PITTSBURGH — Funny thing about this quarterback guru, this developer of young talent — he never played the position.

He didn’t even start working with quarterbacks until he was already six years into his coaching career. His career began as a linebackers coach.

But Mike McCarthy listened. He watched. He learned. And, with obsessive attention to detail, he eventually became known as a coach who could deconstruct quarterbacks the way a mechanic can take apart an engine.

He breaks down their collegiate habits and teaches them such unique things as the proper foot on which to place pressure, finger dexterity and the difference between merely seeing the field and having eye discipline.

He has worked with Joe Montana, Brett Favre, Rich Gannon, Dak Prescott and Aaron Rodgers, to name a few.

When McCarthy became the head coach of the Green Bay Packers in 2006, one of the first things he did was change Rodgers’ release point, moving it from right beside the ear hole to below it, allowing for a smoother release.

He is a “quarterback whisperer,” with a rare gift for understanding the position.

“I really feel, looking back, like I wasted my first seven years in the league,” said Gannon, who played 18 NFL seasons with four different teams. “I’m not going to criticize other coaches, but if I had someone like Mike in the first half of my career, it would have been a lot different. He just made me a better player.”

The makings of a MVP

Gannon is the classic case of what McCarthy can do for a quarterback.

After six uneventful seasons with Minnesota and one in Washington, Gannon went to Kansas City in 1995 — McCarthy’s first season as quarterbacks coach for offensive coordinator Paul Hackett.

After four years with the Chiefs, where he compiled an 11-8 record, Gannon signed as a free agent with the Oakland Raiders. That’s when all that he learned from McCarthy kicked in.

Gannon went 41-23 his first four seasons with the Raiders, made the Pro Bowl every year and was voted the league’s MVP in 2002, the same year he took them to the Super Bowl. He is the only player to ever be voted Pro Bowl MVP in back-to-back seasons (2001-02).

“Mike just took it to another level,” Gannon said recently on the phone. “I was almost 30 years old before I learned how to prepare for a week of football. I had blinders on for the first seven years. I wasn’t exposed to that type of preparation. I owe a lot to him.”

Gannon remembers walking into a quarterback meeting at 7 a.m. on the week of the season opener. McCarthy looked as though he hadn’t slept all night. Gannon said two whiteboards were already completely filled with every coverage, every base blitz.

And McCarthy kept adding to them as the meeting progressed.

“The attention to detail was like nothing I had ever seen,” Gannon said. “He’s head and shoulders above everyone else.”

‘So intricately detailed’

This is what the Steelers are getting for the most important position in football. This is what they are getting for their young quarterbacks, Will Howard and Drew Allar — and, yes, even Rodgers and Mason Rudolph.

And they will feel like they are back in college.

McCarthy is always working with the quarterbacks. During special teams sessions, he will take them aside and quiz them on things such as the top three audibles against a certain defensive look. In the meeting room, he gives them 25-page tests with essays, multiple-choice questions and protection changes.

“I think he’s a great fit for any quarterback,” Rudolph said after working with McCarthy during OTAs and minicamp. “I’m excited about an offense with a guy that’s notoriously been a great developer of quarterbacks. So being around him and that wealth of knowledge is exciting.”

McCarthy did this with Rodgers in his second season, putting him through his “quarterback school” that lasted six hours a day several times a week. They focused on working on Rodgers’ motor skills — footwork, hand-eye coordination and, yes, finger dexterity.

When the rules were changed under the league’s new collective bargaining agreement, it severely restricted the amount of offseason coaching and put an end to McCarthy’s quarterback school.

But he used rookie minicamp to work solely with Allar. And he spent a large portion of OTAs giving snaps — mental reps, McCarthy calls them — to Howard.

“Everything that he teaches, everything that he coaches is so intricately detailed,” Howard said. “It really is. It’s just made me better in my footwork or in my ball-handling that I haven’t even thought about. Things that he brings up just makes you hyperfocused and locked in on those things that maybe seem minute, and seem minuscule, but really, really make a difference.”

Throughout the spring, the improvement in Howard was palpable, more so than in Allar. Then again, that’s to be expected because Howard is in his second NFL season.

But McCarthy told Allar not to be worried about results. Instead, McCarthy said, worry more about executing the mechanics — feet placement, mobility, ball handling.

“When I get to like a 7-on-7 or team setting, obviously I want to go out and complete every ball,” said Allar, a third-round draft pick. “But in those settings, Coach McCarthy told me to not really worry about the results — worry about building that foundation for myself.

Quarterbacks coach Tom Arth spent a summer with the Packers as a free agent signal-caller in 2006. At the time, he went through McCarthy’s quarterback school, showing up on early mornings for weight training, classroom tests and on-field training. McCarthy would then conduct a video profile, taking one at the beginning of the school and one later. He did this with all of his quarterbacks.

“That was really a game-changer for me,” Arth said. “I learned so much about playing the position. I became a better player through it, and it’s impacted me as a coach. I’ve coached that way — from what I learned from Coach McCarthy back in 2006 — ever since.”

Curious and caring

For a coach who has a master’s degree in developing quarterbacks, it might seem odd that McCarthy never played the position.

He was a tight end at the former Bishop Boyle High School in Homestead and Baker University in Baldwin City, Kan. Nonetheless, he doesn’t buy into the notion that just because he never played the position, he can’t teach it.

“I feel I can sit down and talk quarterback play with anybody,” McCarthy said. “It’s all about taking care of the most important position in football.

He learned from some of the best, none more profoundly impactful than Hackett, who hired him as a graduate assistant at Pitt in 1989. When Hackett became the offensive coordinator in Kansas City, McCarthy went with him and got to observe and be around Montana, then the Chiefs’ quarterback.

“There’s a certain curiosity in Mike’s mind,” Gannon said. “He was around Montana when he was young. He asked Joe a ton of questions. Then he had Favre, where he gained knowledge and information and he incorporated that into what he does.

“But you have to go back to the person. Mike is a very relatable guy, a guy you enjoy being in his company. He’s incredible to be around. He generally cares for his players. You can’t fake that part.”

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