“You can take the people outta Pittsburgh, but you will never take the Pittsburgh out of people,” Bill Cowher said on Christian Kuntz’s podcast about head coach Mike McCarthy, acknowledging that the Pittsburgh Steelers‘ new head coach fell right back into being a Yinzer soon after getting the job. But if you ask Kuntz, he’ll tell you exactly how deeply McCarthy is rooted in Pittsburgh and what it means for him to lead the franchise.

“You go to a new team, and you got to experience and get comfortable wearing the new colors, and he’s like, ‘You know, when you’re blessed beyond measure, and you get to wear the same colors that you came home in from Mercy hospital,’ that gave me goosebumps,” Kuntz said this week. “I came from Magee Hospital, but I was fired up like that. And he was crying, like, that’s life-changing. That was cool. Like, that shows you this guy’s deeply rooted here in Pittsburgh.”

McCarthy is a Pittsburgh native, having grown up in Greenfield on the east bank of the Monongahela River. Before becoming an NFL coach, he spent time as a graduate assistant for the Pittsburgh Panthers from 1989 to 1991 and then as the team’s wide receivers coach in 1992 before eventually entering the NFL.

But McCarthy always wanted to coach the Pittsburgh Steelers. Meanwhile, the franchise was going through just three head coaches in over half a century and rarely changed leadership. McCarthy, in the meantime, spent over a decade as the Green Bay Packers‘ head coach and then led the Dallas Cowboys before returning to his hometown.

This is why, when Steelers’ long snapper Kuntz revealed McCarthy’s heartfelt statement, it carried significant weight. Because just like McCarthy spent time in Kansas City, New Orleans, San Francisco, Green Bay, and Dallas before his homecoming, Kuntz also stopped by New England, Denver, and Jacksonville before joining the Steelers.

The 32-year-old is a Yinzer himself, having graduated from Chartiers Valley High School, just southwest of the city, and completing his collegiate career at Duquesne University in downtown Pittsburgh. So, it’s safe to say that there’s a thing or two that Kuntz knows McCarthy felt after becoming the Steelers head coach. In fact, he was one of the first people to catch McCarthy’s accent in his intro speech.

“It was our first day of voluntary workouts, and it was Coach McCarthy’s first day of addressing the team,” he said. “He was probably a little nervous, but he had some juice about him. And I feel like his accent even came out more than it has ever had. He used ‘jagoff,’ he was talking about Kennywood. Muth (tight end Pat Freiermuth) turned around when he said ‘jagoff,’ and looked at me, and I’m smiling ear to ear. I felt like I was listening to my dad teach our team back in Little League.”

The Steelers hired McCarthy earlier this offseason after Mike Tomlin stepped down from the position following a disappointing wild-card loss in January. In his introductory press conference, McCarthy admitted how much this job means to him and his family and emphasized that Pittsburgh means the world to him.

“I understand and embrace the responsibility of the privilege and the weight that comes with the stewardship. The city, this franchise, this fanbase means the world to me, because Pittsburgh is my world, and it’s just awesome to be back here,” the head coach said.

That said, the Steelers haven’t won a playoff game in a decade. But this year, the franchise is heading into the 2026 season with an offensive-minded head coach for the first time in over half a century. So, it won’t be wrong to say that Pittsburgh is going to have so many expectations from Mike McCarthy as he enters his first season as the Steelers’ head coach.