Munchak is leaving for Broncos position
The Steelers not only expect to lose two of their best players this year, but now they’ve also lost a great coach.
Mike Munchak, who coached the offensive line into one of the best in the NFL since he joined them in 2014, accepted the same job with the Denver Broncos.
To fill Munchak’s spot, the Steelers promoted Shaun Sarrett, who served as assistant offensive line coach last season. Sarrett, a lineman at Kent State, was an offensive assistant from 2012-17 and also held coaching positions at Duke and Marshall.
Munchak was one of two finalists to be head coach of the Broncos this year, a job that went to the other finalist, former Chicago Bears defensive coordinator Vic Fangio. But Broncos CEO John Elway came away from his interviews with Munchak impressed enough that he offered him the job
to coach Denver’s line.
Munchak, whose contract expired after this past season, was extremely close to his linemen with the Steelers, and vice versa. Probably the main reason he took the Denver job was to be close to his daughter and granddaughter, who live there.
“When we’re in the room, I look at them like family,’’ Munchak told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Ron Cook in November. “Like I talk to my daughters ... I just hope I’ve been helpful to them.”
The Steelers hired Munchak, 58, a Penn State graduate and Scranton, Pa., native, after he was fired as head coach of the Tennessee Titans, where he previously was offensive line coach for 14 seasons.
His hiring was hailed in many corners as the Steelers’ best free-agent acquisition of 2014, and the results bore that out. He had three linemen make the Pro Bowl in each of the past two seasons — David DeCastro, Maurkice Pouncey and Alejandro Villanueva.
Munchak told Cook that “when you’re in an organization like [the Steelers], I don’t think there are any better. I don’t know why you would want to go anywhere else. For me, it’s a good fit.”
Munchak was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2001 after playing guard for 12 seasons with the Houston Oilers, nine of them landing in the Pro Bowl. He was the Oilers’ first-round draft choice in 1982.
He started coaching with Houston in 1994, immediately after his retirement, first as an offensive assistant and then as line coach in 1997 with the Oilers and when the franchise moved to Tennessee. He remained in that position until the Titans hired him as their head coach in 2011. He remained in that job until he refused to fire six assistant coaches at the behest of management after the 2013 season and was subsequently fired.