With the Pittsburgh Steelers 2024 season wrapped up and the NFL playoffs nearing their end, the off-season is about to fully kick off.
One of the most exciting parts of the off-season is the NFL draft. Leading up to that, coaches around the NFL get a few chances to look at some prospects they’ll get a chance to draft come April. One of those events is the Reese‘s Senior Bowl, which started earlier this week.
Of course, Mike Tomlin is in attendance. He made a big impact on Virginia Tech DT Aeneas Peebles, according to the AJC’s Orlando Ledbetter.
‘That was huge,’ Tomlin said to Peebles after he broke up a running play. Peebles certainly felt the appreciation from Tomlin. ‘That’s what I dreamed of as a kid, getting coached by guys like Mike Tomlin,’ Peebles said to AJC.
As a college prospect, events like the Senior Bowl are obviously a big deal. These prospects are playing for their draft positions, something they’ve worked towards most of their lives.
With that in mind, it’s an even bigger deal when a coach of Mike Tomlin’s caliber gives them credit.
This is also a good example of the difference in the way Pittsburgh and the rest of the NFL world view Tomlin. Tomlin’s received a lot of slack from Pittsburgh recently, and it’s not without reason. The Steelers have been very disappointing over the last half-decade. Things came to a head during their five-game losing streak to end the 2025 season.
Yet Tomlin remains the great player-coach he always has been. He’s always been a coach people want to come and play for. As we see with Aeneas Peebles here, he’s a coach who can start building these relationships from day one.
This is only the beginning of the draft process. Over the next few months, we will hear a lot more about some of these prospects and their potential connections to the Steelers. For now, it’s nice to see Tomlin still being able to make an impact with the next generation of players.
