{"id":717148,"date":"2026-01-30T18:33:22","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T18:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/717148\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T18:33:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T18:33:22","slug":"seems-like-coaching-staff-size-will-expand-under-mike-mccarthy-beat-writer-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/717148\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Seems Like’ Coaching Staff Size Will Expand Under Mike McCarthy, Beat Writer Says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike McCarthy will be expanding the Steelers\u2019 coaching staff, Ray Fittipaldo believes, though to what extent is unclear. A common topic during the Mike Tomlin era<\/a>, during which staff sizes leaguewide expanded<\/a>, the Steelers became somewhat anachronistic. While large staffs were not universal, they did grow in popularity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems like the [coaching] staff is gonna expand, too. It seems like he\u2019s gonna bring in some different guys for some different roles that were not on Mike Tomlin\u2019s staff\u201d, Fittipaldo said in assessing what he has heard about the group McCarthy is assembling on 93.7 The Fan.<\/p>\n

Even Mike Tomlin dabbled in an extra coach here and there. He split the role of the inside and outside linebackers and added an assistant secondary coach. On multiple occasions, he made use of a senior defensive assistant. But generally, duties teams now commonly assign to a dedicated coach were born by somebody already on the staff.<\/p>\n

As for McCarthy, the Steelers have not officially made any assistant coach hires yet, but we have some names. That list includes a lot of names with ties to McCarthy from other stops, and three carryovers from Tomlin\u2019s staff. Patrick Graham will reportedly run the defense. For offensive coordinator, Scott Tolzien and Lunda Wells are the names out there, though McCarthy will call the actual plays.<\/p>\n

While there are names attached to several positional roles, Jason Simmons is the only one without a clear designation. We don\u2019t know what that will be, but it will reportedly be \u201cprominent\u201d<\/a>. Will that be something like the senior defensive assistant roles of Teryl Austin and Brian Flores under Tomlin?<\/p>\n

\u201cI think with Mike, he had his guys, those guys did multiple roles sometimes. That\u2019s just the way it worked out\u201d, Fittipaldo said. \u201cWhen Pat Meyer, for instance, was the offensive line coach and the run game coordinator. [Mike McCarthy] might hire more guys, but I think they\u2019ll be the same roles. They\u2019ll just be divvied up differently than they were\u201d.<\/p>\n

These days, teams around the league have all kinds of specialized coaching roles. The success of Sean McVay\u2019s staff has only made it more tempting. That is best exemplified by the fact that his passing game coordinator, Nate Scheelhaase, fielded several head coaching interviews during this hiring cycle. That included the Steelers job that Mike McCarthy owns. He might not mind hiring Scheelhaase for his staff, but he\u2019ll surely stay out west.<\/p>\n

There is no correlation between coaching staff size and success. After all, coaches still don\u2019t play at the end of the day, and you either have winning talent or you don\u2019t. But a coaching staff should be as large or as small as is deemed useful. Mike Tomlin preferred a smaller coaching staff. Mike McCarthy has a history of employing a larger staff, so a size compromise for the Steelers wouldn\u2019t be surprising.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mike McCarthy will be expanding the Steelers\u2019 coaching staff, Ray Fittipaldo believes, though to what extent is unclear.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":717149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[8740,7,7866,57,7827,691],"class_list":{"0":"post-717148","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-93-7-the-fan","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-mike-mccarthy","11":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers","12":"tag-ray-fittipaldo","13":"tag-trending"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115985488561330522","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=717148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/717149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}