Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin on the sidelines in the first half of an NFL football game against the Baltimore Ravens in Pittsburgh, Sunday, Oct. 8.
For the last 18 seasons, Mike Tomlin has led the Pittsburgh Steelers as their head coach. He’s had undisputable regular-season success, never finishing below .500, and has nabbed 11 playoff appearances. He’s led Pittsburgh to two Super Bowls, winning one.
But Steeler Nation grows increasingly impatient, because in the world of sports, these playoff successes are ancient history. Since 2016, Tomlin has lost all five playoff games and missed the postseason in three seasons. The City of Champions only wants one thing — a seventh Lombardi. And as of late, Tomlin’s finished miles short.
So is it time to move on from Tomlin? Has the standard passed him by? Or can he be trusted to complete the “stairway to seven” and reestablish the Steelers’ winning ways?
Point: The Steelers should stick with Mike Tomlin // Alex Porter, Senior Staff Writer
No, Mike Tomlin isn’t the Steelers’ main problem. He’s quite a ways down the list. A fed up Steeler Nation refuses to hear this. They point to Tomlin’s recent playoff disasters, losing his last five playoff games, or an equally horrid end to this past season as irrefutable proof of his failure.
On the surface level, firing Tomlin seems like a sensible move. Maybe, just maybe, cutting ties with their legendary head coach is the magic button for a seventh Lombardi.
Unfortunately for the average Yinzer, this remains far from the truth. For too long, Steeler Nation has lived in delusion. It’s your rich friend who Venmo requests for exact change. The guy who’s never had an 8 a.m., upset with a class at noon. Or the suite in Bouquet Gardens complaining to their Litchfield Towers peers about a lack of space, blissfully unaware of how good they have it.
In fairness to the fans, they know of nothing else. With the last half-century of Hall of Fame head coaching, “The Standard” has become absurdly high. Steelers fans fondly recall the legendary tenures of Chuck Noll and Bill Cowher as “glory days.”
Yet it might surprise even the most diehard Steelers fans to know that before Noll, the Steelers had 12 previous head coaches. These coaches lasted a combined 36 seasons, losing in their only playoff appearance. It wasn’t until the 13th head coaching hiring that the Steelers finally earned their first postseason victory.
Tomlin ranks 11th all-time in wins and 15th in playoff appearances. Out of the 531 head coaches in NFL history, he’s in the top 5% in conference titles, 4% in playoff wins and 2.5% in playoff appearances. Statistically, it takes about 50 coaching searches to find a coach as successful as Tomlin in these regards.
For sustained success in the AFC especially, teams need both an elite quarterback and an elite head coach.
In the era of Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes and Peyton Manning, the Steelers placed a respectable fourth in AFC playoff wins. It can’t be understated how difficult of a task competing with these giants of the game is. If not for the unfortunate injury of Ryan Shazier or the early retirement of Stephon Tuitt, Pittsburgh very well might have stolen another Lombardi or two.
Without Drew Brees, the Saints quickly moved on from Sean Payton and have a record of 14-20 since Payton’s departure. In the four seasons following Brady’s departure, Bill Belichick went 29-38 and was fired from the franchise he brought six Lombardis.
On the other hand, without Ben Roethlisberger, Tomlin didn’t flinch. In 2019, he dragged a team quarterbacked by Mason Rudolph and Devlin “Duck” Hodges to a winning season. Mitch Trubisky, Kenny Pickett and Justin Fields have played significant time in the past few seasons. Give this group to any other coach in the NFL, fans cheer for early draft picks and tanking — meanwhile, Pittsburghers gaslight themselves that a seventh Lombardi is on the way.
Yes, Tomlin’s recent playoff failure looms large, but context remains more important than ever. The NFL remains a quarterback’s league, as even Tomlin’s Hall of Fame peers fall short without a proven signal-caller. Tomlin has faced Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson in the past three playoff losses — three of the faces of the league, all with MVP-caliber skills. Tomlin has had 39-year-old Ben Roethlisberger, Rudolph and 36-year-old Russell Wilson.
Put legendary coaches like Noll, Belichick and Reid on the same staff, and the Steelers still go 0-3 due to the extreme talent discrepancy at the most important position on the field.
