LATROBE, Pa. \u2014 Everyone who knows Mike McCarthy understood where his heart always belonged, even if his eyes and feet were firmly wherever else he was. Nothing against Green Bay or Dallas, two places with rich and storied football histories and traditions. Pittsburgh is just different, especially for a Pittsburgh kid. “This is where I\u2019m from. This is the cloth that I was cut from,” the new Steelers coach told me during a recent visit to camp at Saint Vincent College. “When you grow up in Western Pa., we\u2019re all sick in the head because we\u2019re all brainwashed as kids. It\u2019s the greatest place on Earth.” So, yes, it sure is surreal for a kid born in the Greenfield section of Pittsburgh, right across the Monongahela River from Steelers headquarters, to be coming home to that place after all these years, to run the team he bled for as a kid. It\u2019s a bucket list item the 62-year-old never imagined could happen. He spent 23 years in Green Bay and thought he\u2019d be there forever. He spent five years in Dallas and figured that might be his last stop too. And for almost that entire time, the Steelers had just one head coach. Heck, they had only changed coaches five times since McCarthy was born. Then, last January, the news came that Mike Tomlin was stepping down after 19 years running the Steelers \u2014 a year to the day after McCarthy was let go in Dallas. “I didn\u2019t expect it,” McCarthy told me. “I don\u2019t think anybody did.” But it was real. And it all started to feel even more real when the Steelers called and invited him in for an interview on Jan. 21 \u2014 the 11th anniversary of the day his younger brother Joe died of a heart attack while playing racquetball at a local gym. McCarthy spent most of that day meeting with Steelers owner Art Rooney II, general manager Omar Khan and others in the organization. But then he got to go home to have pizza dinner with his parents, Joe Sr. and Ellen, his three sisters, and everyone else he could gather from the extended McCarthy clan. “It was heavy, because it was my brother\u2019s anniversary of his passing,” McCarthy told me. “Just to have the opportunity to spend a couple extra hours at home with my family, on that day, it almost \u2026 the reality gave me the feeling that \u2018Hey, there\u2019s a chance this might happen.\u2019” McCarthy has always been a “Yinzer” at heart. He was born and raised in what he called “inner city Pittsburgh,” just five miles to the West of where the Monongahela, Allegheny and Ohio Rivers meet, maybe a 15-minute ride to the site of old Three Rivers Stadium, where his beloved Steelers played for most of his life. He played three sports at the now-closed Bishop Boyle High School. He spent some time when he was home from college working at his father\u2019s local bar. Baseball and basketball were more his thing when he was growing up. He didn\u2019t start playing football until high school. But he knew what football meant to his city. There\u2019s nothing bigger than the Steelers to anyone from there. “I think that\u2019s part of the beauty of the fabric of our great city,” McCarthy told me. “It\u2019s totally intertwined with the Pittsburgh Steelers organization. No disrespect to the 31 other teams, but I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a professional franchise in sports that\u2019s more intertwined than we are with the city of Pittsburgh, the steel industry, the blue-collar background and how the city adjusted and grew. “Just the whole history of our surroundings is such a parallel to how we want to play the game, that we\u2019re willing to do whatever it takes to be successful. That\u2019s something that\u2019s been in place for over 50 years \u2014 the black helmets and the black shirts and the way this team plays.” That part is heavy, too, especially for someone who grew up seeing how the city lives and dies with how the Steelers do every Sunday in the fall. He\u2019s taking over for a coach who wore out his welcome despite not having a losing record in any one of his 19 seasons, and who reached the playoffs five times in the last six years. The last time the Steelers had a losing season was 23 years ago. The last Steelers coach who didn\u2019t win a Super Bowl for the franchise was Chuck Noll\u2019s predecessor, Bill Austin, who was fired a year before the AFL and NFL were fully and officially merged. It\u2019s a place where nothing short of a championship will ever be enough. “I\u2019m from the old school neighborhood, so trust me, I know how this thing goes,” McCarthy told me. “And I welcome that. We have an obligation to the generations before us to uphold the play style and the success that\u2019s gone on before us. And that\u2019s something I embrace.” All the other McCarthys embraced it too. When he was introduced as the new Steelers coach, just 11 days after Tomlin\u2019s exit, it was like a big family reunion at Acrisure Stadium, with relatives filling up the first couple of rows. There were more tears and more emotions than McCarthy thought he could ever have at once. But it just felt right, like it was always meant to happen. He met his wife and they had four of their five children during his years in Green Bay. He loved most of his time in Dallas working for the Jones family, too. But he could feel there\u2019s just something different about finally coming home. “As you go away to college around the country \u2014 and I\u2019ve been fortunate to be in the NFL for over 30 years \u2014 everybody knows,” McCarthy told me. “We all know who we are in the NFL. If you\u2019re from Western Pa., it\u2019s a bond. It\u2019s a pride component that you all root for each other, in a sense. I think that\u2019s unique. And I think anybody that knows me from my time in other parts of the country, they know where I\u2019m from and the pride that I have being from here.” Now it\u2019s part pride, but a lot more responsibility. Being the hometown hero will only go so far. His homecoming may be a great story, but for most of his fellow Yinzers, only bringing home the Steelers\u2019 seventh Super Bowl trophy will do. “Well, I wouldn\u2019t say I imagined it yet, but I\u2019m working toward that,” McCarthy told me. “That\u2019s why I do this. And now, to be able to do this back home, trust me, it\u2019s not lost on me how special this opportunity is. That\u2019s what gets me up in the morning. I wouldn\u2019t do this if I didn\u2019t think I could win the Super Bowl here.” He already won one, back in 2010 in Green Bay. But he knows doing it here would just be different. Because there really is no place like home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LATROBE, Pa. \u2014 Everyone who knows Mike McCarthy understood where his heart always belonged, even if his eyes and feet were firmly wherever else he was. Nothing against Green Bay or Dallas, two places with rich and storied football histories and traditions. Pittsburgh is just different, especially for a Pittsburgh kid. “This is where I\u2019m<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33457"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}