It's Time For The Steelers to Move on From Mike Tomlin

Mike Tomlin has been the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers since 2007. He's currently the longest tenured head coach in the NFL. From the surface, he looks to be a successful man. He's got a 61.7% career win percentage, a Super Bowl win, has never finished below .500, and his defenses are always, for the most part, above average

The truth about Tomlin, though, is that he's always been an overrated coach. After finding a lot of success his first four years, Tomlin’s Steelers only have three playoff wins and a lot of blowout playoff losses since the team’s Super Bowl XLV loss to the Green Bay Packers. Over time, the Steelers have gone from one of the proudest organizations in football to a standard that's a far cry from the peak of the post-merger success they've had. Today, we're diving into Tomlin's career and the gradual fall of the Steelers.

2007-10: First Four Years Saw Success With Cowher’s Roster

The Steelers hired Tomlin in January 2007, shortly after Hall of Fame coach Bill Cowher resigned. Tomlin was inheriting an entering-his-prime Ben Roethlisberger, a stacked defense led by guys such as Troy Polamalu, James Harrison, Ryan Clark, and James Farrior, as well as elite coordinators Bruce Arians and Dick LeBeau. The roster, for the most part, was constructed by Cowher. There's a saying that a coach can win with the roster he inherited for the first four years, but then we know more about the coach after year five when he is left to his own devices in terms of roster construction. This could not be more true with Tomlin.

Tomlin’s first four years saw the Steelers have four winning seasons, make the playoffs three times, clinch two Super Bowl berths, and win Super Bowl XLIII. Largely with Cowher’s personnel, the 2008 Steelers defense is regarded as one of the better ones in the 2000s. Tomlin’s fourth season saw the Steelers advance to Super Bowl XLV and lose to the Green Bay Packers. The future looked bright for Tomlin and Co. going forward. So what happened after that loss?

2011-16: The Gradual Decline Begins

The Steelers won 12 games in 2011 but were forced to settle for the fifth seed, which earned them a trip to Denver to face the Broncos in the first round. The Steelers rallied from a 20-6 halftime deficit to tie it at 23-all at the end of regulation. However, Tim Tebow threw an 80-yard touchdown to the late Demaryius Thomas on the first play of overtime to give Denver a 29-23 win.

The 2012 and 2013 seasons saw the Steelers finish with identical 8-8 records and no playoff berths. Pittsburgh rebounded to win the AFC North in 2014, and hosted the hated rival Baltimore Ravens in the first round. Though the first half was close with the Ravens only leading 10-9, Baltimore pulled away in the second half to win 30-17. Roethlisberger did not have his best game, throwing for 334 yards, one touchdown, and two interceptions while being sacked five times. The following season, Pittsburgh won their first playoff game since 2010, beating the AJ McCarron-led Cincinnati Bengals 18-16. The Steelers kicked a game winning field goal at the buzzer after Cincinnati committed consecutive personal foul penalties on Pittsburgh's final drive. However, the Steelers’ season would end the following week when they lost 23-16 to the eventual Super Bowl champion Broncos.

2016 was a wild ride for the Steelers. The team recovered from a 4-5 start to end the year on a seven game win streak. Their 11-5 record was good for an AFC North title, and they won their opening round game against Matt Moore’s Dolphins. They then upset Alex Smith's Chiefs 18-16 in Kansas City, which is their last playoff win to date. However, the New England Patriots smacked around the Steelers in the AFC Championship, winning 36-17. After the Chiefs game, wide receiver Antonio Brown went live on Facebook. In the background of that video was a clip of Tomlin bad-mouthing the Patriots. Tomlin has always been a players coach who empowers his star players, but that would later come back to bite him. The Brown incident and the loss to the Patriots foreshadowed a further drama-filled decline that was about to come in the following years.

2017-2019: Drama, Drama, and More Drama

The 2017 season was the peak year for the Steelers’ offensive trio of Roethlisberger, Brown, and running back Le’Veon Bell, otherwise known as the Killer B’s. The trio was the driving force behind Pittsburgh finishing the year 13-3 despite a good portion of their wins coming by one score. As Steeler fan YouTuber UrinatingTree put it, the Steelers won despite “playing down to their competition.”

