Steelers Now
Former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Sammie Coates has been hired as the head coach at Columbia High School in Huntsville, Alabama.
Coates, 31, grew up in Leroy, in Southwest Alabama, near Mobile, but he played his college ball at Auburn, three hours to the northeast. Now he’ll become a head coach in the northern part of his home state.
“My goal is to not only guide these young men to be just great football players, but to be great people,” Coates said in a press release.
Coates played at Auburn from 2011-14 before the Steelers made him their third-round pick in the 2015 NFL Draft.
Coates spent two seasons with the Steelers before being traded to the Cleveland Browns in 2017. In 20 total games in Pittsburgh, Coates caught 22 passes for 446 yards and scored two touchdowns. He also played in four playoff games, with four catches for 95 yards in those contests.
Throwback to 2016 -> Big Ben finds receiver Sammie Coates deep for a big time touchdown against the Jets.#PITvsNYJ #SteelersFilm #Steelers #SteelersNation #HereWeGo pic.twitter.com/nyp4BLjIl3
— Steelers Black and Gold Nation (@B_GNation1) October 1, 2022
Coates dealt with a finger injury in 2016 and had sports hernia surgery in 2017 before hi trade. After leaving Pittsburgh, he spent one season in Cleveland before being released by the Browns. He played in 12 games, mostly on special teams, with the Houston Texans in 2018. He spent some time with the Kansas City Chiefs in the 2019 offseason, but spent the following fall out of football.
Coates tried a comeback with the XFL in 2020 and caught six passes on 19 targets for 61 yards for the Houston Roughnecks before the COVID-19 pandemic ended the season prematurely.
He then signed with the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Edmonton Elks for the 2021 and 2023 summer seasons, but never played a regular season CFL game.
This will be Coates’ first head coaching job. He was an assistant coach at Jensen Beach High School, receivers coach at Division III Ohio Northern in 2023 and Division II UVA-Wise in 2024.
Coates will have his work cut out for him at Columbia. The Eagles went 0-10 in the 2024 season and have lost 91 games in a row.
