2026 Steelers Coaching Staff

Arians and LeBeau were great coaches that Tomlin did not hire. When they left, the Steelers were essentially done winning playoff games.The 2026 Pittsburgh Steelers now have a total of 21 coaches. Head Coach Mike McCarthy has finalized his staff, which includes:

11 offensive coaches (including Coordinator Brian Angelichio)
8 defensive coaches (including Coordinator Patrick Graham)
2 special teams coaches (led by Coordinator Danny Crossman)


How the new staff uses the players and develops them remains to be seen. I think McCarthy will run his version of the West Coast offense and scheme the players up better than Tomlin and his staff did in recent years. He has to be better at coaching challenges and situational football.

-JB

 

There's actually 25 "on his staff." (Key words)
A total of 26 with McCarthy. 17 was a quick an inaccurate lookup.

As for philosophy.... only Mike knows what Mike knows.
Given the QB situation, one could speculate it will be based off runs, and quick tosses with the shots probably coming at a higher frequency,
That changes with QB's.

On D we'll see a lot of schema based on skill sets and formations to exploit those skills.
How successful? I dunno.

But the real dig was number of staff (all are coaches of sorts right down to strength and conditioning)
It almost aligns with what Arians did, who was a sample coach with a large staff that had success,,, everyone knows Arians and about him.

 

If MM is calling plays on offense, can we count him twice?

 

https://www.steelers.com/team/coaches-roster/

i count 26.

 

Show off

 

Arians said his job was to make sure his coolers were full of booze.

 

coaches do not play the games. You can have 1 coach and win or lose or 100 ..It does not matter--You can pay someone 1 million dollars or 50 million --if the players don't play hard, they will lose.Dont get me wrong it's nice to have coaches.But in the end its who wants it more..

 

There's too much evidence that says coaches matter. I go back to my default; 80% players, 20% coaching. So a good coach might win 3 or 4 games based on game plans and game day decisions. A bad coach might lose 3 or 4 games.

Now here's the thing, how many coaches are needed to make up that 20% "coaches"? If you have an elite coach you might not need that many assistants.

 

11 herbs and spices for decent fried chicken
23 flavors to be a Pepper
100 bottles of beer for a good song

 

I surprised that you think we'll only win one more game than last year after getting rid of Tomlin.

Especially since you've talked about how the roster is improved over last year.

You keep talking about how bad he was.

But then when you predict what you think the season result will be, it's probably the same thing you'd predict with Tomlin.

I don't get it.

 

I think that 80/20 split is probably about where I am too.

I also think that the effect of coaching is usually more about limiting the downside.

So I think I'd ague that bad coaching leads to more net losses than good coaching leads to net wins. I think that's why the Steelers tended to hire young coaches that were "good enough", then mold them with good coordinators.

Then hold them for a long time. Once you have a coach that isn't losing you games you should win, I think it's probably best to hold on to that guy for a long period because there are a lot more bad coaches (that cause losses) than good coaches (that don't cause losses).

But this might be colored by my bias that I think the Steelers and generally a well run organization.

 

P T Barnum was not a clown, was not an acrobat, did not train elephants or lions

But without him running the show there was no show

 

One of the old hitchhikers on your wagon train?

 

His train

I was the hobo

 

ah yes.
I da ho!

 

As of right now, I predict one more win than last season. In the NFL, that single extra win can easily mean a higher playoff seed. Last year I thought we got a bit lucky with the schedule which featured several weak quarterbacks. We benefited from how the injury situations played out, especially with AR starting as many games as he did. Because of that, I’m projecting 11-6 this season despite a tougher schedule and the likelihood of us being not as lucky.

 

Since we were the 4th seed in the AFC last season, does that mean you think we'll be the 3rd seed (or higher) this year?

I'd love it if that were the case. But I'd bet against it (even though I think it is possible if everything breaks right).

I agree that we did better than the talent on our roster last season. Probably for every season since Ben got hurt IMO. When you get lucky consistently, it might be luck. But it might also be something else.

In this case, I think it's because we adopted a system that gave us a better than expected shot at winning games against other teams that were competing for playoff spots. It was super-boring / not entertain at all. But it gave us more playoff games than we deserved.

Some people do hold making the playoffs with bad teams against the Steelers in this time frame because they ended up losing to teams that were much better than they were (e.g., losing a WC game when they were the biggest underdogs in playoff history...which probably shouldn't have been a surprise). I get the frustration because I would have preferred that we win at least one of those games. But none of those Steelers teams had any chance being genuinely competitive against good teams IMO.

I think, most didn't deserve to make the playoffs. And (as was predicted before the new playoff format), the Steelers under Tomlin were the biggest beneficiary of the expansion to 7 teams in the playoffs. I think before that rule was instituted I read that we would have made the playoffs ever year (except maybe 1 or 2?) under Tomlin?

 

Remember,for a rare time,the afc north was awful last season.I don't think the Bengals ravens will have a losing record again.One of the 2,possible but both,this is unlikely

 

what ever happened to the



;

 

Yep. That's why I think it's likely that we'll do no better than last year.

I think this is why predicting that we'll do better than we did last year is kind of dicey. There have been some changes on the roster, but I don't they're massive.

And if Rodgers goes down and we have to play Mason or one of the lottery tickets, the O is probably not going to hold up. Which isn't great if we get the same D we got last year.

 

why would we have the same anything as last year with different players and coaches?

 

Here's Alex K's breakdown of coaching staff size across the league.

Teams with the most coaches (28): SF, LAR, CLE

Teams with the least coaches (21): CIN, KC, PIT

There's a chart breaking down the total coaches, number on O / D / ST.

So still tied for smallest with a different HC.

As mentioned upthread, Alex says that coaching size seems to be correlated far more strongly with HC age than it is with winning/losing. Young guys tend to have big staffs. Old guys tend to have small staffs. Doesn't seem to matter re: whether they win or lose.