Steelers embrace Mike McCarthy in first offseason without Mike Tomlin

PITTSBURGH — For all of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ additions this offseason, something that wasn’t there caught T.J. Watt’s attention during OTAs and minicamp practices.

“You don’t see benches out here anymore,” Watt said. “It’s just interesting because there’s … there’s many different ways to do things. We’re just doing things much different than what I’m used to over the last nine years, and it’s good. Change is good for me.”

There has been a lot of that since former coach Mike Tomlin resigned in January and Mike McCarthy was hired a few weeks later.

For longtime defensive captain Cameron Heyward, that means also getting used to parking next to a different car in the team lot after spending much of the past 16 seasons next to Tomlin.

“It’s a different challenge,” Heyward said. “I’ve just tried to be open to it, just try to learn. It’s not like there can only be one good coach in the league, and I’ve always admired Coach McCarthy from afar and just want to learn. I think that’s the easiest thing you can do is put your ego aside and just learn from great coaches.”

Not only has McCarthy removed the metal benches and bleachers from the practice fields at the team’s training facility, but he’s also implementing a new practice routine and schedule as he puts his stamp on his hometown organization. Among the many changes is a shift in practice times, meeting schedules and practice organization.

But as much time as the players have spent learning about how deliberately McCarthy operates, McCarthy has spent just as much studying and listening to them.

“It’s important for us to learn each other,” McCarthy said, adding that he recently completed a report chronicling his first 100 days on the job and circulated it among his staff.

“There’s just a lot to do in the first year. … The pompoms flying around and yelling, screaming isn’t going to do anything right now. We need to learn the offense, learn the defense, make sure we know the special teams, make sure we have a clear understanding of the fundamentals, make sure each player has a toolbox that’s full, make sure they are successful.”

Unlike previous seasons in which Tomlin’s mid-June minicamp marked the end of the offseason program, McCarthy scheduled his minicamp for the first week of June, followed by one more week of voluntary OTAs and a few days of extra “rookie school” after that.

“I’ve done it in different ways, but in my opinion, you can really install everything you need in eight installations,” McCarthy said in April before the start of OTAs. “We’ll get the first eight installations in there, and it gives me a chance to reassess, a chance to see exactly where we are because I always like to have that window at the end, and particularly at some level, how much am I going to focus on the younger players because they’re the ones that you have to bridge the gap between your veterans and your first-year players.

“The design of the minicamp before the last OTAs is part of the thinking there, so when we come out of that minicamp, I’ll know exactly where we are.”

The Steelers spent those eight sessions doing as McCarthy laid out: installing the new schemes and getting on the same page with the verbiage. That meant as much time in the classroom as on the field.

“It’s been a lot,” Watt said. “Not going to lie to you, it’s been a lot of studying, a lot of learning, a lot on the iPad. Also trying to see the new faces, not only players, but coaches. There’s been a lot of really good work. As you guys can see, practices are a little bit different around here. It’s tougher as you get older to get the work in, but it’s all been phenomenal.”

By the end of the minicamp installations, McCarthy found the Steelers were on track, and because of that, the final week of OTAs featured mostly rookies and younger players as the veterans scattered.

“We’re in a really good spot as far as what we’ve been able to accomplish with the football team, so we’re really trying to get as many reps to our younger generation,” McCarthy said during the last week of OTAs.

Practice times shifted, too. The Steelers took the field an hour later during this year’s offseason workouts, practicing from about 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Those times will shift even more during the Steelers’ training camp, with practices scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, instead of Tomlin’s preferred midafternoon start, often chosen so the team would learn to work through the added adversity of the late-summer heat and occasional thunderstorm delay.

During the season, the late-morning practice timing will be similar. The Steelers treated the first day of minicamp as an in-season Thursday to give the players a preview of McCarthy’s in-season rhythm.

Although the contents of the practice might look similar to the casual observer, the nuanced differences highlight McCarthy’s commitment to fundamentals and maximizing his time with the players on the field.

Before breaking into install walk-through periods during minicamp and OTAs, the Steelers went through extensive stretching and warmups. Then, after half an hour of the half-speed installs with the offense lining up against other offensive players, players broke into smaller groups for position-specific drills, followed by teamwide individual periods to focus on things such as ball security and reaction time.

With a new staff also comes new ways to do drills. For the outside linebackers, that meant position coach C.J. Ah You strapping on tackling pads and getting physical with his players as they chirped at each other and him.

“Really, hats off to C.J.,” Watt said. “He has a lot of really good drill work for us to do. He breaks down film well. We also just have a solid outside linebacker room to begin with, so it’s really competitive.”

For the quarterbacks, many of those individual periods emphasized footwork and accuracy, especially in the bonus week of OTAs. With Aaron Rodgers and Mason Rudolph absent, rookie Drew Allar and 2025 sixth-round pick Will Howard got extra attention from McCarthy and quarterbacks coach Tom Arth.

In one drill, the pair went through a series of three throws toward a net with red, blue and yellow squares. One at a time, they received the snap and dropped back. As they curled out with the ball, Arth called a color for the quarterback to target. Each quarterback went through the progression three times before flipping sides as Arth kept score.

Then, after that 30-minute period of individual drills, the Steelers went back to a team period, this time with offensive and defensive players lining up against each other and going over the previously learned installations. Much of the team’s focus during minicamp was situational football, including red zone work and two-minute drills led by the younger quarterbacks, McCarthy said.

The offseason program followed this methodical rhythm throughout the practices, with changes in periods announced by an assistant coach over a bullhorn.

Though the on-field portion of OTAs wrapped up June 12, McCarthy and his staff will spend the next seven weeks balancing vacation and preparation for the next phase of team development that will begin July 28 as the Steelers return to St. Vincent College for training camp.

“We’ll have homework to do, just normal first-year stuff we weren’t able to get everything done,” McCarthy said of his and his staff’s summer plans. “We’ll continue to work on that and make sure we’re ready to go for Latrobe.”