Mike McCarthy may not have been the most exciting choice for head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, but his reputation as a winner, at least in the regular season, precedes him.<\/p>\n
CBS Sports analyst Charles Davis believes that McCarthy does not get the credit that he deserves, for one specific reason.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very eager to see what Pittsburgh does because somehow, I don\u2019t believe Mike McCarthy gets as much credit as he probably deserves,\u201d Davis said during an appearance on the Daily Flock. \u201cPeople have forgotten how many games he actually won in Dallas, because the playoff thing killed him. But it\u2019s killed everyone in Dallas since Jimmy Johnson. But the guy was winning eleven to twelve [games] a year. That\u2019s pretty darn good.\u201d<\/p>\n
A quick look at McCarthy\u2019s time with the Cowboys shows he posted three consecutive 12-win seasons from 2021 to 2023. During that period, though, Dallas won only one playoff game.<\/p>\n
Perhaps less memorable are the 6-10 record McCarthy and the Cowboys posted in his first season in Dallas in 2020 and the 7-10 record in his final season in 2024. Both of those seasons share one common variable that may explain the drop-off: quarterback Dak Prescott suffered a season-ending injury.<\/p>\n
Prescott flourished under McCarthy\u2019s coaching when he was healthy, finishing as runner-up for MVP in 2023, but the Cowboys, understandably, struggled in his absence.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to win the NFL without your starting quarterback, but it\u2019s a worthwhile exercise to look back at the quarterbacks that have led McCarthy\u2019s teams in the past and wonder what we can expect from the Steelers\u2019 offense in 2026 with a 42-year-old Aaron Rodgers.<\/p>\n
When McCarthy became head coach of the Green Bay Packers, the Brett Favre era was still in full swing for another two seasons, including a 13-3 record in 2007 and a trip to the NFC Championship Game. The following year, Aaron Rodgers took over, and McCarthy and the Packers quickly learned that they had another elite quarterback at the helm.<\/p>\n
McCarthy posted a .618 winning percentage as head coach of the Packers and was fired in 2018. During that eleven-year stretch, Rodgers won two MVPs, earned seven Pro Bowl appearances, and the pair won Super Bowl XLV together.<\/p>\n
While fate has reunited Rodgers and McCarthy in Pittsburgh, it\u2019s fair to say that his best days are behind him physically. While his football IQ remains as high as ever, the athleticism that once made him so dangerous as a passer has largely disappeared. The glaring question is whether McCarthy can succeed with a quarterback who is no longer among the elites.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s clear that McCarthy has the respect of his players; the praise from Davis is nothing new for a Super Bowl-winning head coach. The biggest question for the Steelers will be McCarthy\u2019s ability to coach an offense that is limited by its quarterback\u2019s capabilities rather than relying on them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mike McCarthy may not have been the most exciting choice for head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":913868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2055],"tags":[19126,123654,7,7866,6,520,57,2360,426],"class_list":["post-930411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh-steelers","tag-charles-davis","tag-daily-flock-show","tag-football","tag-mike-mccarthy","tag-nfl","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-steelers","tag-pittsburghsteelers","tag-steelers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116823463263775173","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930411","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=930411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/913868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=930411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=930411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=930411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}