Steelers Candidate For Passing Coordinator Has A Unique Connection NFL Great Peyton Manning

The Pittsburgh Steelers are looking into adding more faces to their offensive staff for the 2024 season after adding former Atlanta Falcons Head Coach Arthur Smith as the new offensive coordinator. As the team decided to go with a coach with a proven track record in the run game, it would make sense for the organization to add someone with a good knowledge of the passing game as well. Tom Arth has spent the last two seasons on the Los Angeles Chargers' staff as their passing game specialist. Before he transitioned to the coaching ranks, Arth had a unique opportunity to learn from one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game. 

Arth was a prolific college quarterback at Division II school John Carroll. In four years as the starting quarterback, he had 10,345 yards and 89 touchdowns while also taking the team to its first NCAA Division II Final Four appearance in 2002. He would later return to the school as a head coach after his professional career ended and led the Blue Streaks to a 40-8 record in four seasons. 

During his stint as the boss at John Carroll, he hired former Chargers Head Coach Brandon Staley as his defensive coordinator and secondary coach. This connection to Staley and then-Chargers General Manager Tom Telesco helped him get the job with the Chargers before the 2022 season. 

Long before he landed his first NFL job as a coach, Arth was looking to make his dream of becoming an NFL quarterback come true. After falling out of the 2003 NFL Draft, Arth landed with the Indianapolis Colts as an undrafted free agent. He spent the 2003, 2004 and 2005 seasons with the organization, but never played a game. He did play a pair of seasons in NFL Europa in the NFL offseason, playing with the Scottish Claymores (2004) and the Hamburg Sea Devils (2005).

After leaving the Colts, he was in camp with the Green Bay Packers in 2006, but was cut before the season. He tried out for the Toronto Argonauts in 2007, but was cut in June. He played one season for the Grand Rapids Rampage of the Arena Football League (AFL) and another for Georgia Force of the AFL in 2008 before his coaching career began.

Steelers Potential Hire Arth Talks About Learning From Manning 

The Steelers are putting a lot of pressure on Kenny Pickett to be the quarterback he was drafted to be. Pickett has already leaned on Manning in the past as a resource, so why not bring in one of Manning's former backups to help him?

Arth said that the attention to detail and daily focus are things that he picked up from Manning during his time as a backup in Indianapolis. He told Eric Smith, a senior writer for the Chargers official website, that had he already been thinking about coaching then, it would've been much sweeter. The biggest challenge working with Manning was constantly staying on your toes because you never knew when he might try to test you. 

"I didn't know anything about football before I got to Indianapolis," Arth said to the John Carroll University athletics site in 2016. "I thought I did, but I knew nothing. Peyton was famous for randomly asking obscure and difficult questions that pertained to the film, the opponent, or the game plan. He would say, for example, 'Tom, what's your call here in this situation…it's 3rd and-9, there's 1:27 seconds left in the game, the score is tied…and by the way, the coaches' phones went down, you have no timeouts, the play clock is at 10 seconds…9, 8, 7, 6.'  He would literally count down the clock and if you didn't have an answer it would be delay of game…you lose. Or if you didn't have a good answer, well that was probably worse!"

Arth said he doesn't lead in the same ways that Manning did, but the core of paying attention to the details and leading by example will always stick with him. 

Do you like the idea of having Arth on Pittsburgh's staff? Are there other candidates you want to join in a similar role?