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Brian Batko's Steelers chat: 01.26.26
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Brian Batko
12:59
Hello everyone. The snow removal process continues at the Batko abode in the North Hills, but we break now for your regularly scheduled Steelers programming as I enjoy a homemade slushie with the top layer from my front yard plus some orange pop. Let's talk
Stairway to seventh seed
1:00
Brian:  Thanks for chatting on this dark day in Steeler nation.  Do you think that more attractive candidates turned the Steelers down or was McCarthy just the cheaper option since he was not in demand?
Brian Batko
1:02
I really don't know, but I'd caution against any assumptions that assistants who have never been NFL head coaches and have been working for the better part of their professional lives turned down this job. Other than Brian Flores and Anthony Weaver, it seems as if the Steelers didn't get far enough down the road for those guys to have much of a chance to turn down the job even if they wanted to. The only thing I've heard in league circles is that there may have been trepidation to be the coach who follows Mike Tomlin in Pittsburgh.
Ryan
1:03
Brian, Dan Rooney was a neighbor & I knew him well.  He would not approve of a recycled old coach.  This isn't a good move.  Why do you think the Steelers changed their successful philosophy in hiring a coach?
Brian Batko
1:04
Not sure, Ryan. I would imagine that'll be one of the first questions for Art Rooney II and Omar Khan tomorrow at Mike McCarthy's introductory press conference. But what I do know is they'd bristle at calling him a recycled old coach and would rather refer to him as a proven winner.
Mike in DC
1:04
How do you not even interview any of the rams candidates in person? Noll, Cowher, and Tomlin were relative unknowns until they interviewed in person and won the job. Hiring McCarthy after interviewing the required 2 minority candidates is straight up malpractice!
Brian Batko
1:07
It was a curious process, Mike. Allow me to use a football analogy. This feels to me like opting for a field goal on 4th-and-goal from the 1. Sure, you could make a case for going for it, but the safer move might work out too.
OHIO412FAN
1:07
Brian, thanks for all that you do for Steelers Nation. My question today for you is who are the names at OC & DC we should look for? Assistants on his staff as well? If there’s one thing that excites me about McCarthy, it’s his ability to put together good coaching staffs. I think we’ll see an definite upgrade from how Tomlin went about this.
Brian Batko
1:09
Well I wrote quite a bit about that for yesterday! Check it out here https://www.post-gazette.com/sports/steelers/2026/01/25/mike-mccarthy-...
Jim Bow Dean
1:10
Is Art’s fear of failure greater than his desire to win championships? This feels like the safest possible pick and the owner is living in his fears as much as Tomlin did.
Brian Batko
1:13
He clearly wants to stay competitive and doesn't have much appetite for taking a step back with a coach learning on the job. And he made that clear the day after Mike Tomin stepped down.
SMP
1:14
Regardless of what you think of the hire, does or does it not opitomize the current mentality of Steelers ownership during his reign.
Brian Batko
1:15
OK this is quite the negative chat thus far ... regardless of what you think of the hire, I suppose, as SMP put it.
Retire21.
1:15
Hey, we have four straight coaches who won a SB. Who can say that? And no one can say the team is stuck in their ways. John Harbaugh and Payton are same age even older. Maybe it’s the new new..
Brian Batko
1:17
Actually, Sean Payton is younger than Mike McCarthy ... by like a month or so.
Brian
1:18
What were your thoughts when McCarthy was hired? Positive or negative or neutral?
Brian Batko
1:19
Neutral, of course. Always neutral Brian.
Rooney
1:20
How can we get excited about this coaching hire as a fan base?
Brian Batko
1:22
Pretty good track record with QBs, Obvious team success and reaching the very pinnacle of the sport.
Time To Sell
1:23
Good Afernoon, thank you for work and time. Less of a question and more just a statement of general malaise regarding the recent hire and direction of the team. Talk me out of this funk BB
Brian Batko
1:25
Fair enough. This move, though, tells me that Art Rooney II, Omar Khan, Andy Weidl, et al believe their roster is not that far off - at least not if they do find and develop a QB in short order.
martian
1:25
Good afternoon Bats- thanks as always for the chats. Am I crazy to feel uninspired by the direction of the Steelers? Do you get the sense that ARII just doesn't care, and is fine being middle of the pack? I envision we hear "sell the team" in both stadiums in the north shore in the near future, although unfortunately I think we are stuck with the jags that own our beloved franchises.
Brian Batko
1:27
I certainly believe he cares. He has acknowledged the frustration in his inbox and the impatience to get back to playoff success. Perhaps people will do that, but I do know winning cures all and does so quickly. That's probably their logic at the end of the day, too. They believe this hire will precipitate winning.
