The Pittsburgh Steelers officially hired Mike McCarthy on Jan. 27, the same day Art “The Chief” Rooney was born in 1901.
Six months and one day later, McCarthy’s Steelers will report to training camp on July 28. Someone new is running the show for the first time in nearly 20 years.
For those who made the Latrobe trek, Mike Tomlin’s camps were familiar. Leading the charge for 19 seasons makes that unavoidable. There was a rhythm and expectation and flow to practice that was easy to outline even as the players changed over the years.
Tomlin’s camps had a hallmark level of physicality not often found around the rest of the league. The practice movement from drill to drill, day to day, had predictability.
What will Mike McCarthy bring? We won’t know for sure until practices start. The first four are part of the NFL’s mandated ramp-up period. It won’t be until early August when the pads come on to truly differentiate from spring work.
McCarthy, like Tomlin, is a veteran coach with a distinct track record, even if took place in other cities. To learn more, I spoke with four analysts or beat writers: two who covered McCarthy in Green Bay, two more who covered him in Dallas.
What can be expected from McCarthy when the Steelers open up practice at Saint Vincent College on July 29?
The common themes were: more tempo, less physicality, and an emphasis on team reps over 1v1 competition.
From the pace of practice to the swiftness the offense moves, McCarthy wants quality work done with urgency. He’ll go to creative lengths for it, introducing “mojo moments” while in Dallas.
“Without warning, you would suddenly hear the, I think it was the Sunday Night Football theme playing,” Locked on Cowboys analyst Landon McCool tells me. “Unexpectedly, in the middle of the drill or between drills, they’ll do a quick competitive period, and they’ll call out who it is. They’ll gather the whole team, and they’ll get together and they’ll do maybe three [reps]. And everybody watches. And then they announce who the winner was and they get back into whatever they were doing…I think the players enjoyed it.”
It tracks with McCarthy’s approach to spring practices. Steelers beat writers quickly noticed the change in tempo to a spirited approach that maximized time. Coaches held back from taking the field until absolutely necessary. Aside from literal benches being removed, players didn’t stand around.
“The actual meat and potatoes of his practices, the tempo was definitely risen,” says Packers reporter and analyst Zach Jacobson, who covered McCarthy during his final years in Green Bay. “The tempo was very high. They ran a lot of up-tempo offense.”
Marcus Mosher, McCool’s podcast co-host, cited McCarthy once running simultaneous 7 v 7 drills. He’d relay the play call to the first group, watch the play run through, then spin around to the other end of the field to do the same with the second group.
That’s a clear difference from the Steelers, who only ever ran 7 v 7 one unit at a time.
Tomlin’s camps offered “live” tackling to the ground as opposed to most practices and their “thud” nature, wrapping up but not going to the grass. Nearly every day Pittsburgh was in pads, the team would have at least one live session – usually the second “team run” 11 v 11 period.
McCarthy grew up in a two-a-day era, but his camps are likely to be less intense.
“He does not wanna see guys on the ground,” Mosher says. “That bothers him more than anything else. And he will harp on it. He will stop practice. He does not want to see guys going to the ground on even receptions or pass deflections. Partially, because that’s when a lot of the injuries have happened before.”
If that applies to Pittsburgh’s camp, it will mark the most drastic difference. Tomlin preached “sparring before boxing,” tackling in practice to hone technique and readiness before playing a game. McCarthy has opted for a more conservative approach to keep his starters from being hamstrung by injury. That move could be especially helpful for a veteran-laden team.
“It’s just a different style of practice,” Mosher says. “It’s fast-paced. It’s a lot of information.”
Any tackling that does occur may involve backups. Second and third-stringers who need the extended reps. More physical practices occurred during joint sessions, but Pittsburgh is one of four teams to go without this summer.
Though Tomlin once tried morning practices, nearly all of his camps began in the afternoon. There was a time when McCarthy reveled in night workouts, but he’s long switched to morning sessions.
Pittsburgh’s 2026 schedule features a variety of AM starts. As early as 10:15, as late as 11:20. McCarthy might be the oldest coach in Steelers history but his approach is modern and player-first.
