We’re about to embark on the Steelers’ first training camp not under Mike Tomlin in decades, Mike McCarthy now presiding. What changes? Well, we know the schedule is different, and McCarthy ran a tighter ship during spring practices. For Aditi Kinkhabwala, that is not the biggest difference that she expects to see, though. For that, we have to look at what happens off the field.
“I don’t personally know Mike McCarthy as I know many other coaches, so this is sort of a shot from afar”, she prefaced when addressing on 93.7 The Fan the topic of differences for the Steelers’ training camps under McCarthy compared to Tomlin. “But my sense is that we will see a lot more personal accountability, player accountability. A lot more, ‘there’s a line and everybody falls in line’, as opposed to, some people get to be a little bit wiggly around the line”.
Steelers fans surely know well the loose ships Tomlin ran during training camp, at least relatively speaking. Tomlin was a big believer in treating his players like adults, meaning significant free will without micromanagement. Sometimes that took egregious turns, however, most notably with the case of Antonio Brown skipping on-site residency at Saint Vincent College as the exception to the rule.
One thing that sounds to be different will be the absence of a media circus around players reporting to training camp once the Steelers hit Latrobe. While we moved away from over-the-top player entrances, there was still a media throng around them. It appears that under Mike McCarthy, that will be a quiet affair. In fact, media access overall is shaping up to be reduced in comparison to Mike Tomlin’s tenure.
As far as the Steelers’ training camp goes, though, Aditi Kinkhabwala seems to be anticipating a more disciplined and perhaps more structured procedure under McCarthy. How that takes shape may not be obvious in many different ways. It may be more about what we hear behind the scenes—or perhaps what we don’t. Either way, it would be just one of many changes we’re seeing in Pittsburgh after Tomlin.
“I think that that’s be different. And we’ve been talking about this for Mike Tomlin’s tenure for as long as I’ve been here”, Kinkhabwala said of the Steelers’ previous training camps. “It worked for him, for a period of time, and Mike McCarthy has never been known as someone who is loose on that front. I would expect him to be a lot tighter there”.
Mind you, that’s to say nothing of results. Mike McCarthy and Mike Tomlin have approached their entire careers in different ways, yet their resumes are pretty similar. Tomlin has a better regular season track record, and both have one Super Bowl win. Tomlin has been to two, but McCarthy has won more playoff games. This isn’t to say that one approach is inherently better than the other. It’s just how one Steelers head coach approached training camp versus how another will. The fact that we went two decades in one way, though, puts it all under the microscope.