62 Stack Monster
1:29
I want to like McCarthy as the new coach, but it feels like a retread.  I don't think the Steelers brass understand that major overhauls are needed, or maybe they do, which is why they wanted someone with experience?
Brian Batko
1:31
What I keep coming back to in order to see the vision is the offensive/QB aspect of it all. And that's one area that Art Rooney II really has harped on, pretty much since the end of Ben, that they need to get better QB play. So, at least they are well aware of that and aren't necessarily harboring hopes of  winning big games 13-10 all the time.
Hang tight, gotta go re-fill my nature's sno cone
Sal
1:33
GM Brian! So how do you feel about McCarthy's hire? Great exercise of identifying coordinators and coach staff candidates. Look like we should have better coaching talent that with MT. What are your thoughts?
Brian Batko
1:34
I mean, yeah, for those who are disappointed with the Steelers' process that led them to McCarthy, it could've been worse from that standpoint. They did make contact and touch base with guys like Klay Kubiak, Nate Scheelhaase, Chris Shula. For a franchise that rarely changes head coaches and only changes coordinators slightly more often, it's good to start building up that Rolodex.
Jim
1:35
Any reasons to be excited about McCarthy? I'm having a hard time coming up with any. Why couldn't they wait to at least talk to Shula?
Brian Batko
1:37
They'd have had that chance as soon as today, Jim, with the Rams losing last night. Look, I wasn't shy about touting Shula as a candidate, but I also wasn't sitting at the proverbial table with Art Rooney II, Omar Khan and the search committee. Or the literal table, I guess. Maybe whatever transpired in those virtual interviews wasn't exactly what they wanted to hear and McCarthy's message was, so they chose to be more decisive than deliberate.
D
1:37
Will we sign Clay Matthews, Jordy Nelson, and Greg Jennings next?
Brian Batko
1:38
How could you leave out Randall Cobb?
elcid97
1:39
Any truth to the online rumors that Rooney is confused by the negative fan reaction to the hire? The Labriola article with the Rooney quotes certainly sounds like their PR people told him they needed to say something, and it did come across defensive.
Brian Batko
1:40
Don't know what you mean by rumors that he was confused, because I hadn't seen that, but I did read the Steelers.com article. To be honest, if he were truly that defensive/sensitive to the push-back, they probably just wouldn't have included that question and answer at all, right?
itsallmoot
1:41
Do you think ARII's philosophy "The standard is to try to compete to win a championship every year" might be what's hurting the Steelers most (whoever the coach is). Case in point is 2019 trade for Minkah.  Minkah was a good player but most people knew we weren't going far with a backup QB (no slight to Mason).  Ben was 37 and we could have had the QB of the future in Jordan Love (hard to predict QB's but you get the concept).    It's also seen in the emphasis on bringing on aging vets hoping to strike gold.
Brian Batko
1:43
You can make that argument. People do, quite often, sometimes in this very chat. Let's just look at the two Super Bowl teams this year. Bottoming-out worked great for the Patriots. They got Drake Maye. But the Seahawks have just one losing season since 2011, and that was a 7-10 campaign in 2021. Sam Darnold was a free-agent acquisition, and a shrewd one, especially given his fit with their new OC hire. So, sometimes you have to tear down and rebuild, but other teams have shown the ability to re-tool on the fly.
Dormont Legacy
1:44
Brian - hope you stayed warm and dry.  I've been going back and forth between "what the heck are they doing" and "hey, this might not be too bad" regarding McCarthy.  I am finding myself settling in more on the latter. If the idea is he is here to reboot some of the stale practices, spring clean the roster and be the QB/offense whisperer, it might be just what the team needs. It was also hard not to note that two of the weekend's coaches were retreads themselves. A home run would be he hires a young coordinator or two who could be groomed as a replacement. I think one clue on the spring cleaning was that no coaches were specifically retained. What are you hearing AR & OK's logic to be?
Brian Batko
1:46
I'll say this much, DL, when these things happen -- coaching hire, player acquisition, draft pick, uniform change, whatever -- I feel like the negative reaction tends to be most intense initially and then subsides, over time, as people either analyze it from different perspectives or just move on with their lives.
SPIKE
1:46
I see this as bringing in a coach who has had great success with quarterbacks and is offense minded and will only be here 5 years to right the ship before another coach takes the reins.
Brian Batko
1:47
That could be, Spike. But you're still going to get a lot of scrutiny from Steeler fans in that case because that's just not been how the Steelers do business over the course of their storied history. Basically, people had been conditioned to think about this coaching search through one lens, and then they went in a very different direction. We'll see if it works out.
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