“He stuck to more the 10:30 in the morning start time for practice,” longtime Packers reporter Mike Clemens tells me. “Let’s get outta here before it’s too hot in the afternoon. He’ll also tell the players too about hydration. He will tell them, if we’re gonna play a preseason game, it’s on the road, could be hot this weekend. He’s got fruit plates outside of all the classrooms.
“Mark Lovat is his trainer. Mark will be there preaching those kind of things about hydration to cut down on cramps,” Clemens continued. “Mike, he talks like an old-style football coach, but he’s his up to date on the latest information on keeping players healthy.”
Lovat is one of many coaches McCarthy worked with in Green Bay now brought to Pittsburgh.
Tomlin’s sessions featured intense competition periods. Backs on backers for the first day in pads and the night practice, the latter of which created the most physical moments that, at their most chaotic, turned into nearly all-out brawls.
McCarthy prefers for the team to work together, believing that best simulates a gameday environment.
“I just feel like, he didn’t feel like he was getting anything from that,” McCool says, noting McCarthy slowly decreased competition periods that were staple of previous head coach Jason Garrett’s sessions.
Practice how you play is a tried-and-true adage McCarthy adheres to.
“He liked to have practice similar to how the start time would mimic what time they would start during games,” Jacobson says. “He wanted his practices to mimic game environments. He believed that there was a classroom environment, a practice environment, and a game day environment.”
In the spring, McCarthy shadowed Pittsburgh’s two young quarterbacks, Will Howard and Drew Allar. A key component of his hire is his deep quarterback background. Training camp could look different, but McCarthy isn’t married to one in-practice strategy.
“When Dan Quinn was around, I don’t think he felt the need to be around the defense as much,” McCool says of the former Cowboys defensive coordinator under McCarthy. “Because he had a real head coach type that could manage the whole thing on his own and, and he could trust with it.
“Early on, he had chosen Mike Nolan as his first choice and realized pretty quickly that that was an absolute disaster. So, I think he spent more time early on kind of being more of a walk-around coach.”
Preseason may also be played by ear and based on needs of the team. Still, the consensus is that McCarthy remains hesitant to play starters and key names for too many snaps. Personal experience has taught him that. One formative example came against Pittsburgh in 2015.
“One of the most devastating preseason injuries in his 12-year run in Green Bay happened in Pittsburgh when Jordy Nelson went up for a little routine catch,” Clemens says. “Just jumped in the air to catch a ball from Aaron. Came down, tore his ACL, and was never quite the same after that. Both he and Aaron were like, why are we doing this in a meaningless game?”
The bulk of the preseason snaps will be assigned to backups. That evaluates younger players and those trying to make the team, but also to prepare the backup group to rotate in early during the season. McCarthy isn’t shy about dividing up snaps over the first few weeks as everyone gets their football legs under them, including along the offensive line.
“One thing he will harp on is that it’s not just about getting Aaron Rodgers and Metcalf and your stars ready to go,” McCool says. “It’s about making sure your backup swing tackle is not gonna screw up the whole thing when he has to come in and play 12 snaps in December because your left tackle twists his ankle. He’s very big on making sure that everybody throughout the roster that’s gonna be on the game day roster has a level of comfort and understanding of what their job is.”
Mosher agrees.
“In 2021, they were rotating guards every other drive. It’s couple things. Number one, they wanna make sure guy make sure guys are in condition and in shape. Not overworking them early in the year. But he also likes to prepare if a guy goes down, we don’t want our backup guard to have zero snaps before he’s gotta play 65 against Baltimore.”
Don’t be shocked if, no matter who officially wins the starting right guard job between Spencer Anderson or Brock Hoffman, he swaps drives with his summer challenger.
The same could hold true at right tackle, where first round rookie Max Iheanachor and Dylan Cook, veteran by comparison, are expected to battle. However, in a blind resume of experience versus rookie, veterans usually win out.
“The rookie would need to be a tier better than the [veteran] tackle to start,” McCool said. “But that doesn’t mean that he won’t start eventually this season. I think McCarthy actually prefers that model of let’s have the veteran start the season and then you work the rookie in.”
