Many of us have experienced what it’s like to have a change in management at work with a new set of rules and expectations. It can be a difficult adjustment. That is exactly how it sounds like Mike Tomlin’s first season as the Pittsburgh Steelers’ head coach went.
“Coach Tomlin, the first year, it was great — at least for me it was. But a lot of the veteran guys, they didn’t like the way he ran practice,” LaMarr Woodly said via Cam Heyward’s Not Just Football podcast. “I guess training camp was a little harder, practice a little harder. And I used to sit over there just to hear was they had to say.
“They was like, ‘Man, [Bill] Cowher didn’t do it this way.’ It was always ‘Cowher didn’t do it this way.’ So that first year coach Tomlin was, he was getting the team together, but I wouldn’t say people was against him because they still loved him. But he just overworked us. And he had to because he was a new coach, and he had to come put his foot down. And I think eventually they understood that, and they played for him, but he just ran the show a little bit different.”
Woodley was drafted in 2007, so he never played for Cowher. He can’t directly speak to the comparison, but veterans didn’t seem to be shy in talking about it during that first season.
I don’t think Tomlin’s practices are quite as intense as during his rookie season, but in a lot of ways he still runs one of the most physical training camp and practices in the NFL. Elandon Roberts talked about how surprised he was that they were tackling to the ground at training camp in his first season with the team.
The transition from Cowher to Tomlin was probably even more difficult for the veterans since they had jwon a Super Bowl just a couple years prior. Most of them already knew what it took to perform at the highest level and make it through a full season with another Lombardi in the trophy case.
Tomlin was one of the youngest head coaches in the league at the time. He was 34 years old, which is younger than Russell Wilson and Cam Heyward at the moment, for reference. Other players have talked before about Tomlin going above and beyond during that first training camp to prove himself before dialing it back in later years.
Whatever his methods were, they paid off. The Steelers returned to the Super Bowl in his second season as the head coach and added a sixth Lombardi to their trophy case.
Now in his 18th season as the Steelers’ head coach, Mike Tomlin still fosters a highly physical environment, but he is also more conscious of veteran players and things like rest days for certain players.
