Steelers Find New Rising Star in Front Office

There’s a new name to learn in the Pittsburgh Steelers front office, and in his first year on the job, he’s already getting rave reviews from his boss.

When the Steelers promoted Omar Khan to general manager last April, part of Khan’s old role as the team’s vice president of football and business administration needed to be passed on to someone else.

Khan had been the team’s salary cap specialist and chief negotiator of free agent contracts under his predecessor Kevin Colbert. Now, much of that role has been passed down to Cole Marcoux.

Marcoux has been with the Steelers since 2020, when he first came on as Khan’s understudy as football administration coordinator. Before his time with the Steelers, he spent five years working in the NFL office as senior manager of labor operations.

Marcoux has an interesting football backstory. He grew up in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, which is not exactly where most NFL stories start. The graduates of his Fieldston School include Jeffrey Katzenberg, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Stephen Sondheim and Barbara Walters, but no NFL players.

When he was coming out as a football recruit, Marcoux was picked to play in the U.S. Army All American Bowl, and trained with Tom Brady, Brian Hoyer and their private quarterback coach.

He eventually settled on Dartmouth, where he played football with the Big Green alongside Dan Rooney, the son of Steelers president Art Rooney II. Marcoux started as a quarterback behind Rooney, who graduated two years ahead of him. In his junior season, Marcoux moved to tight end. 

His 15 career catches for 206 yards and one touchdown were probably not as interesting to the Steelers as his experience with the league office side of contract registration and the ability to be an outside-the-box thinker in terms of making the salary cap work.

“So, when I got this job I had to pass on several of my responsibilities to Cole,” Khan said at the NFL Annual Meetings earlier this offseason. “He got promoted and he’s done an amazing job. He’s an Ivy Leaguer and has spent a lot of time at the league office. He sees things a little differently. He’s got a great perspective on things.”

Part of what got Khan noticed in the first place was pushing the envelope in terms of making thins work inside the structure of the salary cap, and he sees some of that in Marcoux, as well.

“One thing I’ll say on Cole is he’s an idea guy,” Khan said. “I’ve been here for two days and in two out of three days he’s texted me for an idea on something or a guy to look at. That’s just how he is.”

Having a Summa Cum Laude Ivy League graduate as the franchise’s “idea guy” can’t be a bad thing.