Barring an extremely unforeseen circumstance, Mike Tomlin will be the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2025. The Steelers haven’t won a playoff game since 2016, but Tomlin still has excellent job security. Former Steelers guard Ramon Foster didn’t want the Steelers to fire Tomlin, but he does believe this year might’ve been their best opportunity to move on from the veteran coach.
“We’re talking about Coach Tomlin. I’ll put it this way: this is my opinion,” Foster said Tuesday on Footbahlin’ with Ben Roethlisberger. “I didn’t want him fired, but I also thought this.
“If there was a year to move on, I thought it was this one, considering the circumstances. Five straight losses, another first-round bounce, offense looked anemic, but you still have some bones. If you have a guy in mind that you wanted to bring in. I don’t know who the guy is.”
Foster is correct that, while the Steelers’ season as a whole wasn’t terrible, the way they finished could have justified them moving on from Tomlin. That collapse to end the year was brutal, mainly because the Steelers weren’t even competitive in most of those games. While not all of it was Tomlin’s fault, he deserves much of the blame as the team’s leader.
It didn’t seem like anyone had any answers for what changed. The Steelers were one of the best teams in the league, sitting at 10-3, and somehow, they failed to win another game for the rest of the year. It’s tough to argue in favor of Tomlin after that.
However, Foster is also correct that the Steelers would need to know they have another coach ready to bring in to replace Tomlin to get them over the hump. It’s not like they’d be replacing a bad coach. Tomlin is still one of the league’s best. The Steelers’ standard is just higher than simply making the playoffs.
Therefore, if they did fire Tomlin, they would do so with the intention of finding someone who could help them win immediately. On that same podcast, Ben Roethlisberger explained why that’s so important.
“It’d have to be someone that you felt super comfortable with that you knew could turn it around right now,” Roethlisberger said. “Because you don’t want to lose the guys you have on defense. The question is, is Coach [Tomlin’s] message getting stale? Is it just going over people’s heads?”
Roethlisberger also makes a few good points. If the Steelers bring in a first-time head coach and turn towards a rebuild, then some of the aging stars on defense might want to leave. They want to compete for a Super Bowl, and in that scenario, the Steelers might be moving farther away from that goal. For all his faults, Tomlin raises the Steelers’ floor.
It’s debatable if getting rid of Tomlin would solve all the Steelers’ issues. It doesn’t sound like that will happen anyway, so ownership probably believes that wouldn’t be the case. The Steelers are still one of the most successful teams in the NFL, having never had a losing season under Tomlin. It’s just that they could be better, and keeping Tomlin could continue to see them tread water.
