Omar Khan doesn’t want the Pittsburgh Steelers to break up the band. Now officially the team’s GM for almost a year, Khan is hoping head coach Mike Tomlin sticks around for the foreseeable future. Khan joined 93.7 The Fan’s Andrew Fillipponi and Chris Mueller and said though he doesn’t know if Tomlin will receive an extension, he hopes it happens.
“That’s not my department but I sure hope so,” Khan told the show Thursday afternoon. “I love Coach Tomlin. We’ve had a great relationship and he’s been awesome to be around. And I know he thinks very highly of the city but that’s not my department.”
Khan is referring to that being a better question for team President and Owner Art Rooney II, who is in charge of handling Tomlin’s contract, not Khan.
Pittsburgh is likely to offer Tomlin an extension sooner rather than later. His latest deal was signed in 2021, a three-year deal, meaning this summer is a logical time to re-up him again. In January, Rooney was noncommittal about an extension, though it’s standard language for all things contractual in Pittsburgh.
“I don’t like to speculate on our coach’s contract,” Rooney told 93.7 The Fan in January. “So we’ll see.”
Tomlin’s Steelers are coming off a 9-8 season in his first year without Ben Roethlisberger. In 2022, Pittsburgh got off to a miserable 2-6 start, 2-6, but turned things around after the bye week, finishing the year 7-2 and nearly making the playoffs as the 7th seed.
Since being hired in 2007, Tomlin has a 163-93-2 record. He’s won seven AFC North crowns and two AFC championships, going to two Super Bowls and winning one. But Pittsburgh hasn’t won a playoff game since 2016 and has only won double-digit games once since 2018, making 2023 a critical season. Not only do the Steelers need to return to the playoffs but the pressure will be on to win a postseason game. On paper, Pittsburgh’s schedule looks easier than last season, but the AFC is a brutally tough conference that will have 10+ teams with a serious chance to make the playoffs.