Regarding the Steelers’ end-of-season crashout, realistic fans saw it coming from miles away. They played four legitimate Super Bowl contenders in 10 days — one of the most brutal stretches in NFL history.
Any other expectation remained out of touch with reality. The Steelers’ Hall of Fame quarterback retired a mere four seasons ago. Typically, that signals it’s time for a rebuild, but that is a foreign concept to Steeler Nation.
Yet behind the smoke and mirrors of Tomlin’s winning records and overperforming teams, Pittsburgh is already entrenched in a rebuild, featuring a retooled offensive line and a secondary rejuvenated with youth.
With another solid draft and the discovery of a star quarterback, expect Tomlin to make deeper playoff runs. Fans must understand that now remains a time for patience, taking a second to look around at the average rebuild and realizing the blessing of avoiding years of basement dwelling.
This is the last thing fans want to hear, but sometimes the truth is the hardest pill to swallow.
Tomlin remains a leader of men, a master motivator and an elite coach. He’s even a proven winner, regardless of Roethlisberger. But Tomlin is only one piece of the puzzle — an elite quarterback remains the other. So before giving up on an undeniably valuable resource, the Steelers must exhaust all other options first.
Counterpoint: It’s time to move on from Mike Tomlin // James Carter, Staff Writer
I have gone on record as one of Mike Tomlin’s defenders, but now is the time for a change. While he has done some good coaching jobs in recent years, like in 2019 and 2021, those are overshadowed by collapses in 2017, 2018, 2020, 2023 and 2024.
Tomlin’s good qualities, such as motivation, are often overshadowed by his biggest flaws — stubbornness and not surrounding himself with good coordinators, especially on offense, which has killed the Steelers.
From Todd Haley to Randy Fichtner and Matt Canada, the Steelers coordinators have failed to adapt to modern offensive schemes, and it’s apparent to everyone who has followed this team in recent years.
Tomlin comes from a defensive background, so it makes sense he would defer offensive duties to coordinators, but you need to make good hires that develop synchronicity with your staff to make it work.
Other head coaches with defensive backgrounds, such as Baltimore’s John Harbaugh and Buffalo’s Sean McDermott, have found success in the contemporary NFL by allowing their coordinators to work with their players to create an effective run-first offense.
The Steelers haven’t had that luxury in recent years, partly due to ineffective schemes and playcalling, but also due to inadequate roster construction. The team failed to properly rebuild following the collapse of the Killer B’s.
The team should have blown it up after the disastrous 2018 campaign, and while Tomlin is not fully in control of this, he had more than enough organizational influence to do so.
As head coach, Tomlin is largely responsible for roster construction, and his inability to build from the ground up has bitten the Steelers in recent years. The team still has some young talent, but many of the Steelers’ draft picks at key positions have largely flopped — especially at quarterback. This is another indictment of Tomlin and his staff’s inability to develop young talent.
Since then, the team has failed to find an identity post-Roethlisberger, as its typical bread-and-butter of defense and ground game has become largely obsolete in the current league. This stems from Tomlin’s vision of what he wants as the Steelers’ identity. Other teams in the league, including historic also-rans like Detroit and Cincinnati, have changed their identity and found success.
Tomlin has continued to rely on the old Steelers system, which doesn’t succeed at the higher level in the modern NFL. The Steelers will throw out an offense running outdated schemes and an overly simplistic defense heavily reliant on high-end talent and expect to win games. And while people will point to the Steelers’ continued winning-season streak, that statistic is highly misleading.
Especially in recent seasons, the Steelers have won by squeaking past largely inferior opponents and getting dominated by upper-echelon teams in the league. This is shown by the team’s 191-point differential since 2021.
I am forever grateful for the good that Tomlin has brought to this team throughout his career, but every coach reaches their expiration date, and I fear Tomlin has reached his.
The Steelers are stuck in a cycle of mediocrity, and something needs to happen for the team to break out of it. Whether that’s replacing the system or blowing it up entirely, the team needs a shakeup that can only start from the top, and one of those pieces includes Tomlin.
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