Mike Tomlin has built a reputation not only as a winning coach but also a wordsmith. He’s the Shakespeare of NFL coaches. Every Tomlin press conference comes with the intrigue of a potential new “Tomlinism,” which is a word invented to represent Tomlin’s colorful quotes and unique analogies. Some of his most iconic Tomlinisms include “The standard is the standard” and “You blink, and I’ll cut your eyelids off” among many others.
Tomlin dropped another fantastic quote in his latest Tuesday presser, via the Pittsburgh Steelers’ YouTube page. It came after he was asked about the “petty game ball” given to Russell Wilson Sunday after the Steelers’ win against his former team in the Denver Broncos.
“None of your businesses, respectfully,” Tomlin said. “There are certain things that go on among teams that I don’t talk about. Whether it gets out or how it gets out is unimportant to me, and I’m not overly guarded against it. But there’s just certain things as a leader that I talked to the collective about, that I have zero intentions of sharing with the larger public because it’s about our collective and how we come together and how we appreciate and support one another. And I can’t give you all the ingredients to the hot dog. You might not like it.”
If I interpret the quote correctly — and I had to listen to it a few times to really get the gist of it — Tomlin is in a way comparing the Steelers’ locker room to a hot dog. Not everything that goes into making the hot dog needs to be revealed because the ingredients aren’t always pleasant.
Similarly, I guess, not all the happenings inside a football locker room need to be reported to the general public because they can be interpreted poorly at times by those on the outside. Football locker rooms are an intimate space, and, like Tomlin said, it’s the collective coming together and appreciating each other that really matters. How they bond is irrelevant to the public.
It seemed like he was giving his own little spin on the famous cliche “It’s better not to see how the sausage is being made.”
The question about “petty game balls” arose because Justin Fields spoke to the media after the win against the Denver Broncos, and he mentioned that Russell Wilson along with other former Broncos players, including new starting punter Corliss Waitman and practice squad wide receiver Brandon Johnson, also received game balls. The concept of Tomlin handing out petty game balls to players when they beat their former teams was new to me, but ESPN’s Steelers beat reporter Brooke Pryor wrote that “Tomlin routinely hands out that kind of game ball to his players in games where they beat their former teams.” Evidently, it’s something that’s been happening for years, but Tomlin and his players have kept it under wraps because they felt that it didn’t need to be broadcast to the public.
Well, sorry Coach Tomlin because now we’re writing about it. And frankly, the petty game ball concept is fantastic and a great method for some playful taunting without giving other team’s too much bulletin-board material. Tomlin builds relationships with players better than any coach in the NFL. But for those relationships to stay strong and feel meaningful, he wants the locker room to be a guarded space where players feel that they can be themselves. Remember when Antonio Brown livestreamed from the Steelers” locker room during the 2017 playoffs while Tomlin was delivering some comments to the team about the New England Patriots that they could definitely use as bulletin-board material? I certainly do.
For now, we’ll let Tomlin keep doing his thing without pressing any further. The Steelers will have plenty of opportunities to hand out petty game balls as the season continues, none bigger than Patrick Queen getting to square off against his former team and division rival Baltimore Ravens twice.
The lesson learned is that no matter what he puts in the hot dogs, we as Steelers fans and media are going to enjoy every last bite of them because Mike Tomlin has an unparalleled way with words.
