The Steelers Have a Mike Tomlin Problem

By Matt Quinn

It was the end of the 2006 season and the Steelers were beginning the rare franchise process of finding just their third head coach since the late 60s after the retirement of Hall of Fame head coach Bill Cowher. The Steelers would go on to hire a young defensive coordinator from Minnesota and former Tony Dungy assistant Mike Tomlin. At the time he was the youngest head coach in the league. He made an instant impact, making the playoffs in his first season before ultimately winning a Super Bowl in just his second season as head coach. Everything was trending up and the Steelers would go on to make the Super Bowl again in 2010, only to lose to the Packers and Aaron Rodgers. Even though it was a tough loss, there was still a good feeling around the city of Pittsburgh that they had got their guy at the head coaching position.

Fast forward to this season, the Steelers are in the midst of a three game losing streak, the 4th time in the last six seasons that the Steelers have lost three straight in December. Rumblings about Tomlin needing to be fired are starting to get louder amongst the fan base. Some fans believe that his time in Pittsburgh may be coming to an end, while others still shower Tomlin with praise for never having a losing season in 18 years as head coach.

Now I’m not trying to simply bash Mike Tomlin for the sake of bashing him. There are statistics to support the issues with this team. Sure Mike Tomlin has never had a losing season, which is definitely an impressive feat in today’s NFL, but he’s also only won at least one playoff game in 4 out of the 18 seasons he’s been head coach. He has coasted by most of his career by having a hall of fame QB in Ben Roethlisberger. Since Ben Roethlisberger retired the Steelers have just been treading water and even a few seasons before that they have been a mediocre team. It’s been 8 seasons since the last Steelers playoff win, and most franchises would have moved on by now. But the Rooney’s have a loyalty problem. Which fits right in with the loyalty problem that Tomlin himself has. Tomlin hired Matt Canada for his Offensive Coordinator in Ben Roethlisberger’s final season. Matt Canada came over from the University of Maryland and also had a personal friendship with Mike Tomlin, helping Tomlin’s son get into Boston College to play football. I bring that up because it’s the only way to explain why he could possibly keep a guy like that on his staff for 4 years. Under Matt Canada, the Steelers offense hit over 300 yards of offense once, never got to 30 points and went 56 straight games without reaching 400 yards of offense, the longest offensive drought in NFL history. For reference, the second longest drought was just 12 games. That is a record that will most likely hold up for decades. Tomlin has also never developed a QB. They foolishly drafted Kenny Pickett simply because they had an opening at QB with Ben’s retirement and Pickett went to Pitt, so it would be an easy transition logistically. It was a notoriously weak QB class that year, with the only other QB taken in the first 3 rounds being Malik Willis. The Pickett experience failed miserably, as he requested a trade after Tomlin brought in veteran QB Russell Wilson to compete with Kenny for the job.

I say all of this to say, Tomlin may be admittedly a great motivator and, for lack of a better term, cheerleader, but when it comes to scheming and game planning for teams, he falls short. The steelers are always competitive with the decent teams in the league, but there are two glaring weaknesses. Whenever the Steelers have to play an elite team, there’s never a doubt the elite team will win comfortably. Also, every year, there’s always 2 or 3 games in which the Steelers inexplicably lose to the worst teams in the league. This year it was the Cowboys and Colts, last year it was losing back to back home games to teams with 2 wins. The biggest issue though, is the pattern of scratching their way to 9 or 10 wins to assure the non-losing record for Mike Tomlin, before ultimately getting blown out in the first round of the playoffs. Mike Tomlin, who is supposed to be a defensive guy, has seen his teams give up more than 30 points in each of the last seven playoff losses and have given up more than 40 in half of those games. With the Steelers yet again collapsing in december after a 10-3 start and having a stranglehold of the division, they now most likely won’t win the division and with a loss on sunday, will finish the regular season with 4 straight losses and most likely have to travel to Baltimore and will most likely get blown out again in the playoffs. These issues have left the fanbase asking, “How long must this go on?” How long does mediocrity continue to be acceptable in a franchise that prides itself on competing for Super Bowls. This team is nowhere near a Super Bowl title right now but as long as Tomlin has his .500 or better record, they will continue to be the team that just treads water but will never be able to legitimately compete for a Super Bowl, which is the ultimate goal after all. I’m not saying Tomlin is a bad coach, he’s just not a great coach and his time in Pittsburgh needs to be nearing it’s end if there is any hope to compete for a title.