When the Pittsburgh Steelers signed head coach Mike Tomlin to a three-year contract extension Monday, there was a fair amount of outcry. There is no doubt that Tomlin is one of the most successful head coaches of the recent era. He’s won a Super Bowl, coached in another, and has the 13th-most wins in NFL history (third among active head coaches).
Yet there are reasons for Steelers fans to be frustrated. One of the biggest sticking points is that the team hasn’t won a playoff game since 2016. That’s a long time for a streak of futility. Yet former Steelers front office executive Doug Whaley doesn’t think that’s the biggest issue when talking about Tomlin overall.
“I think he’s a heck of a coach,” Whaley said on Wednesday’s episode of the Fan Morning Show on 93.7 The Fan. “I think the two things that you can have issues with. Number one for me is not the playoff record. It’s his hiring practices, how he has hired coaches in the past. And if you look at it [Sean] McVay’s been in the league seven years, and I can’t count how many guys he’s had a tree of, a coaching tree. There’s only been two [for Tomlin], and Bruce Arians was unceremoniously let out of town, that was a head coach. And then Scottie Montgomery went to be the head coach of East Carolina. How do you coach 17 years, not have a losing season, win one Super Bowl, and not have a coaching tree?”
Whaley did acknowledge the lack of playoff success being the second point people can take issue with. However, the lack of playoff success certainly has roots in the coaching staff. That begins with Tomlin, both as the head coach and as the one responsible for putting the coaching staff together.
Whaley notes that there are two former Tomlin coaches who went on to have success elsewhere, just at varying levels. Arians was Steelers’ offensive coordinator from 2007-2011. He then went on to be the head coach of the Arizona Cardinals from 2013-2017 and then the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 2019- 2021. He won Super Bowl LV with the Buccaneers.
Montgomery was the Steelers’ wide receivers coach from 2010-2012. He then went on to spend a number of years at the college level, coaching at Duke as an associate head coach/offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach. He then became head coach at East Carolina, filling that role from 2016-2018. He then spent two years at Maryland as the offensive coordinator before moving back up to the NFL ranks with the Indianapolis Colts as the running backs coach. He currently coaches the running backs and serves as assistant head coach with the Detroit Lions.
As Whaley said, that’s not much coaching development success for a 17th-year head coach. It’s definitely a point that Tomlin’s detractors can point at and say that he’s not a great head coach. When you couple that with the lack of recent playoff success, there’s definitely a problem there.
However, the Steelers still proved they want Tomlin as their head coach with the three-year extension, and Tomlin proved he still wanted to be in Pittsburgh. Now it’s up to him and one of his newest coaching hires, offensive coordinator Arthur Smith, to turn things around on offense in order to win some playoff games. ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio expects that the Steelers will be more successful after this Tomlin extension, and if that happens, all these concerns will melt away.
