“I kind of liked that \u2018Pittsburgh Macho\u2019 stuff. I like the fact that he’s a tough guy. I think he’s a players’ coach, but [he] also understands the bounds of that. I think he’s a good fit for us.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2013 Packers general manager Ted Thompson, explaining why he hired Mike McCarthy as the Green Bay Packers\u2019 14th\u00a0head coach, during McCarthy\u2019s introductory news conference on Jan. 12, 2006.<\/p>\n
GREEN BAY \u2014 A few weeks ago, Mike McCarthy was crossing the Highway 172 bridge that spans the Fox River, headed to his suburban Green Bay home in his oversized black 4 x 4 truck \u2014 the one he used to park in the loading dock area of Lambeau Field during his nearly 13 years as the Green Bay Packers head coach.<\/p>\n
The NFL season was in full swing, and for the second time in his post-Packers life, he was living full-time in Titletown but not coaching the iconic football team based there.<\/p>\n
The first time had been in 2019, when he\u2019d spent a year out of the game after being fired by the Packers with four games left in the 2018 season. And after parting ways with the Dallas Cowboys following the 2024 season after five years as their head coach \u2014 McCarthy and owner Jerry Jones did negotiate an extension after McCarthy coached out the final year of his existing deal, but the team\u2019s offers didn\u2019t provide the longer-term commitment he was seeking \u2014 he was once again out of work.<\/p>\n
Instead, he was serving as a full-time, unpaid Uber driver for his and wife Jessica\u2019s two teenage daughters, carting them around to all their various school and extracurricular activities.<\/p>\n
And McCarthy was loving every minute of it.<\/p>\n
He missed the game, sure, and wasn\u2019t ruling out the idea of coaching again. But, he said, it would take a special opportunity to get him to jump back in. He wasn\u2019t about to coach just to coach.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because the time away not only meant he was getting to spend more time with Jess and the girls, but that he could make regular trips back to his native Pittsburgh to see his parents, Joe and Ellen.<\/p>\n
With both of them in their 80s, and having spent three decades coaching in the NFL, he\u2019d rarely been back to his hometown, so he was traveling back every few weeks, trying to make up for lost time.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, almost 20 years to the day since then-general manager Ted Thompson referred to him as \u201cPittsburgh Macho\u201d while introducing him as the Packers new head coach, that special coaching opportunity came to life:<\/p>\n
McCarthy agreed to become the head coach of the team he\u2019d grown up rooting for \u2014 the Pittsburgh Steelers.<\/p>\n
Talk about a homecoming.<\/p>\n
\u201cMike, as much as anybody, talks about where he came from,\u201d four-time NFL MVP quarterback Aaron Rodgers once said. \u201c[Every] Saturday morning, when we are talking about the game plan, we usually start with story time \u2014 and he is usually always relating some story back to Pittsburgh and his father\u2019s bar and his friends.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCarthy becomes just the Steelers\u2019 fourth head coach since 1969, succeeding Mike Tomlin, who stepped away earlier this month after 19 seasons in charge \u2014 including during the 2010 season, when McCarthy\u2019s Packers beat Tomlin\u2019s Steelers in Super Bowl XLV.<\/p>\n
The MVP of that game, of course, was Rodgers, who spent his first 18 seasons with the Packers, winning two of his four NFL MVP awards before two star-crossed seasons with the New York Jets and quarterbacking the Steelers in 2025.<\/p>\n
The 42-year-old Rodgers is not under contract for 2026, but both the team and the quarterback had signaled that they were open to another year together. Although Rodgers and McCarthy didn\u2019t always see eye-to-eye during their 13 seasons together in Green Bay, a reunion might be just what Rodgers is looking for when contemplating a 22nd NFL season.<\/p>\n
McCarthy was one of seven candidates the Steelers interviewed during their search, having had his second interview with the team in person on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Steelers owner and team president Art Rooney II said last week that the Steelers, who finished 10-7 this season but lost their AFC first-round playoff game at home to the Houston Texans. Pittsburgh hasn\u2019t won a postseason game in a decade.<\/p>\n
But, the 63-year-old McCarthy\u2019s hiring means he\u2019ll have coached three of the NFL\u2019s iconic franchises, with the Steelers, Cowboys and Packers having won a combined 15 Super Bowl championships \u2014 exactly 1\/4 of them, with Super Bowl LX set to be played in two weeks.<\/p>\n
And McCarthy, who was seven years old and living in the Greenfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh \u2014 where his dad owned Joe McCarthy’s Bar & Grill on Alcorn Street \u2014 when the Steelers won their first world title in 1975, will be tasked with getting the Steelers to their first Super Bowl since his Packers beat them in February, 2011.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s my first memory. It was all about watching Steeler games,\u201d McCarthy once said of the Steelers\u2019 Super Bowl IX victory over the Minnesota Vikings. \u201cThat\u2019s a part of the fiber of growing up in Pittsburgh. It\u2019s the same thing in Wisconsin. It\u2019s very, very similar. It\u2019s all about your home team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just remember the reaction of the town when they won the first Super Bowl. It was incredible. A lot of positive memories from the \u201870s. I watched them at home, or we watched a lot of them down at my father\u2019s bar. Because Sunday was a day we would work and clean the bar. He didn\u2019t have the Sunday license, so we were closed on Sundays.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody\u2019s proud to be where they\u2019re from. Growing up, people would ask you, \u2018Where are you from?\u2019 I\u2019d always tell them, \u2018Greenfield.\u2019 I never even said I was from Pittsburgh because I was so proud of where I was from. And that\u2019s just the way it was.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack in those days, you hardly even left your community in Greenfield because you had everything there to do. That\u2019s the pride that I was brought up with \u2014 and you see that in everybody that grew up in Western Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s my life. That\u2019s where I grew up.\u201d<\/p>\n
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