The Mike McCarthy era will be different from Mike Tomlin’s 19-year tenure with the Steelers. When training-camp gets rolling, there will be one major change from nearly two decades of Pittsburgh football.
“We won’t do live tackling,” McCarthy told reporters on Tuesday. “No, I’ve done live tackling in the past. . . . Every drill’s been evaluated. There’s a GPS component behind everything that we do. You know, there’s more stress that we need to apply to our training situations than just going the ground. The footwork’s the priority. It always will be about the feet and everything that we do whether tackling, blocking, you know, ball security, all those things. So the footwork component about it is important.”
The balance is preparation and health of the players.
“You have to assess stress in everything you do,” McCarthy said. “That’s [what] I look at as one of the primary responsibilities of being a head coach, and one of the primary focal points of being in charge of a training regimen for your football team. So tackling is a good way to go. I’ve done it. But I feel like, you know, we’ll be able to get it done in in other ways of training, particularly in our tackling drills, in the team drills. So, injuries are part of the game, you know? And I think you’ve clearly got to do the best you can. And it’s a judgment. You try to reduce risk. So — but we will not live tackle. And we’ll have goal-line, but we won’t live tackle. And it is, you know, that’s one of the harder drills to get that done.”
Tomlin preferred live tackling in training camp. In 2017, for example, he said, “[W]e see the benefits” of intense tackling sessions, and “we’ll continue to do what we do.”
The big change last year wasn’t to change what they do but to when they do it. Tomlin moved practice to a hotter part of the day.
“Wasn’t hot enough last year,” Tomlin said about the plans for 2025 training camp. “To be quite honest with you, heat aids in the development of physical conditioning. It makes it a more stressful environment, and that’s what we go to camp for. We go to camp to get better, and if it’s a little bit more miserable late in the day, man, that’s what we want.”
There will be many differences between the two Mikes. Many of them will be noted and studied. And the ultimate test is whether, when it’s time to play games, the Steelers win their first playoff game since the 2016 season, they regress and miss the playoffs, or they continue a trend of one-and-done postseason appearances.