LATROBE, Pa. (AP) — Mike McCarthy arrived at Saint Vincent College for his first training camp as coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers with a detailed plan designed to maximize the club's annual three-week trip to the western Pennsylvania hills.
Mother Nature wreaked havoc with it, so much so that McCarthy opted to break camp a day early so the Steelers could get into a familiar routine back at the team's headquarters ahead of a visit from the New York Jets on Friday night.
While McCarthy allowed that he was a mixture of disappointed and annoyed, he dismissed the idea that making the trek an hour east of Pittsburgh wasn't worth it.
“I’m actually looking forward to next year,” McCarthy said Monday, after the club canceled what became its final camp practice following another round of storms that have deluged the area over the last month.
McCarthy already is kicking around ideas on the “little things” he might change in 2027 now that he'll have a better idea of what to expect. The one thing he has no plans to alter is the decision to immerse the 90-man camp roster into the familiar rhythms of a place the franchise has called home almost every summer since the 1960s.
“As far as the support staff, facilities, Saint Vincent’s, just as a whole, it’s an A-plus,” McCarthy said. “I really think this is not only a special place, but this is a great place to train the football team, you know, just the whole environment.”
The Steelers are one of the increasingly few teams that go away for camp. While the team building can sort of be replicated by putting the players in close quarters at a hotel if they chose to train in Pittsburgh, McCarthy thinks it's not quite the same.
“The conversations these men have at dinner, at night, on the pool table, all those things,” he said. “To me, training camp is critical for your football team.”
While a new indoor practice facility allowed the Steelers to get some work in when the weather didn't cooperate, McCarthy doesn't think it can come close to the intensity of practicing in front of thousands of fans at Chuck Noll Field.
“In some ways disappointing to leave here because this is such a great environment for us to train in,” he said. “It’s disappointing, probably for the fans just because I mean, those are our best practices when everybody's out there.”
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