Larry Foote remembers thinking when the Steelers hired Mike Tomlin as head coach that maybe he could do this someday, too. After all, Tomlin was only 34, and Foote was nearing his late 20s, still with plenty of gas in the tank for his playing career.
When it came time for Foote to hang up his cleats and think about his next step, Tomlin may have been an inspiration, but Bruce Arians was his shepherd.
“He put a lot of pressure on me,” Foote was saying this week in the run-up to the Super Bowl. “When I tried to retire, he said, ‘Nah, you’re going to be a coach. You’re going to be a hell of a coach, and you’re going to be a coordinator one day in this league.’ Just that confidence he gave me, I took it and ran with it.”
Surely, Foote wasn’t the only one who seized upon such a conversation with Arians. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have 29 coaches listed on their roster, a staff assembled by Arians, who was the Steelers offensive coordinator for their most recent Super Bowl runs. Five of them won at least one Super Bowl with him in Pittsburgh, including two of his top three assistants. Three others are from Western Pennsylvania, one is in Pitt’s athletics Hall of Fame and another was Steelers offensive coordinator way back under Chuck Noll. There’s even an assistant who’s the son of a former Steelers coach.
Most notable among the Steelers-turned-Buccaneers are wide receiver Antonio Brown, defensive lineman Steve McLendon and defensive back Ross Cockrell. Teammates Rob Gronkowski, LeSean McCoy, Justin Watson and Jordan Whitehead played locally in high school or college (or both), while rookie defensive tackle Khalil Davis is the twin of Steelers defensive lineman Carlos Davis. Even Moon High School graduate A.Q. Shipley is on Tampa Bay’s injured reserve.
But on the coaching side, there’s Foote, the outside linebackers coach, and Antwaan Randle El, an offensive assistant. Closer to the top of the masthead are Harold Goodwin, assistant head coach/run game coordinator, and Byron Leftwich, offensive coordinator. “Goody” was a member of Tomlin’s original Steelers staff as offensive line coach, and Leftwich was Ben Roethlisberger’s backup in 2008, 2010 and 2012, when he retired. Both were with Arians in Arizona, then followed him to Tampa when he took the Buccaneers job two seasons ago.
“I just think it’s a situation where we all walked in the door, when we got the call from B.A., as soon as we showed up in the building, everybody knew what to do,” Goodwin said this week. “He didn’t have to set the expectation. The expectation had been set years ago.”
And now they’re having more success than ever, thanks in large part to a quarterback who used to torment their teams at Heinz Field. Tom Brady has been “the missing piece,” as Arians put it Tuesday, but when you’re one of the only two teams still playing into February, there’s plenty of credit to go around.
Leftwich figures to be a fast riser in the NFL world. He just turned 41 in January, and he’s only in his fourth season coaching at any level. Like Foote, he recalls Arians convincing him to give it a shot, and now he’ll be calling plays on the biggest stage there is.
“B.A. always wanted me to coach. It was just something I wasn’t ready to do,” said Leftwich, who added that he also kept in touch with Roethlisberger to talk ball and the Steelers. “I never really got away from football. I just wasn’t in the meetings. I still had communication with a bunch of guys who were in the league.”
Working closely with Brady, who’s actually two years his senior, Leftwich still gets plenty of input from the head coach, as well, but Arians says he’s “running the show” on offense.
Goodwin, too, is heavily involved in the game plan each week. And, at 47, he could be an NFL offensive coordinator or head coach someday himself. He’s part of a Steelers coaching tree that hasn’t produced many high-profile names of late, but he’s quick to point out what he learned in Pittsburgh.
“Mike Tomlin does a great job of finding ways to motivate all his players,” Goodwin said, “from the guy at the bottom of the roster to the guy at the top of the roster.”
Everyone in the Buccaneers organization can relish having the Super Bowl played in their home stadium, but for the Steelers segment, it’s doubly sweet deja vu. They hoisted the Lombardi Trophy in the same venue back in 2009, with Foote, Leftwich, Arians and Goodwin all being part of it.
Of course, going back now as a coach, Foote takes the approach of a “proud papa” rather than an active participant.
“I remember as a player, there was a party every night,” Foote remembered. “By the time we got around to Wednesday, we kind of hunkered in on the game and put all the Super Bowl festivities to the side. As a coach, I’m old now. My wife and kids are waiting on me to come home and do daddy stuff.”
But don’t think for a second that one of many former hard-hitting Steelers linebackers isn’t soaking it all in. Foote was all smiles discussing how he’s gone from Super Bowl-winning player to potential Super Bowl-winning coach.
“I think [Arians] recognized the leadership I brought to the game. I still like to think I was just a heck of an athlete and that’s why I made it all those years in the league,” grinned Foote, who was known for being a bit undersized for his position. “He’s not the only one who reminds me it was because of my play from the neck up that I survived so long in this league. But I’m still going to tell everybody I was bigger, stronger and faster.”
Beyond those Steelers connections, the Buccaneers have New Castle native Nick Rapone as secondary coach, Aliquippa’s Anthony Piroli as head strength and conditioning coach and Ambridge’s Cory Bichey as one of Piroli’s assistants. Roger Kingdom, an Olympic sprinter who was an NCAA champion at Pitt, is the speed and conditioning coach. Cory Grimm, son of Pitt great and former Steelers offensive coach Russ Grimm, is a defensive and special teams assistant.
Some of the longer-tenured Steelers fans might even remember the name of Tom Moore, who was on Chuck Noll’s staff from 1977-1989, serving as offensive coordinator the final seven years. He’s now an offensive consultant in Tampa Bay at the age of 82.
“I want to coach until physically or mentally I can’t, or until I die,” said Moore, who’s in his 41st season. “There is absolutely nothing about working that turns me off. I want to coach as long as I can or as long as someone will hire me. I want to come back next year and the next year and the next year.”