The Steelers received a first round bye in 2017 and their first game was a Divisional Round matchup against the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Jaguars beat the Steelers 30-9 earlier in the year as their “Sacksonville” defense forced Ben Roethlisberger into throwing five interceptions. This did not stop Bell and Steelers safety Mike Mitchell from talking down on Jacksonville before the game. Looking ahead to an AFC Championship rematch with the Patriots, who also went 13-3 that year and beat the Steelers to effectively steal the one seed from them, Mitchell said the team would beat Jacksonville and then New England the following week, while Bell tweeted out “I love round 2’s…we’ll have two round 2’s in back to back weeks.” Their trash talk didn't work out well, as the Jaguars jumped out to an early 28-7 lead and hung on to win 45-42. Tomlin has always been known as a poor disciplinarian when it comes to handling players, and this was just the latest example of it. Tomlin, Bell, and Mitchell all looked past the Jaguars because they were looking ahead to the Patriots, but they never even got to Foxboro because Jacksonville throttled them.

The following season was a drama filled disaster, as the Steelers went from being 7-2-1 after Week 11 to finishing 9-6-1 and out of the playoffs. Off the field, Roethlisberger kept calling out younger teammates for immaturity, Bell sat out the year after being franchise tagged again, and Brown had several off the field controversies. During this time, Tomlin did nothing as his players ran AWOL. The team also had several embarrassing losses during the year, losing to a 6-10 Broncos team, a 4-12 Raiders team, and committing critical late game mistakes in losses to the Chargers and Saints. Bell and Brown would subsequently leave the team the following offseason. The drama went down in 2019, but the Steelers finished 8-8 and out of the playoffs, largely due to Ben Roethlisberger missing all but two games with a significant elbow injury.

2020-present: Playoff Blowouts And A New Standard

The 2020 Steelers started the year 11-0 but went 1-4 over their final five games to finish 12-4. They won the AFC North, but Tomlin’s lack of locker room discipline reared its ugly head again as wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster became the team's new main diva receiver. He danced on opposing team’s logos during the season and threw various insults at the Cleveland Browns before the Steelers’ Wild Card game against them. The Browns subsequently raced out to an early 28-0 lead and won 48-37 after holding off a late Steelers flurry.

The past four seasons have been more of the same in terms of playoff losses. For three out of the last four years, the Steelers have been blown out in the Wild Card round. They lost to the Chiefs 42-21 in 2021, they lost to the Buffalo Bills 31-17 in 2023, and this past weekend lost 28-14 to the Ravens. The 2022 season saw them miss the playoffs entirely.

The Steelers have become incredibly stale under Tomlin. Ever since Super Bowl XLV, the team has a new standard- not going below .500 and, most of the time, getting blown out in their first playoff game. They haven't won a playoff game since 2016 and haven't beaten an elite QB in the playoffs since Kurt Warner in Super Bowl XLIII, which is now 16 years ago. For a franchise that is tied for the most Super Bowl rings with six and constantly boasts Hall of Famers, that is an incredibly low standard, one that would not be tolerated by most coaches. Could you imagine this being the standard of the likes of Andy Reid, Bill Belichick, Jim and John Harbaugh, Sean Payton, and Sean McVay? No you can't. They wouldn't tolerate the antics that Tomlin’s players bring to the table. This streak of winning seasons would not be enough for them. They'd be okay with losing seasons if it makes the team better in the long term.

It's time for the Steelers to move on from Mike Tomlin. Where are they going with him? The answer is nowhere. He's a defensive coach who's tone deaf to offense and is becoming a dinosaur in this league. On top of that, they don't have a franchise quarterback, and frankly haven't had one since Roethlisberger had that elbow injury he never fully recovered from. The Steelers are in the worst spot in the NFL right now- no quarterback, not good enough to win playoff games, and not good enough to tank for top draft picks. The no losing seasons part is great but it's hurting them more than ever now. The worst part is that they're going to continue to be in this spot if they don't part ways with Tomlin. The longer they stick with him, the more they'll deserve what they're currently getting.

Mike Tomlin is a good coach. He's a great culture guy and an elite motivator. He gets the most out of his players even if their antics can be too much. A team like the Bears who need a culture reset would be a great fit for him. If the Steelers trade Tomlin they will get at least a first round pick for him. It's time for a rebuild in Pittsburgh, and it starts with moving on from their longtime coach.

Serafino Diaz is a writer at Chaotically Intolerant, Phoenix's finest Vikings, Bucks, and Cubs fan, traveling everywhere I can.