 61 in his first season with the Rams, and went 5-11 and 4-12 before winning the Super Bowl at the age of 63.
3) The
Mike McCarthy Is a White Mike Tomlin fallacy. Yeah, McCarthy won a Super Bowl in Green Bay, things got stale, and they fired him in mid-2018 after he went 4-7-1. Fine. The Packers went 2-2 the rest of that year, and have gone 3-6 in the playoffs since. He spends 5 years in Dallas, goes 12-5 in seasons when Dak is healthy, goes 1-3 in the playoffs, then gets fired. Fine. The Cowboys go 7-9-1 in 2025,
with Dak. He's put together a long, solid career with an 11-11 record in the playoffs, and at least he's won a postseason game in this decade. Tomlin is 8-12 in the playoffs and hasn't smelled a win since 2016. Unlike MT, McCarthy didn't inherit a stacked team, either. The Packers went 4-12 under Mike Sherman in 2005.
4) Pittsburgh roots. Totally surprising that most of you yinzers are holding the fact that McCarthy is from Pittsburgh against him for some reason. I would have thought that you'd want to welcome back a native son and root for the guy. How is his familiarity with the area a bad thing?
5) No distinctly better options.
@tapeANaspirin2it did a pretty nice job of summing it up on page 16 -- which other coaches in this cycle are parade-worthy? The Steelers gave Anthony Weaver a second interview...thank God they didn't hire that guy -- you'd all really have something to bltch about. And for all the guys who were creaming themselves over Chris Shula, you do know that the Rams finished in the bottom half of the league defensively (26th and 17th) during his two years as their DC...right?
Take a deep breath, stop clutching your pearls for a minute, and let's see what kind of staff McCarthy brings in. The defensive coordinator will be key. The biggest thing that does concern me about this hire is whether or not Rodgers returns. Another season with him at QB would be a step backward, in my opinion, and would signal that they hired McCarthy for the wrong reasons.
