Brian Batko

But I think what a lot of fans went into this search post-Tomlin stepping down, their optimism stemmed from, well, the one thing the organization has always done well is hire a new coach and pick the right kind of young, energetic mind to get that done, even though they've never been in the seat before.

So...

Now we've got a little bit of circular logic of like, well, do you still trust them to do that when they did it in a very different way than the last three?

I guess that, you know, your mileage may vary on that depending on who you are.

No, one, I don't think that would do any good.

And two, I mean, I can't imagine that's where his mind is, right?

I mean, you've got to be coming in here with the positive outlook.

And, you know, for as much as the negativity is out there, and I know firsthand because I did my chat yesterday on the PG website, and, like, such a high percentage were people skeptical of the hire process.

criticizing the process.

And I wasn't trying to steer into or away from those kind of questions.

I was just taking them as they came in, basically.

And that was the tone and tenor of it.

But even that being said, you have to compartmentalize, okay, this is how a large portion of the fan base might feel about it.

But there's also the side story here.

The main story for them and McCarthy is,

This is a local guy coming back home, a bunch of success that he had away from Pittsburgh and what it's going to mean to him and family and countless friends now for him to be here.

So I think he's I think it's going to be a lot more about that and maybe not at all about, you know, whatever the outside perception might be for some people.

I couldn't even really hazard a guess.

I mean, I would think that the offensive coordinator will be someone Mike has worked with before, and I saw that Adam Schefter reported the first known offensive

interviewee is uh lunda wells his former tight ends coach so check that box but i mean i bring that up because he's going to be calling the plays i would think he's on record in the past of saying he's tinkered with uh not calling the plays and he won't do that again so uh that tells you based on his history that whoever has that role is going to be installing the game plan and