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.
After 19 seasons, Mike Tomlin has stepped down as head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers and leaves Pittsburgh as of the best to ever do it.
— First and Pen (@firstandpen) January 13, 2026
Congrats Coach T on an amazing career and thank you for everything that you did for the Steelers and the City of Pittsburgh.✊🏾 pic.twitter.com/58UZNTzD77
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?
