What are Reasonable Expectations for Mike McCarthy in year one with the Steelers?

Some of the kiddies here like to add nicknames

 

well
FAT MIKE wouldn't help
and
neither coach can be KILLER MIKE

 

I think he will win some games too, but my point is that far too many people are trying to make the determination of how much success or failure he will have when we don't know the first thing about what will be in place by the start of training camp.

So much will depend on the draft, and who they choose to be the starting quarterback. Then they have to use the roster to fit the schemes they want to run, but that may not be the talent that they prefer to work best in what they run. It will take time to adjust the roster to have all the talent they need to optimize what it is they are trying to do on both sides of the ball. Of course, good coaches adjust the scheme to get the most out of who they have on the current roster, but they may not currently have enough of the players that are the perfect fit for what they want to do. That will take a little bit of time and adjustment as well.

The people that want to say that McCarthy needs to win 12 or 13 games this season or he is a disappointment are the same people that claim that the roster sucked for Mike Tomlin and he got the most out of them, but now Mike McCarthy apparently has a stacked roster and nothing should be able to stop them from playing well and winning tons of games.

What they are neglecting to say is that Mike Tomlin had everything in place from a coaching perspective because he was here so long. All he had to do was place the talent into the roles of the system that was already in place and integrate it into schemes that have been used for years and years. Everyone was supposed to know what they were doing because everything was in place for so long. It is a huge advantage to have the entire team on the same page and knowing the language of the systems and what was expected of them within those systems from year to year. Anyone pretending that it doesn't matter that there is going to be a new offense and potentially a young quarterback learning that new offense with no NFL experience are people that are trying to set McCarthy up for failure.

The other thing that bothers me is that way too many act like Mike Tomlin is the only reason that the Steelers were successful. The fact of the matter that the Steelers organization has been the most successful organization over the last 50+ years. Mike McCarthy will have the full backing of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and that means something. The Steelers were great long before Mike Tomlin could ride a bike. They have been great at picking coaches and putting those coaches in position to win a lot of football games.

They are the organization that hired Bill Nunn, Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher, Tom Donahoe, Kevin Colbert, Mike Tomlin, and now Mike McCarthy. Every organization makes mistakes. They make bad hires or have some bad stretches periodically. This stuff happens, but even if I didn't agree with hiring Mike McCarthy, I can't sit here and say that the Steelers don't know what they're doing because history says they do until proven otherwise over a longer period of time.

 

You are not a lone voice in the wilderness. There are many saying that McCarthy isn't going to succeed and they don't think he is as good a coach as Tomlin.

To your credit, you give some real reasons based on your interpretation of things while in close proximity to his time in Green Bay, and not the blind statements some are making about it. I also know that you hope you are wrong and you want to win. It just sometimes comes off as you are projecting nothing but negativism.

There are plenty of people here that are now demanding that Mike McCarthy leads the Steelers to at least one playoff win, but they didn't demand it of Mike Tomlin for almost a decade. This loyalty to Tomlin by some has just grown into ridiculousness. Many are saying poor Tomlin didn't have the roster to get this team over the hump and he was held back by the ownership and he couldn't develop a quarterback.

Those same fans are now threatening that McCarthy better start winning playoff games right now. If he doesn't, he sucks.

They also say that McCarthy better develop a quarterback into something special right away even though Mike Tomlin didn't successfully develop a young quarterback over his 19 seasons as head coach.

All this, and Mike Tomlin stepped down! Imagine if they threw him out on his butt. Oh, the horror.

At some point you would think that any animosity about Tomlin would fade, and everyone would try to get behind McCarthy and actually see what he and his coaching staff do before banging on him with every keystroke.

 

You just keep spouting the same nonsense over and over again.

Did Ben sneak into your basement and bang your blowup girlfriend when you weren't there?

Where does all this bitterness towards a Hall of Fame quarterback come from?

We need an origin story.

 

All of that contributed to the Steelers losing and they lost the turnover battle 3-0.

 

The bold part here seems kind of silly IMO.

Tomlin certainly had flaws. There are lots of things to complain about legitimately. Especially if we think about later in his tenure. In particular, I think he wasn't good at understanding load sharing for RBs so we often had RB1s hurt in the playoffs (this especially sucked with Bell who was amazing in the playoffs, but didn't get nearly enough playoff games because we ran the wheels off him every year). He wasn't good at hiring successful coordinators. I also think that toward the end he had too much control. I think both Cowher and Tomlin functioned much better when they were the motivator / facilitator and they had very good to elite coordinators (particularly LeBeau).

But "early on" in Tomlin's tenure was pretty amazing. The list of coaches in their first 5 years like this has to be pretty slim. Just like Ben looked like he had a chance to be the GOAT early on in his career.

First 5 years:

• 55 wins total...average of 11 wins / season (when we only played 16 games)
• 3x 12 win seasons.
  
• Made the playoffs in 4/5 of the first years
• SB win in year 2
• AFCC in year 4