Jacobson offered the same read.
“Their top round picks wouldn’t necessarily play right away, especially the receivers,” he said. “The guys on offense, they wouldn’t step right in right away.”
There are moments that thrust rookies into the lineup. Clemens calls it the David Bakhtiari exception. A fourth-round pick of Green Bay in 2013, Bakhtiari’s stellar play and Bryan Bulaga’s ACL injury earned him the Week One nod. Bakhtiari never looked back.
Unless Iheanachor reaches that level out of the gate, he’s likely to begin the year watching from the sidelines.
Mike Tomlin controlled every practice. McCarthy might offer a different approach. Mosher noted McCarthy testing positive for COVID in 2021 served as a reminder teams need a backup head coach plan, even in a world beyond the pandemic.
McCool referred to Special Teams Coordinator John Fassel as “the voice of God” during some Cowboys practices, calling out the next drill to players instead of McCarthy.
Don’t take a less physical and higher tempo practice as McCarthy going soft on his players. Especially not the veterans. They set the tone, and when they don’t live up to that expectation, McCarthy holds them to account.
Clemens shared a story of McCarthy’s next-day reaction when veteran defensive back Charles Woodson didn’t give full effort during a preseason game.
“McCarthy tears into Charles. From about 30 or 40 feet away, we couldn’t quite hear what he was saying, but you could see his arms flail a little bit. The bill of his cap was touching his like a drill sergeant. Literally in his face. You could see Woodson like, ‘Come on man.’ This went on for maybe five or six minutes. And then Charles walked away.
“McCarthy comes over and we said, ‘So what was that all about?’ [McCarthy says], ‘Oh, we were just talking about special teams.’ He got into Charles Woodson and said, this is garbage. You are a leader on this team. Everybody looks up to you, and if you don’t kick it up in every rep, you’re killing us. You’re killing us. So you make this choice. Charles Woodson, not on a dime, but eventually flipped and became Defensive Player of the Year, got him to a Super Bowl. Mike McCarthy may have saved Charles Woodson’s career, and it started with that dressing down in front of us at 9:45 at night at the end of a summer night practice.”
No matter the position, one universal element McCarthy wants in camp is staying low.
“It became kind of a running joke in Green Bay, just amongst writers and amongst fans, that Mike McCarthy always talked about pad level,” Jacobson says.
The offense being on time is also critical. So much so that, as Clemens outlined, McCarthy in Green Bay brought out a clock with a red flashing light that would flash at 2.5 seconds, the time when the ball should be out of the quarterback’s hands. He wouldn’t blow the play dead if the play took longer, especially when a prime Rodgers was his quarterback, but a reminder of the flow the offense should strive for.
An adaptable coach, McCarthy may blend some of the old with the new. McCarthy has said as much, telling reporters in the spring that he may carry over some of Tomlin’s approach to 2026. That will ease the transition for returning players, especially long-tenured ones like Heyward or Watt.
Tomlin’s style certainly had merit and for all its physicality, Pittsburgh’s injury rate never seemed higher than other teams.
“I always ask what was done,” McCarthy told reporters in the spring. “If I think it fits, then I’ll utilize it. I have to believe in it. Fortunately, I’ve done this for 18 years already. I’ve tried some things already I won’t do again. Have some things that have worked very well. Put that all together and you’re fortunate enough those are good challenges to have.”
One thread that ties Green Bay to Pittsburgh is location. Beginning in 1958 and lasting all of McCarthy’s tenure, the Packers practiced at Div. III St. Norbert just outside of Green Bay. Pittsburgh has trained at Div. III Saint Vincent, sans the COVID years, since 1966. Two colleges nestled away from the rest of the world.
McCarthy grew up as a Pittsburgh kid attending Latrobe to watch the team practice. Now, he’s running the show. Another pinch-me moment when that first whistle blows next week.
“This guy is living the dream,” Clemens says. “He cannot believe he’s gonna finish in Pittsburgh. He cannot believe it. No one’s going to give this thing more effort than this guy. He can’t believe that he’s gonna get this opportunity. Because he absolutely loves that team. And Pittsburgh.”