Usually, when an NFL team’s Hall-of-Fame quarterback retires, it takes a huge step back and enters a rebuilding phase. This tends to mean the team will start losing enough games to have a high draft pick it can then use to select its next franchise quarterback. The Pittsburgh Steelers spit in the face of what’s normal though. Since Ben Roethlisberger retired, the Steelers have still done everything they can to compete, narrowly missing the playoffs in their first season without Roethlisberger and actually making it to the postseason this past year. Much of this success can be attributed to Mike Tomlin’s coaching prowess with one former NFL offensive lineman claiming this ability makes Tomlin the second-best coach in the league.
Jeremiah Sirles played guard in the NFL from 2014-2018, bouncing around between multiple teams. Now, he hosts a podcast called The OLine Committee alongside fellow former offensive lineman Alex Boone and Minnesota Vikings’analyst Phil Mackey. On the latest episode, Mackey asked the former players who the best coach in the league is besides Andy Reid.
“Mike Tomlin is definitely, in my opinion, the number two of the best coaches,” Sirles said. “He’s got a winning season pretty much every year he’s been in the NFL. He had a revolving door at quarterback. He finds a way with the pieces that he has to not have a dumpster fire of a team that plays in a great division every single year. Bengals, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, those guys beat the living shit out of each other all year long, and he still finds a way to be competitive. If we’re talking about the top coaches, I have Mike Tomlin up there right at the top.”
Some fans are sick of hearing about it because the Steelers haven’t won a playoff game since 2016, but Tomlin’s ability to wring every single win he can get out of his teams is remarkable. Teams that start three different quarterbacks during a season aren’t supposed to make the playoffs. Yet, that’s exactly what the Steelers did last year. Now that the team has Russell Wilson and Justin Fields, there’s optimism that Tomlin should be able to lead the Steelers to their first playoff win in years.
While Sirles has a high opinion of Tomlin, Mackey had a different opinion, leaving him out of his top 10 coaches going into this year. Sirles pushed back on that idea.
“His reputation amongst players in the league is so high,” he said. “The way that he runs his organization, the way he runs his teams, the way it’s unwavering of like there’s a fine line that he draws, and that it’s my way or the highway type of way, and it works.”
Sirles’ echoes a common point about Tomlin here, which is that people in the league have the utmost respect for him. That matters more than what anyone else thinks. You can criticize a lot of what he does, but at the end of the day, he has something almost every other coach in the league wishes they had: respect. There are a select few coaches in the league who have the complete trust of their team’s owners. Tomlin is one of them, not just because of his Super Bowl win, but also his consistency.
After signing a new extension this offseason, Tomlin will surely be staying in Pittsburgh for the foreseeable future and likely won’t be done with the Steelers until he decides to walk away. He may have failed in the postseason recently, but with an improved quarterback room and a better play caller this season, he may have the Steelers in position to make some noise in the playoffs once again. Managing to not hit rock bottom after losing Roethlisberger was a miracle. It won’t be any easier going forward until the Steelers have a true franchise signal caller, but Tomlin has proven that he is the right man for the job.
