McCarthy’s Old Volume Rule Meets a 3-Point Night

Mike McCarthy is cutting the Steelers’ offensive volume after a 20-3 loss to the Patriots on Sept. 20, citing a lesson from Marty Schottenheimer. Pittsburgh finished with 278 yards, went 2 of 12 on third down, and never reached the end zone. McCarthy said he felt the plan was too big on Wednesday and Thursday, then ran it in Foxborough anyway.

That is the same fix he has reached for when an offense gets sloppy. The personnel talk is loud. The first lever he named is a smaller script.

A 20-3 Loss McCarthy Saw Coming on Wednesday

New England scored on a 39-yard TreVeyon Henderson run, two field goals, and a 19-yard fumble return by Elijah Ponder. Pittsburgh’s only points came on a Chris Boswell field goal at the end of the second quarter. The Steelers held the ball for 32 minutes, 47 seconds and still left Gillette Stadium 1-1.

McCarthy did not hide from his postgame press conference in Foxborough. “Offensively, clearly not good enough. That starts with me,” he said. He called the week “herky-jerky” in the run and the pass, said the protection work did not show up, and told reporters to fire at him if they needed a name.

“I felt it on Wednesday and Thursday. I’m a veteran coach. I know better. I didn’t do a good job,” McCarthy said. Aaron Rodgers, asked the same midweek read, was less sure. “I didn’t feel that way maybe Wednesday, Thursday. I felt like it was a grind,” he said.

That gap is the part that travels. If the head coach already thought the menu was too fat in practice, the game plan that went out on Sunday was a choice. He still expected to win, and he said the defense had done enough by holding New England to 13 points on offense.

The Volume Rule He Learned From Marty Schottenheimer

McCarthy did not invent this language in Pittsburgh. He spent his Kansas City years under Schottenheimer, and he still talks about that staff the way a lineman talks about his first position coach. The rule was simple. If the operation is not clean, you take plays out of the plan until it is.

MCCARTHY ON VOLUME

1. Kansas City, under Marty Schottenheimer: McCarthy learns the clean-it-up rule as a young assistant, the lesson he still names first.
2. October 2024, Dallas: With a shuffled roster, he says any time personnel changes, you take a hard look at volume, and that “less volume, more creativity is something that I’ve always lived by.”
3. Sept. 20, 2026, Foxborough: He calls himself “some old bastard that didn’t do it this week” and says the volume is getting cut down.

The Packers years sit in the same file. PFF found those Green Bay teams dropped back on 66.2 percent of plays from 2014 through 2018, among the most pass-heavy in the league. He has also overseen 12 top-10 scoring offenses and eight top-five finishes. Pittsburgh hired that résumé after years of defensive head coaches, and he is calling the plays himself.

We’ve got to look at the volume, too. That’s Marty Schottenheimer, that was his thing. It was a great lesson for a young coach to learn, and here I am some old bastard that didn’t do it this week. If it’s not clean, you cut the volume down, and we’re not clean on offense. So, the volume is getting cut down. That’s the first starting point, and that’s my fault.

Mike McCarthy, Steelers head coach, postgame press conference, Sept. 20, 2026

He has used the other side of the sentence too. In Dallas he said that when volume goes down, the staff has to be more creative. Pittsburgh is about to test whether a first-year mix of coaches and players can do both at once.

39 Passes, 187 Yards, Zero Touchdowns

Rodgers went 23 of 39 for 187 yards, no touchdowns, and one interception. His passer rating was 60.5, and he averaged 4.8 yards per attempt. Mason Rudolph took the last snaps in a situational finish, missed his only throw, and ran once for 3 yards.

A week earlier, in a 20-13 win over Atlanta, Rodgers was 24 of 40 for 221 yards and a 6-yard touchdown to Pat Freiermuth. T.J. Watt added a 35-yard pick-six, his first, and Rodgers handed McCarthy a game ball. The offense still needed the defense to finish that one.

WEEK 1 AND WEEK 2 ON OFFENSE

Through two weeks the Steelers have one offensive touchdown. Rodgers put the scoring in plain numbers: the defense is holding teams around 13 points, and the offense is averaging about 8. “That’s not winning football,” he said. He also said there were too many three-and-outs, and that nobody on offense had an exceptional game.

