With the start of the mandatory minicamp, several of the Pittsburgh Steelers coaches were available to the media today; chief among them was head coach Mike Tomlin. This being the day after he received a three-year extension to keep him with the team through 2027, he was asked about what has made him so successful in his coaching career.
“I don’t focus on what’s in my rear view. If there’s a secret, the secret is I’m focused on the challenges and tasks at hand and not my resume,” Tomlin said in a clip posted by 93.7 The Fan on X. “I could care less about my resume.”
Some will likely take this the wrong way and suggest that he is not worried about the past failures, particularly over the last seven seasons without a playoff win. But I think that is missing the mark. He has spoken about that at length in the past and went as far as to call that his story—not the story of the players on the current roster.
He had to make some very difficult decisions as recently as last year, such as parting ways with Matt Canada in the middle of the season. Everybody knew it needed to happen, but it was still a difficult decision for Tomlin. He stated that his job as a leader is to protect and shield those that he works with and that he was not looking to scapegoat Canada while acknowledging that a change was necessary. Tomlin saying he doesn’t reflect on his resume, good or bad, isn’t a statement of indifference.
The heart of his message is that he doesn’t wish to rest on his laurels. Each season is a different challenge. Whether it was 2019, navigating a season with Duck Hodges and Mason Rudolph as his top quarterbacks, or last season where injuries wreaked havoc all over the roster, Tomlin has always remained focused on the task of ending the season with a chance in the playoffs. And he has done a pretty good job at that task over his career. Having zero losing seasons over 17 years is nothing to sneeze at, and he has qualified for the playoffs 11 times.
It might be easy to call that a job well done if you were in his position, but his goal is the same every season. He wants to get back to playoff success and bring another Super Bowl championship to the city of Pittsburgh. That singular focus and forward-thinking approach is what Tomlin credits to his sustained success at the NFL level.
