The first episode of the AFC North Hard Knocks premiered on Tuesday night, and the Pittsburgh Steelers were heavily featured, with head coach Mike Tomlin coming across very well behind the scenes. The inside look at how Tomlin operates and runs his team could give him a leg up when it comes to deciding who wins Coach of the Year, an award Tomlin has never been won, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk believes. While Florio said he hasn’t watched the first episode yet, he heard that Tomlin was the star.
“No surprise, Mike Tomlin, star of the show. What a shock. Probably helps him win Coach of the Year,” Florio said Wednesday on The PM Team on 93.7 The Fan. “Why wouldn’t it? Fifty voters, they’re gonna watch it, I’m gonna watch it [and] they’re stupid enough to give me one of the votes, and it’s kind of a close race right now. If Tomlin comes off looking as good as I heard he does, then that’s gonna help him in that vote.”
Tomlin said earlier this season that he doesn’t care about winning Coach of the Year because it usually goes to a team that overperforms or surprises, and he never wants the Steelers to be a surprise. Florio agreed with that assessment but said the Steelers do fit into the category of a surprise team this season.
While Pittsburgh has never had a losing season under Mike Tomlin, there was a lot of skepticism about the Steelers heading into this season with Russell Wilson and Justin Fields brought in at quarterback, two players who hadn’t experienced much success in their previous stops. Both quarterbacks have played key roles for the Steelers, with Fields starting the first six games while Wilson recovered from a calf injury and then Wilson returning to play some of the best football of his career to have the Steelers at 9-3.
Tomlin deserves a lot of credit for turning to Wilson after a solid start by Fields and seeing the work he puts in and how he empowers his players behind the scenes gives AP voters a view of Tomlin they simply don’t have of some other candidates. If Tomlin continues to get a lot of screen time and impresses throughout the series, he could find himself walking home with some hardware as long as the Steelers also keep performing on the field.
