While the fan base may be divided on Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, the locker room certainly is not. Year after year stories come out on how much players love playing for Tomlin, and tonight one more came out. EDGE rusher Alex Highsmith joined SiriusXM NFL Radio with Pat Kirwan and Jim Miller and cited Tomlin as one reason he wanted to re-sign with the Steelers.
“I love playing for him,” Highsmith said. “Coming back to play for Coach Tomlin is definitely one of the reasons I wanted to be here for awhile. Just in meetings when he says stuff, just like you said, it pierces you, it hits you when he says stuff. He’s the guy that you wanna play for. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who has played for him that said they didn’t enjoy playing for him. He’s a guy that you want to go to war for and a guy that you wanna battle for. Just being able to play for him is awesome.”
Tomlin is a great coach; no losing seasons in his 16 seasons is nothing to scoff at. He has always maintained control of the locker room and gets the best out of his players. In 2019 Tomlin led the Steelers to a .500 record with a quarter of the season being played by an undrafted free agent rookie QB in Devlin “Duck” Hodges, arguably his most impressive feat.
Highsmith is a star-caliber player coming off a 14.5 half sack season and getting him to come back is huge. Having Tomlin as a coach who is attractive to players is a huge pull and can help the Steelers be successful. Already a franchise with great history, having a coach whom everyone respect is big when it comes to retaining players and bringing in new ones in free agency.
New signings always talk about how they want to play for Tomlin and that means something. If Tomlin were to leave who’s to say the Steelers bring in some of the players they have? CB Patrick Peterson wanted to play for Tomlin; who is to say he comes if Tomlin isn’t the coach?
Obviously, Tomlin and the Steelers need to win a playoff game soon. Not excusing some of the losses that the Steelers have suffered in the playoffs over the last few years, but winning in the NFL is a hard thing to do, especially come playoff time. Tomlin knows how to win, and the players love him, so the idea that he should be fired is foolish.
To win you need good players, and good players are attracted to head coaches they want to play for. Tomlin is that head coach everyone wants to play for and is a big reason why the Steelers are consistently good. He’s also, as Highsmith now revealed, a big reason the Steelers retained Highsmith for the foreseeable future.