Metcalf, the Line, and a Blindside Hit

Wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr. was out with a foot injury, which left DK Metcalf as the clear No. 1. Christian Gonzalez followed him, including into the slot. Metcalf caught 4 passes for 27 yards on 9 targets and dropped two, one on a third down with New England up 7. Until late, he had as many drops as receiving yards. He has 8 catches on 19 targets through two games.

The Steelers paid twice for that job, first with a second-round pick and then with a four-year, $132 million extension that included $60 million guaranteed at signing. Rodgers said he is not worried. “We’re going to get it sorted out. We’ve been on the same page since I came back,” he said.

The line was the other half of the mess. Pro Football Focus tracked 4 sacks and 12 pressures. Rodgers got the ball out in 2.73 seconds on average, threw 21 of 39 attempts in under 2.5 seconds, and averaged 4.4 air yards per throw. He said New England brought a lot of six-man pressure and that the pocket was not stable. He also thought they got to him once. The box score had four sacks.

THE BREAKDOWNS IN FOXBOROUGH

• The Elliss hit: Christian Elliss came free on a six-man pressure when left tackle Troy Fautanu and left guard Mason McCormick blocked the same man, and Rico Dowdle missed his assignment on the other side, turning the play into fourth-and-43.
• The strip: Christian Barmore drove right guard Spencer Anderson into the backfield, punched the ball out, and Ponder scored from 19 yards.
• The traffic: Center Zach Frazier got pushed back on a play meant to sneak Metcalf across the formation, and the receiver ran into him.
• The underneath night: Germie Bernard led the team with 35 yards on 4 catches, Roman Wilson had 5 for 28, and Jaylen Warren’s 34 yards on 2 catches outgained Metcalf.

McCarthy said he would look at Bernard and Wilson after Pittman’s absence. Rudolph’s entry, he said, was situational. He had no injury update on Dowdle in the moment. Jaylen Warren led the rush with 43 yards on 11 carries. Dowdle had 22 on 7. Travis Homer added 16 on 2 late carries that padded a 91-yard, 4.0-yard average.

What a Smaller Playbook Does to This Roster

When McCarthy says volume, he means the number of plays in the weekly plan, not the number of throws on Sunday. He said you can feel when the envelope is being pushed, and that this is still year one of the staff and the players together. “We’ve got a quarterback that could play at any volume of game plan, but at the end of the day, it’s a team game,” he said.

He does not want the smaller script to become a dink-and-dunk team. “I don’t want to dink and dunk and play keep-away football,” McCarthy said. “There’s a place for that maybe situationally, but that’s not the philosophy. We have to attempt to get the ball thrown downfield.”

That is the hard part of the old rule. A thinner menu can clean up the mix-ups that left Elliss and Barmore free. It can also starve a receiver who needs shots, and it can leave a 42-year-old quarterback throwing the same handful of plays at a defense that just sat on them. Rodgers asked for a tighter loop with the staff. He wants to tell McCarthy what is working and what is not, so the next call has a better chance.

Asked about lineup changes, McCarthy would not close the door. “It’s two weeks,” he said. The buzzwords, he added, are that everything is correctable, which he called true, “but if you’re making the same mistakes, those are the things, whether you’re young or a veteran, that’s what we have to address.” Right tackle Dylan Cook and first-round pick Max Iheanachor are already on that line. McCarthy did not name a swap. He named the plan.

Rodgers’s other line was about panic. “You’re not going to see me panic. I don’t think Mike’s going to panic. Urgency is going to go up a little bit for sure, but no panic,” he said. Urgency without a smaller, cleaner operation is what Sunday already looked like.

Joe Burrow Comes to Acrisure at 2-0

Cincinnati is 2-0 and comes to Acrisure Stadium on Sunday, Sept. 27, at 1 p.m. ET. Joe Burrow went 20 of 31 for 207 yards and two touchdowns against Houston, and Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins combined for 12 catches, 170 yards, and both scores. Burrow called that game incredibly average and said the 2-0 record is what matters. He had been dealing with back tightness and still played.

Pittsburgh then goes to Cleveland on Thursday, Oct. 1. There is almost no time to install a new identity, only time to run fewer things faster. McCarthy already said the defense has played well enough to win two weeks in a row. The next opponent will not wait for the Steelers’ details to catch up to the résumé that got him hired.

The Schottenheimer rule is now on the calendar. Cut the volume, get clean, or take the same herky-jerky operation into a division game against a quarterback who is 2-0 and still unsatisfied.