The Steelers signed coach Mike Tomlin to a three-year contract extension on Monday. It will extend until 2027.
I’m not angry, because it was inevitable.
I am dumbfounded. Because everyone says retaining Tomlin is the obvious and correct move. But I don’t see a good reason to do so.
When evaluating Tomlin, he somewhat removes winning from the equation. In a business based on results. That is incredible.
Aside from the old history of successful salad days with Bill Cowher’s staff, the only tangible thing Tomlin has going for him is never having a losing season.
But it has many intangibles.
The players love playing for Coach T. Maybe too much. No one ever points out that the emperor is naked.
Heck, Dallas standout linebacker Micah Parsons quite fantasized about playing for Tomlin. It was like training porn.
National media like Rich Eisen, Mike Greenberg, etc. repeatedly tell us that Tomlin is great and that anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot. Local media say the same. (In public, at least).
Tomlin is great and that’s it. It is a lie that has become truth despite the flimsiest of evidence. It is no different to worship a supreme being.
But Tomlin hasn’t won a playoff game in seven years.
He has three postseason victories in 13 years.
He has an AFC North championship in six years. That season, 2020, the Steelers lost five of their last six, including the wild-card playoff game at home against Cleveland. They trailed 28-0 after the first quarter.
Twenty-three NFL teams have more recent postseason wins than the Steelers.
Tomlin wasted Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell, allowing the former to significantly damage the Steelers’ culture.
Tomlin is wasting Minkah Fitzpatrick, Cam Heyward and TJ Watt.
Tomlin wasted a lot of Ben Roethlisberger. In general, he has not achieved good results considering his resources.
Tomlin doesn’t have a coaching tree. His staff is inferior. He has run away from superior football minds like Bruce Arians and Dick LeBeau.
Tomlin’s approach is old-fashioned. Today’s Steelers will try to be the team of the ’70s: pound the ball on the ground, play elite defense. Except there’s no Franco and Rocky in the backfield, their defense isn’t elite, and it’s 2024. You need to score more and faster.
Tomlin pushed to draft Kenny Pickett in the first round in 2022, presided over its failure, and then escaped blame when Pickett left. “It was Matt Canada’s fault!” Maybe, but Tomlin hired Canada, he promoted him to offensive coordinator and employed him for too long.
Errors abound. Look how Tomlin is destroying the left tackle. The Steelers have taken tackles in the first round of the last two drafts. Instead of doing the obvious, Tomlin will stick with starter Dan Moore Jr. at left tackle. Who sucks by all metrics and will be gone via free agency at the end of the season.
Will that benefit the Steelers in Week 1? Maybe, maybe not. But Tomlin’s thought process never looks beyond the next game. He refuses to consider the bigger picture.
But Tomlin is great. Everyone says so. The results don’t matter. He is absolutely extraordinary.
I think Tomlin is a complete fraud. I don’t trust a single word he says. After all, he brags about fooling the media.
But I’m wrong. Tomlin is great.
Much of Tomlin’s prestige comes from being the most prominent black coach in the NFL. But that’s not why he will never be fired.
Tomlin’s employment by the Steelers is guaranteed because the Steelers don’t fire head coaches: they’ve had only three since they hired Chuck Noll in 1969. That’s how dad and grandpa did it. The Steelers want stability, even if the consistency produced by that stability lies in the soft middle.
NFL teams have fired a host of great coaches: Bill Belichick, Andy Reid and Mike Shanahan, to name just a few.
Tomlin won’t be.
Conventional wisdom holds that if Tomlin were ever available, he would have another job within five minutes.
That could be true, but that concert could be on television.
Belichick sought a coaching position after parting ways with New England and was not hired. NFL teams would scrutinize Tomlin’s resume before signing him up. That resume isn’t very good, not recently.
Word is the Steelers couldn’t do better than Tomlin. But over the past seven seasons, doing better wouldn’t take much.
But the undeserved adulation will never cease.
Tomlin won’t deserve to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but he will. That will be the last pile of steaming horse manure.
Owner Art Rooney II called Tomlin “critical to our success” in announcing his contract extension.
Success? What success? None recent, that’s for sure.
It is as if the devil convinced the world that he does not exist. No one looks closely at Tomlin’s results.