Steelers Burning Question: Ranking Steelers Offensive Coordinators
Last season I did the Friday Night Steelers Six Pack and wondered if it was worth doing further. After all, interaction was not great, and sometimes you just have to adjust. So I decided to call an audible, and not just abandon the Friday night meeting of the black-and-gold minds.
Instead of six questions, I wanted to focus solely on one question.
We’ll still do the preamble of what you’re eating/drinking/listening to, but we’ll focus our attention on the one Steelers question of the week. Don’t worry, most weeks I’ll do a bonus/extra credit question for fun. With all that out of the way, let’s get to the question!
How would you rank the Steelers Offensive Coordinators?
I was shocked to see the Steelers have only employed an OC since 1983. But here is what I want from you, the community. Who are your Top 5 Offensive Coordinators? I feel as if we have to throw out Arthur Smith with only one year of experience at the helm. So, who is your Top 5, in order? (HINT: This might come up in an article series on SCN soon…)
Here are the coordinators in team history:
If I had to pick my Top 5, I’d go with the following:
1 – Ken Whisenhunt
2 – Todd Haley
3 – Bruce Arians
4 – Mike Mularkey
5 – Chan Gailey
This was tough for me on a lot of fronts. I did use winning percentage as a measuring stick, but it wasn’t the sole basis of my decision. The Steelers haven’t had an incredible list of play callers in team history, with some forgettable names throughout the list.
Nonetheless, I went with Whisenhunt as the top because he had the winning percentage, won a Super Bowl, and turned his job into a head coaching gig with the Arizona Cardinals. Haley had the most talent by far, and Arians almost got Ben Roethlisberger killed on his way to a Super Bowl. I did think Mularkey did a good job, both he and Whisenhunt were very creative play callers, and Chan Gailey was better than most might remember since he only did the job two seasons before becoming the Dallas Cowboys head coach in 1998.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments section below!
As for what I’m eating, it’s homemade pizza and salad. As for drink, it’s always store bought kombucha, as usual, and the tunes will be whatever my family wants to hear!
Happy Friday everyone!!
Burgers and Cabernet, about to watch Rocky (my SO has never seen it)
This is a great burning question! It was a tough one but ultimately, I went with your top five. The only change I made was swapping Haley and Arians.
So your rankings are:
1 – Ken Whisenhunt
2 – Bruce Arians
3 – Todd Haley
4 – Mike Mularkey
5 – Chan Gailey
Also, never seen Rocky?!?!?!!?
That would be my personal ranking!
As for Rocky, I watch it on a yearly basis because it’s one of my favorite sports movies of all time! I’ve been begging my SO to watch it for years and she finally caved lol. She hates sports movies, but she really liked it. I was quite surprised.
Indoctrinating another in the wonder that is Rocky, good on you skyfire.
Extremely happy! Used to read the articles produced by the writers here on another site. No idea what happened but I’m glad I found this site and group of writers! To say there was a content drop off at the other site is an understatement.
WELCOME!!!
Glad to have you here! Tell anyone you know who might not know about us!
You’ll recognize some of the commenters from the old site as well. There still aren’t a ton of us but Rome wasn’t built in a day either.
I’m hoping the new site/layout/comment section will get some to transition over to SCN.
Is there a space specifically for site feedback space? An article / thread / whatever?
You can use any thread you’d like, or you can email me feedback.
I’ll do the best I can, just know I’m NOT a web developer lol
bngblitz@gmail.com
Still have the home improvement project going, and now I’m working 60 hours at work, so I stood at my sink and ate a can of spaghetti-o’s with meatballs right from the can like a savage. Chugged a Gatorade, and now I have to walk my dog – the highlight of this day! No music, the TV’s on but I’m really not sure what’s on it.
I’ve never given this any thought, my knee jerk would be Whisenhunt, but I base that on nothing other than memory.
It’s really tough to rank offensive coordinators without acknowledging the gap in talent that accompanied a lot of these guys. I mean, Ken Whisenhunt, Todd Haley et al had prime Ben Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown, Marquis Pouncey, Heath Miller and a host of other all-stars to coach. Matt Canada, Joe Walton et al had Mitch Trubisky, Kent Graham, Dwight Stone and guys like that. It’s tough be apples to apples.
Still, although he never got the team to the Super Bowl, I have to go with Todd Haley. Virtually all of the Steelers’ meaningful offensive records occurred under his watch. His tenure likely extended Ben’s career as well. Really, it can be argued that those teams didn’t make it to a Super Bowl more because of Tom Brady’s greatness than anything else.
I’d put Haley in front of Arians.
A lot of “his” playoff losses were totally from the D collapsing. O puts up 42 points on the Jags and the D says Hold mah beer. Give Haley a consistent D like Arians had, his W/L numbers would look great.
I agree with this 100% 4th! I’d take Haley over Arians all day.
Am I really supposed to believe that Fans would rather have Haley? Let me remind everyone that the fanbase was very very very vocal about wanting Haley gone after the JVille loss. This brings me to something I told fans on another Steeler Website: Fans complain about the OC position because they want the job for themselves. No matter whose calling plays Fans always have something to complain about so in reality it tells me that fans have nothing better to do on NFL Sundays than yak about the Steelers OC.
I sometimes whether the past OC’s of the team will actually say in Private that they can’t stand Steeler Fans for their constant harping about their play calling and never giving them credit for a job well done when they win.