Aaron Rodgers’ heated exchange with head coach Mike McCarthy has raised serious concerns in the locker room. Now, things have escalated to a point that McCarthy’s approach is being compared to the Steelers’ former head coach Mike Tomlin.
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“Would never happen if Mike Tomlin was on that sideline,” Le’Veon Bell said on the White House with Michael Irvin podcast. “Never. He’s not grabbing that headset, screaming, I don’t even know who he’s yelling at. Mike Tomlin, that’s never happened with him.
“But you can see that’s the change in culture. It’s a different change in culture when I’m looking at it on the sidelines. The Steelers look different. T.J. was never like that. You don’t ever see T.J. just going off. If he’s going off, he’s going off on his team or the guys, pumping them up. Never on the coaches upstairs.”
Both of them got into a weird spot during a Browns game. The heated moment happened in the first quarter as Rodgers was waiting for McCarthy to give him the next play and appeared frustrated by the delay. The QB was heard saying, “What the f–k? Call it!”
McCarthy fired back with a “F–king a–hole.”
McCarthy was Rodgers’ head coach at Green Bay for 13 seasons. At Pittsburgh, fans thought that connection would be an advantage during what is clearly the quarterback’s final season. Little did they know, they would have to see them exchanging expletives.
“I wouldn’t classify it as normal,” McCarthy said about that moment on the field. “But I think the reality of it is, you know, it’s a 20-year relationship. I think the fact that we were able to sit and talk numerous times, you know, over the weekend, about that and a number of things.”
Rodgers was not the only Steelers player losing his cool. A frustrated T.J. Watt borrowed a coach’s headset and spoke with defensive coordinator Patrick Graham in the booth. Cam Heyward was also seen yelling on the bench as things started to boil over.
It’s not like there were no issues during Mike Tomlin’s time. In the fourth quarter of the Steelers vs. Browns game in the 2020 playoffs, JuJu Smith-Schuster appeared upset about something Tomlin told him. After the Steelers scored a touchdown to get within two points, Smith-Schuster walked away while Tomlin was still talking to him. He then turned around and briefly got in Tomlin’s face.
McCarthy was always going to be different from Tomlin. We saw that in training camp this year.
During one session, Steel Curtain Network’s Kevin Smith noted that McCarthy could not be spotted on the field since he was personally looking into young quarterbacks Will Howard and Drew Allar’s drills. Smith noted that Tomlin would otherwise be seen on the field at all times, “barking out instructions” to the team.
“McCarthy seems comfortable yielding control of the team to his assistants when he feels it’s warranted,” Smith wrote. “Which isn’t to say Tomlin was a micro-manager. He wasn’t. But he was absolutely the ring-master. McCarthy still sets the tone, but he doesn’t feel the need to be front and center all the time.”
During training camp, players were given T-shirts that carried the following message: “More than talented. More than tough. Tempered.”
That last word threw many off guard. The Steelers were a lot of things, but never mellowed down.
“We’re used to a hundred miles an hour, nonstop, and we’re kind of dead tired by the end of practice,” Steelers guard Spencer Anderson told ESPN. “But now we can kind of temper it down, and we still have maybe 10% left in the tank. But obviously don’t tell [McCarthy] I said that.”
There are other notable changes too: McCarthy uses a weekly rotation of team captains, whereas Pittsburgh had a longstanding tradition of veterans being named team captain. Dallas Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer scrapped the practice in his second year of leading the franchise.
A tempered Pittsburgh Steelers is now 2-2 in the season after falling to the Cleveland Browns. Was Mike McCarthy the right hire to steer the team to glory? We will have to wait and watch.