Commentary: New Steelers coach has tough act to follow

The Pittsburgh Steelers completed a little chore called hiring a new coach, something the Rooneys generally get around to when needed roughly every 15 to 23 years. Among all the statistics in every corner of the NFL datascape, all the next generation metrics and lost generation fossils of conventional football wisdom, perhaps nothing had sustained such prolonged introspection as the whole "Pittsburgh hiring only three head coaches since 1969" thing. The Miami Dolphins have had three since the pandemic. Rare as it is, a Steelers head coaching hire maintains a vague imagery in the deep memory, identifiable among the whipping snow and an ominous forecast. Chuck Noll, hired Jan. 27, 1969, Bill Cowher, hired Jan. 21, 1992, and Mike Tomlin, hired Jan. 22, 2007. Two Hall of Famers and a Hall of Famer-in-waiting will soon have a successor, and there's a little pressure associated with that lineage, don't you think? Now Mike McCarthy is The Guy, but would you want to be that guy? The historical irony is, to whatever precise degree McCarthy's new gig is thoroughly pressurized, most of it is going to be external. Art Rooney II was surprised to find Tomlin packing his career into a box on the morning of Jan. 13. Not living in his fears, the third generation scion of a pro football dynasty even revealed that he was willing to take another spin with Tomlin next fall despite his recent playoff pratfalls. Tomlin and Cowher and Noll have been so imbedded in our sports consciousness for so long, even the people with the most direct stake in their performance can be reluctant to change the music. On a spur of a moment visit this week to Christ Our Redeemer Catholic Cemetery, where Noll has rested in peace since 2014, it occurred to me not just that the Emperor would have been 94 this month, he might still be coaching were it up the Rooneys. I have it on impeccable authority that Dan Rooney was shocked to learn of Noll's imminent resignation in 1991. Noll wasn't fired. Cowher wasn't fired. Tomlin wasn't fired. The Rooneys haven't fired anyone since 1968, when the logo was a guy in overalls and a hardhat punting from steel beam. When your logo is a punt, you've probably had a history of lowered expectations, which is the historical flip side of the Steelers' stability coin. When Dan graduated from Duquesne in 1955, he walked into a Steelers front office not exactly on track to eventually hire three coaches who'd work across most of six decades. The Steelers of Dan's childhood were averaging a new coach about every 30 months, in part due to the singularly North Side Irish rhythms of his father, Art Rooney Sr., part street fighter, part seat-of-the-pants sports entrepreneur. The Chief, as he was known, made coaching changes in ways that would be considered well outside of best practices. "Three coaches in our first three years in the league, and I had to knock two of them out," said the only actor in a stage play about him mounted years after he was gone. "This was a management practice I eventually had to discontinue." The last Steelers coach actually fired around here was Bill Austin, whom Dan dismissed after a 2-11-1 campaign in 1968. Austin was the third Steelers coach of the 1960s. You may have heard there've been three since. So this week I found out that if you're in a state of mind that permits you to pull off 279 North and poke around a cemetery because of Chuck Noll, you're in a curious state of football vulnerability that's even weirder in a dream state. So I had that dream where I was in some workplace, an office-type setting, and word came that coach Cowher wanted to see everyone in an upstairs office. There was a fast round of speculation on what Bill might need to impart of to us underlings, accompanied by much grumbling about the unpleasantness of being chewed out by coach Cowher. But when we went up there to his office, there was no chewing out. He just said, "Yinz are all fired," and that was that. You've never had that one? How about the one where you're sitting at a lunch counter, the only person at the counter while others are seated a nearby tables. Mike Tomlin comes out from the kitchen and hands you a piece of fish. No plate, no sandwich bun, just a slab of breaded cod, it looks like. "No bun?" you say. Tomlin just glares at you. "How 'bout some Tabasco?" He goes back to the kitchen. Yeah, I had that one. Tomlin called me when my mother died. Not a dream. He came to see me open for Chris Porter during my overlong ill-fated standup career. Not a dream. He parked his Escalade on the sidewalk near the stage door and left without comment, like in the Tabasco moment. Tomlin was aloof and prideful, but I liked him, and I liked Noll and Cowher, too, even as we were generally at cross purposes in that they were taking their job way more seriously than I was. "No cheerleaders again this year?" I said to Noll one time in Latrobe. "Would it help us win?" he said. "Would it hurt?" I said. He just glared at me.