Cowboys, Packers fans share thoughts on new Steelers head coach Mike McCarthy at NFL Draft

As the football world descended on Pittsburgh in record-breaking crowds this weekend for the 2026 NFL Draft, the Steelers embarked on their first draft of the Mike McCarthy era. 

After Pittsburgh’s 30-6 loss in the wild card game at Acrisure Stadium in January, Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin abruptly stepped down from his post. Tomlin famously never had a losing season in his 19 years as head coach of the Steelers, but the lack of playoff success caught up to him in his later years. His tenure ended with a nine-year playoff win drought, where the Steelers went 0-6 during that time. 

Steelers owner Art Rooney II insisted he was willing to run it back with Tomlin for one more year. The decision for change ultimately came from Tomlin himself, who held one last meeting with his team in the wake of the loss to announce his departure. 

Eleven days after Tomlin stepped down, the Steelers announced McCarthy as the 17th head coach in franchise history. For McCarthy, this gig was his dream job. He grew up in Pittsburgh’s Greenfield neighborhood idolizing the Steelers, and his roots go even deeper than just cheering on the hometown team growing up. 

One of McCarthy’s earliest coaching gigs came as a graduate assistant — and eventual wide receivers coach — at the University of Pittsburgh. He was on Pitt football’s staff for four years, and cited Pitt head coach Paul Hackett as one of his earliest mentors. Now, his coaching career comes full circle with a Pittsburgh homecoming. 

McCarthy has now coached arguably the three most iconic franchises in the sport, arriving in Pittsburgh after stops in Green Bay and Dallas. Fans of those teams who attended the NFL Draft seemed to have a more positive reaction to the hiring than many Steelers fans did at the original announcement. 

“He’s a Pittsburgh guy, so I mean, overall he probably fits the culture,” Lynn Snell, a Cowboys fan from York, Pennsylvania, said. 

McCarthy’s reputation as a quarterback developer was corroborated by several other fans at the draft. 

“I think he’s going to do a lot for the development of Will Howard,” Snell said. “I don’t know if they get another quarterback this weekend, but we’ll see.” 

The Steelers did take a quarterback. With their first pick in the third round on Friday, the Steelers took Drew Allar out of Penn State. Allar now joins Howard, a sixth-round pick last year, in a quarterback room that now features two young, unproven prospects while the Steelers continue to await a decision from Aaron Rodgers. 

“He’s very [good at] coaching offense. He developed Aaron Rodgers very well,” Jayden Duncan, a Cowboys fan, said of McCarthy. “They just drafted a wide receiver, and I feel like Mike McCarthy could develop him a little bit more.”

Earlier in the night, the Steelers took wide receiver Germie Bernard from Alabama with the 47th pick. His selection earned a roar of approval from the home crowd, especially after the Steelers missed out on Makai Lemon on Thursday night. 

Packers fans have a bit more fond of a memory of McCarthy than their Dallas counterparts. 

“I love Mike McCarthy, I’ll never not love Mike McCarthy,” said Packers fan Benno Lobe, a Pitt student who is graduating as a psychology and film and media studies major, but added that by the end of McCarthy’s tenure he “was sick of the Packers losing NFC Championships as a young kid.” 

Sporting an Eddie Lacy Packers jersey, Lobe praised the Packers’ ability to develop players during McCarthy’s reign in Green Bay, citing examples like running back Lacy — the offensive rookie of the year in 2013 — and three-time All Pro wide receiver Davante Adams. 

“I think he’s a good coach, and I think the Steelers team is a young enough team for him to do well,” Lobe said. 

Fans from both teams acknowledged a more laid back, player’s coach style that worked both for and against McCarthy. 

“From what I can remember, he wasn’t the most aggressive coach,” Packers fan Brayden Barciszewski said. “He was pretty laid back and chill. But he gave us a Super Bowl with him, so obviously he did pretty well.”

In order to replicate that success in Pittsburgh, however, Barciszewski thinks the roster might still need some work. 

“I think it’s going to be a little more of a struggle with the Steelers,” he said. “I don’t think their roster is as talented as it was in Green Bay and how they built things up in Green Bay. But I think he’s still a very solid coach and he can work with the players he has and get it done.”

This sentiment was shared by fellow Packers fan Tyler English, who thinks McCarthy is at his best when surrounded with the right personnel. 

“I think the players he had really just had his back,” English said, “and the reason we won the Super Bowl with him was because we had Aaron Rodgers, not because of Mike McCarthy himself, per se.”

English called McCarthy a “good coach” and said that a change in Pittsburgh could help lift them out of the nine and 10-win seasons they’ve had, but stressed that McCarthy needs a good roster to perform at his best. 

“I think his personnel is what matters to him, and the Steelers don’t quite have that yet,” English said. 

In February of 2011, McCarthy defeated his boyhood team in Super Bowl XLV, 31-25. Rodgers bested Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who dug the Steelers into a hole early and could never quite get them out. 

McCarthy stayed in Green Bay for another seven and a half years, making it back to the NFC Championship Game twice, but never to another Super Bowl. Midway through the 2018 season, he was fired. 

After a year off, McCarthy landed in Dallas starting in 2020. There a polished quarterback was already awaiting him in the Lone Star State by the name of Dak Prescott. 

Though McCarthy’s Cowboys suffered a 6-10 season in his first year, Dallas went a combined 49-35 during his five years there. However, the struggle to get over the hump into the postseason followed him down south. Dallas was 1-3 in the playoffs under McCarthy, never making it past the divisional round. 

“I feel like we got rid of him because he was a bad end-game manager,” Duncan said. “He doesn’t know how to use his timeouts.” 

Though Duncan believed he was a strong offensive coach, he didn’t see that come to fruition when his team needed it most. 

“End of game situations, it seemed to crumble on offense,” Duncan continued. “because he just couldn’t make those clutch play calls when we needed them.”

Carson Nagel, another Cowboys fan, believes McCarthy’s relaxed style was part of the problem in Dallas. 

“I think part of the downfall was being laid back, not stepping up,” Nagel said. 

Some fans, including Duncan, see a lot of similarities between McCarthy and Tomlin. The two have similar résumés — both have a distant Super Bowl, both have a strong career record and both take criticisms about their playoff performances. Tomlin’s .628 regular season winning percentage narrowly beats McCarthy’s .608, but McCarthy has a slight edge in playoffs, with a record of 11-11 to Tomlin’s 8-12. 

“I just see him doing the same thing as Mike Tomlin,” Duncan said about McCarthy’s future with the Steelers. “Just barely reaching the playoffs, and one and out.”

Despite three straight 12-win seasons, the Cowboys moved on from McCarthy after a 7-10 season in 2024. But while it didn’t end the best in either location, fans from both teams hesitate to put all the blame on the coach. 

“I don’t know if he was a problem,” Lobe said about McCarthy’s exit from Green Bay. “A coach is just the easiest person to pin a problem on.”

As for Dallas, Nagel believes he shares blame with the front office. 

“It kind of wasn’t his fault, because of the way the Cowboys operate with Jerry Jones,” Nagel said. 

Nagel cited Dallas’ lack of aggression in the trade and draft markets as part of the organization’s problem while McCarthy was coach. 

“It wasn’t completely on him at all. I mean, no matter who the coach has been in the last 30 years, the Cowboys haven’t gotten it done,” Nagel said. “But, certainly respect McCarthy and he was certainly winning. I think he’ll do a really good job in Pittsburgh.”