Steelers' Mike McCarthy Announces The Foundation Of Pittsburgh's New Identity

The Pittsburgh Steelers are in a brand new era of football as Mike McCarthy has replaced Mike Tomlin after 19 seasons. Change was desperately needed to flip the franchise into a different direction. It's a complete switch from conservative staffs on both sides of the ball with Tomlin to an aggressive offensive-first staff with McCarthy. Aside from play-calling, there are a lot of other changes coming to Steelers football, which will be interesting to watch throughout training camp and the preseason.

With plenty of other new faces joining his coaching staff, this will turn into a major shift in the organization. There will be plenty of differences that players and McCarthy will speak about down the road as Pittsburgh tries to alter their long-running philosophies. Different leadership will mix up the pillars that the franchise has followed for nearly two decades, which could help bring the Steelers back to being Super Bowl contenders.

To get there though, the players need to get bought into what McCarthy and the staff is trying to push across. While there are a ton of different aspects of the game he wants to be aggressive on, such as getting to the line of scrimmage in 15 seconds between each play, there are direct fundamentals that he is preaching to the team. 

He calls it the 'Steelers Six', as McCarthy attempts to create important pillars for players to focus on and get right to have a positive product on the field. The X page for 93.7 The Fan posted the list of what McCarthy is pushing.    

"6 fundamentals of Steelers football per Mike McCarthy--Ball security, blocking, tackling, big plays, pursuit and finish, mannerisms and disguises," the 93.7 The Fan X account posted.

While some of these are key parts of football that all of these players have known for their entire careers, the change in structure is reinforcing it upon the players. Getting all of these right and being effective on each front will be critical for the Steelers to have success. It's rebuilding the little things to get positive results long term. It seems like it's unnecessary to some, but to rebuild the culture and get a key plan to model for the future, this is what needs to be done.

To go along with this, Patrick Queen spoke with the media yesterday and gave some positives about the coaching staff. That first impression was a good one, but something thing that stood out was the quality communication and attention to detail. They want to be perfect and they don't want to miss these factors that could hold them back. They believe that they have a team in front of them that can do big things and to accomplish their goals, they have to excel with what they have.

Getting Pittsburgh back to a playoff-winning team is exactly what McCarthy has dreamt about for years. Putting his hometown squad back at the top of the NFL has been a goal for a long time and he finally has the opportunity to do that. He wants to get everything right, getting his finger print on everything in the Steel City.

There's a major difference between hitting on the fundamentals of football like McCarthy is doing between what Tomlin did for years. Tomlin had some sense of accountability with his famous 'the standard is the standard' line. One could describe the 'Steelers Six' as a similar type of message, but focusing on the on-field things like this presents a much different message.

Steelers' McCarthy Foundations Paint Different Picture From Tomlin

It's still just the start of training camp and the organization will get plenty of new information regarding these new changes over the next few weeks. Players have already given some positive feedback regarding the changes and for long-term success, there needs to be more encouraging updates regarding this foundation from McCarthy in year one with Pittsburgh. 

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