The Pittsburgh Steelers get Mike Tomlin back next season and that’s a good thing.
Pittsburgh At the end of Wild Card Weekend, rumors concerning Mike Tomlin’s future as head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers reached a fever pitch. Following the Steelers’ season-ending 31-17 loss to the Buffalo Bills, which was a difficult, turbulent, and occasionally absurd one, speculation over his future status with the team circulated both within and outside of the postgame press conference room.
According to a report from NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo, Mike Tomlin will return to lead the Steelers next season. As you might expect, the public’s response to Tomlin’s “return” was, at best, ambivalent, when it should have been encouraging. In actuality, Tomlin may have been this franchise’s greatest asset rather than the worst problem.
The players unquestionably supported their head coach, even after the Steelers suffered another brutal playoff loss to the Buffalo Bills that prolonged the team’s lengthy postseason losing skid and didn’t even feel as close as the final score would have suggested.
Before the news broke, veteran defensive lineman Cam Heyward stated, “My thought is that he’s going to be the coach here.” “You’re asking for a lot more than that, man, if anyone thinks it should be someone else. Mike T is a Pittsburgh Steeler, and he wants to be one. Why would someone want anything more at all?”
Pro football player T.J. Watt stated that one of the main reasons he chose to remain in Pittsburgh rather than pursue free agency was because of Tomlin.
“Mike T. is the only person I want to play for, thus it was a major factor in our contract negotiations. You all get it from the way I speak about how much I value and respect him as a leader, coach, and man, and that’s why I’m endorsing him.”
No, Mike Tomlin did not come out flat in the run game, fumble twice against the Bills, throw an interception in the red zone, or put on a tackling performance in the Steelers secondary that would have let coaches at any level of the game down.
But it was Tomlin who, in defiance of organizational tradition, made an unexpected but necessary midseason change to the offensive coordinator, inserting the new starting quarterback who ignited a playoff push, and assembled a defense full of players who were afterthoughts at the start of the season and turning them into a winning team.
You can talk all you want about the Steelers’ poor start and how a 21-0 deficit doomed them before they could even establish themselves on Buffalo’s icy field. If Tomlin is to be held accountable for the extent of their deficit, then he deserves recognition for his role in pulling the team out of that hole and overturning a one-score deficit in the latter half of the game.
“Every player in there wouldn’t be anything without Mike T,” stated Heyward. “Without Mike T., this team could not even hope to qualify for the playoffs. I wouldn’t want to play for any other coach because he holds us all accountable from the top down.”
The Steelers’ season was encapsulated in the Buffalo loss: they were outmatched in terms of skill, had a depleted roster due to injuries, and continued to make thoughtless mistakes and penalties that furthered their downward spiral.