It’s not easy to find negative words about Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, at least outside of Steelers fandom. By a wide margin, he commands more respect than nearly anybody else in NFL circles as the longest-tenured head coach. He has near-universal respect from his players past and present. One thing that doesn’t come up often is how he handles his stuff, though, which Miles Killebrew recently mentioned.
“He’s such a leader, man. And he holds his coaches accountable, which is unique, I think”, he said of Tomlin on the Christian Kuntz podcast. Christian Kuntz is, of course, the Steelers’ long snapper, so he knows Tomlin quite well, too.
“I haven’t been in a lot of other teams, obviously, but to have a consistent message for the players and the coaches, I respect that a lot”, Killebrew said of the coaching methods Tomlin employs. “Because you don’t have to do that. You could just be like, ‘Ah, coaches, you do what you want’, but players, ‘Do as I say, not as I do’. But not here”.
Kuntz agreed with Killebrew about Tomlin holding his coaches accountable. “He calls coaches. Called out. Oh yeah”, he said. “Everybody. Scouts, the guy filming, whatever. You’re there to do the job, and if you’re not doing it, you’re gonna be called out”.
A recent example came just this week during training camp practices, on the first day of pads. During the backs-on-‘backers drill, Tomlin singled out outside linebackers coach Denzel Martin, ribbing him for his unit’s performance. “Coach your guys up!”, he yelled, saying that they had no business losing to tight ends.
But as both Kuntz and Killebrew pointed out, Mike Tomlin has clear motivation for everything he does. “He wants the best from you”, the latter said regarding Tomlin’s critiques. “He doesn’t want you to just settle for being mediocre, which is cool”.
Of course, many Steelers fans will disagree about the idea that Tomlin holds his coaches accountable. After all, we are coming off one of the biggest blunders of his entire career, which was his decision to retain Matt Canada as offensive coordinator. He ended up having to fire Canada in-season last year, which I’m sure he hated doing down to his core.
One thing I can say is that the Steelers have turned their coaching staff over a lot in recent years under Tomlin. The wide receiver coach position in particular has been a revolving door since Darryl Drake’s sudden passing. They have cycled through Ike Hilliard and Frisman Jackson since then, now onto Zach Azzanni.
Tomlin also kept things moving along the offensive line a lot throughout his coaching career, with one exception. He would have kept Mike Munchak here for as long as he was willing to coach, I’m sure. Outside of Munchak’s tenure here, though, they have gone through a number of o-line coaches. They seem to like current coach Pat Meyer, though, now doing into his third season. Most position coaches operate under two-year contracts, so he is obviously on his second contract.
