{"id":849031,"date":"2026-04-02T10:44:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T10:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/849031\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T10:44:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T10:44:18","slug":"mike-mccarthy-discusses-challenges-of-juggling-year-1-crunch-with-old-school-scheme-installation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/849031\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike McCarthy Discusses Challenges Of Juggling Year 1 Crunch With ‘Old School’ Scheme Installation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The football offseason may be a marathon, but Mike McCarthy\u2019s first with the Steelers has begun at a sprinter\u2019s pace. Hired on January 24, he has been full speed ahead for the past two months. With the draft coming up and the first phase of the offseason program around the corner, he admits getting everything situated hasn\u2019t been easy.<\/p>\n

McCarthy noted that the Steelers\u2019 coaching staff is heavily involved in the draft scouting process. But they still have other duties to the players already on the roster, and Phase 1 of the offseason program is nearly here. Now, Phase 1 doesn\u2019t include on-field player interaction with coaches, but it will be here soon enough. For the time being, he\u2019s just trying to have all of his coaches prepared for when the players arrive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s just so much to do. I\u2019m an old school believer\u201d, McCarthy told the Steelers\u2019 website<\/a> about the offseason thus far. \u201cYou go back and we put page one of the playbook in, we talk about the huddle, put the ball in play, cadence. We don\u2019t just take the old playbook. It would have been very easy for me to just put the playbook in the middle of the table and say, \u2018This is what we\u2019re running. That\u2019s not what we did\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n

One aspect Mike McCarthy already touched on previously<\/a> was keeping the same terminology the Steelers were already using. Here, he admitted it was easier to do on defense than it has been on offense. \u201cWe are trying to keep some things that work for us as a coaching staff that are in place there and just try to keep the newness to a minimum\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s time consuming, is my point\u201d, he added. \u201cThe coaching staff, they\u2019ve been grinding. This next month is going to be a lot of fun, but we\u2019ll basically spend our day between trying to get the players acclimated with our systems, and we\u2019ll be in the draft meetings in the afternoon\u201d.<\/p>\n

Because Mike McCarthy is a new head coach, the Steelers begin Phase 1 of the offseason program on April 2<\/a>. Given that today is April 2, we can reasonably deduce that isn\u2019t very far away at all. The first phase only includes classroom work for player-coach interaction, but that\u2019s what he was talking about.<\/p>\n

McCarthy has been coaching for a long time, so it\u2019s not surprise he intends to bring an \u201cold school\u201d approach to the Steelers\u2019 offseason. This will also be one of the most radical offensive installs in years in Pittsburgh, so that\u2019s a major factor. After all, Mike Tomlin was the head coach for 19 years and most of his offensive coordinators came from the same tree.<\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019s also worth reminding that the offseason program up to this point is entirely voluntary. Most players show up, but nobody is required to be there before mandatory minicamp in June. I\u2019m sure McCarthy is counting on robust attendance from his new Steelers players, though, as they\u2019ve got a lot to get through this offseason, and not a lot of time in which to do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The football offseason may be a marathon, but Mike McCarthy\u2019s first with the Steelers has begun at a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":849032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2055],"tags":[7,7866,6,520,57,2360,426,691],"class_list":{"0":"post-849031","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-steelers","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-mike-mccarthy","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-pittsburgh","12":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers","13":"tag-pittsburghsteelers","14":"tag-steelers","15":"tag-trending"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116334707652729992","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849031","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=849031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/849032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}