Pittsburgh Steelers Set Camp Dates for Mike McCarthy's First Summer in Latrobe

For the first time in nineteen years, the Pittsburgh Steelers are packing for Latrobe without Mike Tomlin, and this week the new regime put its first training camp on the calendar. The team's key dates dropped over the weekend: players report to Saint Vincent College on July 28, the first public practice runs July 29, and the Mike McCarthy era gets its first padded practice on August 3. That is the frame around everything in Pittsburgh Steelers news right now — a franchise that has not opened camp under a new head coach since 2007 is about to do exactly that, with a 42-year-old Aaron Rodgers at quarterback and a roster remade nearly everywhere else.

This Week: Camp Dates Locked In, Quarterback Math Debated

The camp schedule was the week's concrete news. Beyond the July 28 report date, the highlights include the Hall of Honor class announcement on August 1 during the league's Back Together Weekend, the annual night practice at Latrobe Memorial Stadium on August 8, and a Latrobe stay that wraps August 18 before the team shifts back to Pittsburgh. Saint Vincent College remains one of the last true away-from-home camps in the league, and it will be genuinely strange to see someone other than Tomlin holding court on that hillside.

The week's louder conversation was about arithmetic: the Steelers are carrying four quarterbacks into camp — Rodgers, Mason Rudolph, second-year man Will Howard and third-round rookie Drew Allar — and they cannot keep them all. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Christopher Carter argued this week that the team should let the competition run all summer and then trade the surplus arm rather than cut him, banking draft capital instead of eating a loss. It is not an official plan, but it tracks with how this front office operates, and McCarthy has been pointedly complimentary of Howard's spring. Somebody in that room is going to be elsewhere by September.

Life After Tomlin

The scale of the change still takes a second to absorb. Tomlin stepped down on January 13, one day after the Steelers' 30-6 wild-card humiliation at home against the Texans — a seventh consecutive playoff loss stretching back to the 2016 season. He left having tied Chuck Noll as the franchise's winningest coach and with an NFL-record 22nd straight non-losing season, an achievement that had somehow become both a badge and a burden. Weeks later, the Steelers hired Mike McCarthy, the Pittsburgh native, Super Bowl winner and former Packers and Cowboys head coach.

The culture shift has been immediate and visible. McCarthy hauled the benches and bleachers off the practice fields, moved practices to late morning, restructured the entire meeting calendar, and ran eight structured installation sessions this spring with the fervor of a man who has been drawing up this program in a notebook for two years. The players, notably, sound bought in. “You don't see benches out here anymore,” T.J. Watt said. “Change is good for me.” Cameron Heyward, entering his 16th season, was more philosophical: “Put your ego aside and just learn.” New defensive coordinator Patrick Graham is installing his own ideas on that side of the ball, which means even the franchise's cornerstones are back in school this summer. Watt admitted as much: “It's been a lot. Not going to lie... a lot of studying, a lot of learning.” McCarthy's own summary of his philosophy doubles as a mission statement for the whole reset: “The pompoms flying around and yelling, screaming isn't going to do anything. We need to learn the offense, learn the defense.”

Rodgers, One More Year

The quarterback plan is the McCarthy hire's most obvious corollary. Rodgers, who turns 43 in December, re-signed on a one-year deal worth up to $25 million after a debut Pittsburgh season that was better than the ending suggested: a 65.7 percent completion rate, 3,322 yards, 24 touchdowns against just 7 interceptions, a 94.8 rating and a 10-6 record in his 16 starts as the Steelers won the AFC North. Then came the Houston game, a 30-6 faceplant in which nothing worked and Rodgers coughed up a fumble that summed up the afternoon.

Now he gets a reunion with the coach who ran his offense for 14 seasons in Green Bay, and he has said this season will be his last. The Steelers spent accordingly. They traded for Michael Pittman Jr., giving Rodgers the kind of big-bodied, reliable-hands possession target he has always made a living with, and used the 47th pick on Alabama's Germie Bernard to add another young receiver to the pipeline. If the front office's math is right, Rodgers' farewell tour comes with the best supporting cast he has had in years. If it is wrong, Howard and Allar are the future waiting in the wings — which is precisely why the team drafted Allar in the third round despite the crowded room.

Omar Khan's Offseason Haul

General manager Omar Khan was busy enough this offseason that local outlets spent the week ranking his moves like a draft class. The consensus top of the list: the McCarthy hire, the Pittman trade, extensions for tight end Darnell Washington and pass rusher Nick Herbig, and the Rodgers re-signing. The middle class is deep — safety Jaquan Brisker on a $5.5 million deal, running back Rico Dowdle on two years, corner Jamel Dean, defensive lineman Sebastian Joseph-Day, safety Darnell Savage, and a re-signed Asante Samuel Jr. Chris Boswell got extended, Cameron Johnston replaced Corliss Waitman at punter, and Jonnu Smith was cut a year after arriving.

The draft class leans heavily toward the trenches and the future:

• Round 1 (No. 21): Max Iheanachor, OT, Arizona State
• Round 2 (No. 47): Germie Bernard, WR, Alabama
• Round 3 (No. 76): Drew Allar, QB, Penn State
• Round 3 (No. 85): Daylen Everette, CB, Georgia
• Round 3 (No. 96): Gennings Dunker, G, Iowa

Iheanachor's camp will be watched closely — first-round tackles in Pittsburgh are expected to play early — and Everette walks into a corner room where Dean, Samuel and company will make him earn every snap. The beat sites, meanwhile, have been grinding through their position-by-position camp previews all week; the outside linebacker installment landed Monday, and the short version is that behind Watt and the newly extended Herbig, the depth chart is a genuine open competition — exactly the kind of thing Latrobe exists to sort out.

What's Next on the Steelers Calendar

The runway from here is short. Report day is July 28, pads come on August 3, and the preseason opens August 13 at Acrisure Stadium against, of course, Green Bay — McCarthy and Rodgers against the franchise where they won a Super Bowl together, in an exhibition game that will draw a very non-exhibition audience. The Jets visit on August 21, the preseason closes August 27 in Buffalo, and then the real opener: September 13 at home against the Falcons, a 1 p.m. FOX kickoff and only the second home opener for the franchise since 2014.

So this is where the Pittsburgh Steelers stand a week out: new coach, old quarterback, remodeled roster, and a fan base that has spent two decades knowing exactly what its team was — steady, competent, and stuck on one playoff win since 2016. The whole point of this offseason was to get unstuck. Whether McCarthy's structure and Rodgers' last ride actually deliver that is a question for January, but the first evidence arrives at Saint Vincent College in seven days, and Steelers news is about to get a lot less theoretical.