Steelers to hire coach Mike McCarthy: Answering 6 questions - ESPN

Sixteen years after beating Mike Tomlin in Super Bowl XLV, former Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy is succeeding him as the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Steelers entered into a verbal agreement to hire the 62-year-old, a Pittsburgh native, as just their fourth head coach since 1969, the team announced Saturday afternoon. McCarthy is now the oldest head coach in franchise history. Chuck Noll, who retired 10 days shy of his 60th birthday, was previously the oldest.

His selection, coming 11 days after Tomlin told his team he was resigning after 19 seasons as the Steelers' coach, is a significant departure from the organization's previous history of hiring up-and-coming defensive minds without prior NFL head coaching experience, signaling the team's desire to win now.

After failing to reach an extension with the Dallas Cowboys following the 2024 season, McCarthy spent the 2025 season away from coaching. McCarthy now becomes the first person to be the head coach of three iconic NFL franchises in the Steelers, Cowboys and Green Bay Packers, where he got his start as a head coach in 2006 and remained until he was fired in 2018.

Steelers reporter Brooke Pryor, NFL reporter Kevin Seifert, national NFL reporter Jeremy Fowler, NFL draft analyst Matt Miller and NFL analyst Ben Solak answer all the pressing questions in the wake of McCarthy's hiring.

Days after Tomlin walked away on Jan. 13 as the Steelers' head coach, team president Art Rooney II said he wanted to compete from «day one.» He also said he didn't like the word «rebuild.» In hiring McCarthy over younger, less proven candidates, Rooney emphasized his desire to win now with the league's third-oldest active head coach (behind