The first few words of Mike Tomlin’s announcement were most curious, bordering on bizarre.
“After much thought and reflection,” was the opening clause.
How much thinking and reflecting can one do in 16 hours?
Between the end of the Steelers’ Monday night playoff loss to the Texans and the early afternoon announcement he was done, that’s all the time that passed.
Are we to believe he was thinking and reflecting in advance of the Houston game: If we lose this one, that’ll be seven in a row, and there’s no way I’m shooting for eight. That never has appeared to be the Tomlin way. He always gave the impression he could have led my senior-year YMCA league team, the Deacons, into March Madness fully expecting to pull that 16-over-1 seed upset.
Tomlin’s decision appears entirely out of character, and it could not have come at a worse time for the Steelers organization. This was the moment they needed what he could bring: the certainty that whatever ability exists within the roster would be maximized, whether the quarterback was Duck Hodges, Mitch Trubisky or the ghost of Aaron Rodgers.
Instead, Tomlin will be as absent as so many key players during all those heartbreaking playoff losses. I honestly expected more of him. I expected the fight he'd shown on so many occasions over the previous two decades.
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This will be widely celebrated by those in the fan base who’ve come to believe in his deficiency as a coach, despite massive evidence to the contrary.
It all but assures the Steelers will begin the 2026 season with a lack of experience at the head coaching position and a dreadful lack of talent at the quarterback position. If it means there will be new personnel in the coordinator positions, well, even the worst news can have its positives. That may not be enough to overcome the challenge Tomlin’s departure has created.
Very often during this decade, as the Steelers searched fruitlessly for a permanent or temporary successor to all-time great Ben Roethlisberger, fans or members of the media asserted they did not trust Tomlin to locate and develop that next quarterback.
The Steelers have an abundance of draft picks they can use to engineer a deal to advance in the 2026 NFL Draft order. It's not obvious there's a worthwhile target, and less so there's someone truly capable of leading the offense while any No. 1 pick gets the requisite time to develop.
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To be fair, the preposterous decision to select Kenny Pickett in the first round of the 2022 draft, widely endorsed within the fan base and the region’s media, did erode some of the belief in his ability to manage the most important position. There should have been far more of that left, however, because Tomlin never was given enough credit for Roethlisberger’s development from a young, developing talent surrounded by an elite defense to a superstar who had to carry that disintegrating D through multiple seasons.
Here’s what was missed by so many in that calculation: Why do we trust Art Rooney II to hire a coach as good as Tomlin?
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Does Rooney follow the organizational preference to hire a young assistant coach with apparent talent? That’s the most over-harvested crop in the league right now, given all the coaching changes that occurred elsewhere. Does he try what’s worked in Denver and New England? If there were a Mike Vrabel around, that would be tremendous, but he’s got a game this weekend.
Although he had a few deficiencies, most obviously the decision not to fill at least a portion of his staff with promising young coaches with inventive approaches, Tomlin’s 19 seasons without ever falling below.500 is a breathtaking record. He represented the great Dan Rooney’s enduring contribution to the organization, the last great decision he made as the team’s owner, from hiring Chuck Noll in 1969 to Bill Cowher in 1992 to Tomlin in 2007. Three coaches in 56 years, all with two things in common: the confidence of the man who hired them, and a Lombardi Trophy on the Hall of Fame resume.
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Steelers fans over the past half-decade have expressed frustration, even anger, over a string of first-game playoff losses that commenced with a 45-42 upset at home against the Jaguars and ended Monday night against Houston. There’s no assurance these will days will not be viewed fondly in the near future.
Perhaps all the reflecting and thinking necessary for Tomlin was transacted during the painful closing minutes of the game against the Texans, which had been so close for so long but was suddenly enough of an embarrassment for some of the remaining members of the Acrisure Stadium crowd to revive the “Fire Tomlin!” Chants heard in November during an especially crushing loss to the Bills.
Fire me? After I won four of five to clinch the division? Good luck to you.
Aside from an errant field goal on a cold Sunday night, the Steelers haven’t had a lot lately.
They’ll need it now.