On Tuesday, Mike Tomlin announced he was stepping down as the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, ending an amazing 19-year run with one of the greatest franchises in all of sports.
It was a heartbreaking moment for a large majority of Steelers Nation who watched a young Tomlin take over a storied franchise after two Hall of Fame coaches and lead it to 19 consecutive non-losing seasons.
For others, it was a long-awaited moment of relief for in their minds, Tomlin wasn’t as great as many believe.
Tomlin was hired in 2007 to replace Bill Cowher, who had finally won a Super Bowl after 16 years as the team’s head coach.
While Tomlin had one year under his belt as a defensive coordinator for the Minnesota Vikings, his resume, confidence and aura of leadership impressed team owner Dan Rooney so much that he hired Tomlin, making him only the third head coach in the team history, and the franchise’s first Black head coach as well.
Tomlin did not disappoint, taking the 8-8 Steelers in Cowher’s last year to 10-6, an AFC North title and a playoff appearance. A year later, he became the third Black head coach to lead a team to the Super Bowl (behind Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith in Super Bowl XLI in 2006) and, at 36, the youngest head coach to win a Super Bowl (Sean McVay has since leapfrogged him).
Two years later, Tomlin led the Steelers back to the Super Bowl where they fell to Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers.
Over the next 15 years, Pittsburgh never finished worse than 8-8 under his leadership, including 10-7 this year, which secured Pittsburgh its NFL record-setting 22nd consecutive non-losing season.
That’s 19 straight non-losing seasons, which ties Bill Belichick and is second only to legendary Dallas coach Tom Landry (21). More impressively, per ESPN, “Tomlin’s 19 consecutive seasons without a losing campaign is now five seasons longer than any other such streak to begin a NFL head coach’s career.”
That’s coaching and leadership, yet some don’t understand just how difficult that is to accomplish.
Instead, his detractors are laser-focused on the fact that Tomlin hadn’t won a playoff game since 2016.
Tomlin has had his faults and mistakes for sure.
His loyalty caused frustration- he kept Matt Canada for too long, didn’t push hard enough for a successor for Ben Roethlisberger and kept Teryl Austin over Brian Flores.
Critics also add that he’s a poor drafter, yet former GM Kelvin Kolbert bears a bigger part of that blame.
But Tomlin is a leader, which is what an NFL head coach needs to be.
He coaches his players and gets the best out of them as evidenced by his “next man up” mantra.
How else could he secure winning seasons with players like Duck Hodges, Mason Rudolph, Kenny Pickett and Mitch Trubisky?
How else could he secure a non-losing season despite losing Big Ben for the season in Week 2 in 2019 and still finish 8-8?
How else could he win 11-straight games to start the off the 2020 season and finish 12-4 in Big Ben’s first season back from his devastating arm injury?
In 2023, when Pittsburgh lost Cam Heyward and Minkah Fitzpatrick to injuries for multiple games and the entire linebackers crew was decimated by multiple injuries, the Steelers sat at 7-7. But Tomlin led them to three straight wins to make the playoffs at 10-7 with a QB roster of Pickett, Rudolph and Trubisky.
Tomlin believed in keeping locker room business out of the public eye, which is while disgruntled players like Le’Veon Bell, Antonio Brown, Diontae Johnson and George Pickens were shipped out despite their talents.
While Tomlin didn’t have playoff success in the latter part of his career, his role in the lives of his players was evident, as detailed in The Athletic’s story on his player’s emotional reactions after he informed them he was stepping down.
“‘No. No. No. No. No,’ he [TJ Watt] kept repeating over and over, his eyes welling with tears as Tomlin continued his speech,” wrote The Athletic.
Mike Tomlin’s successes are far greater than his shortcomings, and any coach who wouldn’t want his resume and 193-114-2 regular season record and a Super Bowl title is a fool.
Tomlin’s 193 regular season wins tied him with Chuck Noll for the most in franchise history and pushed him past Tony Dungy (139 wins) to become the winningest Black head coach in NFL history.
His career of zero losing seasons is something no other coaching legend has had- not Don Shula (1), George Halas (6), Tom Landry (8), Paul Brown (4), Marty Shottenheimer (2), Dan Reeves (9), Chuck Knox (8), Bill Parcells (5), Tom Coughlin (8), Mike Shanahan (7), Tony Dungy (1), Bill Belichick (8), Andy Reid (4), Pete Carroll (5), Sean Payton (4) or his former rival, John Harbaugh (3).
If Mike Tomlin’s greatest failure is to never have a losing year, shielding fans from the pain of losing season, that’s a failure any coach would love to have on their resume.
This April, the NFL Draft hosting Pittsburgh Steelers are slated to have 12 picks thanks to the wheeling and dealing of Omar Khan. By the looks of things, 2026 might be a down year for the team, which means the 2026 and 2027 NFL Drafts could be the start of Pittsburgh’s rebuild; I’m just sad that Tomlin won’t be there as he deserved the chance to finally be part of one.
Instead, fans made it almost impossible for him to stay for another season.
If Pittsburgh finally has a losing season/s, I can’t wait to see how the anti-Tomlin fanbase deals with it (they’ll probably blame him anyway).
More interestingly, if the team wins a Super Bowl in the next two years, will these same fans give Tomlin credit for the title being delivered by “his” players like they credited Cowher with after Tomlin won his Super Bowl ring two years after the former resigned?
Regardless of the future, Mike Tomlin will go down as the second greatest head coach in Pittsburgh Steelers history, one of the greatest coaches in NFL history, the greatest Black head coach in NFL history and a Pro Football Hall of Famer.
So thank you Coach Tomlin for leading the greatest NFL franchise to 19 years of success and showing others what it takes to be a true leader.
