The man who once could have been hailed as the mayor of Pittsburgh is starting to generate quite a following of detractors who want to run him out of town. That man is Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, who has led the team since 2007, having accomplished plenty of feats during his tenure as the team’s head coach. They include making two Super Bowl appearances while bringing home the Lombardi Trophy in Super Bowl XLIII.
Still, Tomlin has irked plenty of Steelers fans given his team’s results this season, the Steelers having dropped consecutive games to the Cardinals and Patriots, both 2-10 teams coming into Pittsburgh. His team has shown a lack of desire and urgency on both sides of the football as the offense continues to play poorly and the defense fell apart against two of the worst offenses in the league this season. Speaking with Kevin Adams on the Steel Here podcast, former offensive Pittsburgh lineman Trai Essex voiced his concerns regarding Tomlin and his job security if the results don’t improve in the team’s final four games of the season.
“I do think there’s a chance they look elsewhere if it continues to look like it did the last two games,” Essex said on the Steel Here podcast. “I truly do. Because that’s just really, really bad football. And [if] we get four more games of that, I don’t know if Tomlin could survive that type of decline at this point in the season when we were 7-4.
“Like on the other side, when you started out 2-6 and you’re improving into the offseason, you got some hope that things could get turned around. But when you are losing it and you’re losing the way that we’ve lost with the type of product on the field and it continues to slide towards the end of the season, I don’t think he can survive that to be truthfully honest.”
Pittsburgh was supposed to enter the back half of the season ready to hit its stride. The Steelers had gotten back DL Cameron Heyward and S Minkah Fitzpatrick from injury and were facing the Cardinals and Patriots, who sit near the bottom of the league this season, as well as the Colts and Bengals, who are both on their backup quarterbacks due to season-ending injuries to their respective starters. Instead of building on their 7-4 mark, Pittsburgh dropped two straight games to inferior teams. Tomlin’s team looked unprepared and frankly unmotivated, having the announcing crew of Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit point out a lack of urgency from the Steelers last Thursday night against the Patriots.
Tomlin’s press conference following the loss to the Patriots showed a man who was frustrated and at a loss for words, stating that the Steelers would get things turned around because that’s what they do and who they are. Alex Kozora of Steelers Depot noted after that presser that the standard in Pittsburgh has fallen, and Tomlin should feel the heat for it as this team has no identity, no current direction. They are lacking that fire and resilience the past Steelers teams have had, and Tomlin is having a tough time instilling that into this group.
Tomlin’s track record speaks for itself, but the saying “what have you done for me lately” rings true here as well. As of late, Tomlin has lost two games to teams that Pittsburgh should have beaten, his team unprepared and outplayed. He hasn’t had the Steelers considered legit contenders for the AFC since 2017, and his last playoff win came the year prior in 2016. Should he lose on Saturday against the Colts and experience similar results down the stretch, Steelers owner Art Rooney II will be feeling the heat to move on from his long-tenured head coach the same way the team moved on from its offensive coordinator at midseason.
