Steelers' Patrick Queen Shares Strong First Impressions Of New Coaching Staff

The Pittsburgh Steelers are back in the Latrobe for training camp and all eyes are on the players with how they adjust to the new coaches. Going from Mike Tomlin to Mike McCarthy is a major change, as it going from a more conservative approach with Tomlin to an aggressive, up-tempo scheme with McCarthy. For many players in the organization, they haven't seen much outside of Tomlin, so this change is significant for a handful of players. 

One of the anchors on the defense in Patrick Queen is one of the exceptions that has seen a different approach from Tomlin when he was with the Baltimore Ravens. On top of McCarthy coming in, Patrick Graham is also the new voice in charge of the defense, and that creates even more switch-up for the players to get used to. 

With the first practice in the books, players are starting to get their first impressions of the coaching staff in the full hands-on experience ahead of the 2026 campaign. Guys are finally able to see what they are getting with these fresh ideas and creating their stances on it all. Queen spoke to the media after practice and talked to reporters, via Chris Adamski, about the first impression the defense got from one day one. 

"We good, we confident," Queen stated. "Everything we’ve gone over, OTAs all the way through now, everything is about detail. So we all feel like we’re on one page with everything. There’s a lot of communication going on. Still a lot of room to grow, but it’s good from day one."

Based on what Queen shared, an interesting takeaway from what they've seen early on is the attention to detail. They seem to be focused on making everything perfect, which should clean up all of the little things that could hold players back in critical moments. 

Whether it forms of tackling, drop backs in coverage, or any little aspect, showing an effort to the little details is a great quality to have. That shows that he cares and if everything clicks, it could turn into very positive results on the field.

In terms of Queen in particular, he's a veteran that has been in the game for a long time. Coming off a slight down year, he knows that he needs to be better and is making adjustments to give the defense that star inside linebacker that it needs. Looking into that attention to detail, if all of the new coaches are giving their insights and valuable comments trying to fix him, that's going to be critical in getting Queen back up to speed.

Additionally, Queen commented about the communication going on. Even with acknowledging the details that need improved, it doesn't matter if they aren't talking about things together. Getting strong communication across is a great trait that winning teams need to have. Over the years, there have been some areas where there weren't great relationships between players and coaches. Queen even made that clear recently, posting on social media that he had enough of Teryl Austin. 

It's very evident that the organization needed some change on the coaching side of things, but getting it right was the important thing. With these early comments from Queen, it's looking like positive hires already, which is exactly what this organization needed. There needs to be more than just one day of training camp to really prove that it is right, but these early comments are encouraging. It provides clarity on a major question that needed to be answered with such big changes to the franchise. 

Steelers' Needed This Positive Step From New Coaching Staff

It's early and there's still plenty of observations to be made on this staff, but this is the type of comments fans need to hear to trust this enormous change. There will be a lot of different things happening from this organization down the road, especially on offense, so hearing a strong update from a key player is what needed to come out of the first day of practice.

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