Since he took over as the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2007 following the Hall of Fame tenure of Bill Cowher, Mike Tomlin has not been an underdog entering a matchup all that often.
In his career, 264 games and counting, Tomlin has seen his Steelers be an underdog just 85 times. In those games, the Steelers are 45-40, according to Stacking the Box’s Iain MacMillan. Tomlin is the only coach in the Super Bowl era who has coached at least 50 games that has a winning record when the team is an underdog, according to MacMillan.
Entering Sunday’s Week Eight matchup against the Jacksonville Jaguars at Acrisure Stadium, the Pittsburgh Steelers are once again underdogs as the line opened at Jaguars -1.5 on Sunday, according to VSiN.com.
For Steelers’ star outside linebacker T.J. Watt, that success under Tomlin when the Steelers are underdogs isn’t anything mystical, even if the Steelers have no clue that they’re underdogs or not.
During an appearance on the “Stacking the Box” podcast with MacMillan Wednesday, Watt stated that the Steelers know what it takes to win football games under Tomlin, and that there is no secret to the success as it all comes down to the details and the work put in throughout the week on a daily basis leading up to kickoff.
“I don’t know, we never know if we’re underdogs or not. I don’t think anyone in our building is looking at lines or anything like that. More than anything about Mike T, is being very consistent and transparent,” Watt said to MacMillan, according to video via the show’s YouTube page. “It doesn’t matter if we’ve won six games in a row or lost six games in a row: It’s going to be the same message. There is no magic formula to winning football games. We all know that it’s all in the details and the work throughout the week, so it’s not like we’re making something ordinary mystical.
“We all understand what it takes to win football games, and he does, and he’s done it at a high level for an extremely long time. So that’s kind of the secret is that there’s no secret with him.”
You can tell that Watt has been around Tomlin a long, long time and has heard that same message over and over again. There is no secret, they aren’t making the ordinary — that being the weekly preparation — mystical, and they are consistent each and every week in their messaging, their preparation and the way they go about their day-to-day work in the National Football League.
Chances are, the Steelers — especially one like Watt — have no clue if they’re underdogs from a betting line perspective week in, week out or not. That type of stuff doesn’t matter to him. It doesn’t matter to the Steelers, either, regardless of their success from an underdog perspective.
Hopefully Pittsburgh can keep that record trending in the right direction on Sunday against the Jaguars, assuming that the line doesn’t move all that much in favor of the Steelers.
