The Pittsburgh Steelers signed HC Mike Tomlin to a three-year, $50 million extension last June. Generally speaking, you are not going to pay somebody that much money and then hamstring them. But according to former Steelers reporter Ed Bouchette, it doesn’t really make a difference what his salary is. That’s just what they do with their coaches.
“Every [Steelers] coach has the final say”, Bouchette insisted on the Chipped Ham and Football podcast. “That started with [Chuck] Noll, it went through [Bill] Cowher and Mike Tomlin. They’re not bringing anybody in that Tomlin doesn’t want. He gets who he wants, and that’s the way it is. Whether it was Kevin [Colbert] or Omar [Khan], that’s the way it is”.
This topic comes up often, especially early in the offseason, as an integral part of the evaluation process. Since 2016, Mike Tomlin hasn’t won a playoff game, but he manages to win in the regular season. More often than not, observers assess that he is doing “more with less” in terms of roster quality. But if he is primarily responsible for the roster, then how much credit does he deserve for coaching them well?
“Blame or praise or whatever, he’s deeply involved”, Bouchette insisted of Tomlin’s control over the Steelers. “He coaches the defense—everybody knows that now. He’s the man who hires the coaches. To me, he’s not done a very good job of that, hiring coaches. That’s the one thing I don’t think he’s done a good job at. I think Mike is a good coach, I really do”.
The Steelers hired Tomlin in 2007, and he is going into his 19th season in 2025. He led them to a Super Bowl title in his second season and reached the championship again two years later. Since then, however, the Steelers have only made one conference finals appearance. The organization is mired in a six-game playoff losing streak, tied for the longest in the NFL.
Bouchette is far from the only reporter to point out Tomlin’s control over the Steelers’ personnel. Last week, Brooke Pryor did the same, likening him to a chef buying his own ingredients. “In a lot of ways, he creates the problem and then he solves it and then he gets credit for solving it without a lot of acknowledgement that, ‘Well, you’re in this problem because you had a hand in it’”, she said.
To hear the Steelers tell it, they strive as much as possible to reach a collective consensus on players. President Art Rooney II and GM Omar Khan are involved in all such matters, but would it be at all surprising if Mike Tomlin has a thumb on the scale? He is, after all, the one who has to coach them.
