The Pittsburgh Steelers hired Mike Tomlin on January 22, 2007. Bill Cowher stepped down because of his wife’s health, and the Steelers walked the walk on the Rooney rule. They interviewed Tomlin and were so impressed that Russ Grimm and Ken Whisenhunt were passed over for an outsider. Tomlin validated the decision when he made it to the Super Bowl twice in his first five seasons as the head coach.
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Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin (right) and Dick LeBeau (left) oversee practice.
Dick LeBeau, Bruce Arians and Todd Haley were solid coordinators who made Tomlin look like an outstanding leader. That was their job, and like any good CEO, Tomlin got credit for listening to them. Jim Lee Howell, the legendary New York Giants coach from the 1950s, not necessarily by choice, employed Tom Landry as his defensive coordinator and Vince Lombardi as his offensive coordinator.
“I just blow up the footballs and keep order,” Howell famously joked about his responsibility as a head coach.
Howell parlayed his assistant coaches into a successful seven-year coaching career that saw the Giants win the 1956 NFL Championship in the famous ‘sneaker game.’ He might have been the first coach to fill his staff with future championship-caliber head coaches, but he was not the last. Sid Gillman, Bill Parcells and Bill Walsh have impressive coaching trees littered with championships.
COREY CRISAN / DK Pittsburgh Sports
Pittsburgh Steelers Offensive Coordinator Matt Canada should have nothing to smile about after underperforming throughout his tenure as offensive coordinator.
Tomlin, in the kindest terms possible, does not have a good eye for assistant coaches. It might serve the organization well to determine how accomplished he is at inflating footballs. The best coordinators under Tomlin were forced on him. The Rooney family made it clear that LeBeau was untouchable. If they hadn’t, Troy Polamalu and the rest of the last great NFL defense would have done it for them.
Arians was promoted from Cowher’s quarterback coach to offensive coordinator and ran an offense that was good enough to win Super Bowl XLIII and come within a freak injury to Ben Roethlisberger the night before Super XLVI of winning another. Others would argue Arians was within a Rashard Mendenhall fumble of engineering a miracle comeback in Super Bowl XLVI. Art Rooney II hired Todd Haley to protect Roethlisberger soon after.
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Former Steelers Offensive Coordinator Todd Haley
Tomlin got his hooks deep into the hiring process after Haley’s contract expired in 2018. It has been a disaster ever since. The Steelers have not had competent coordinators since the end of the 2018 season. The five-year period that has followed has produced the worst stretch of Steelers football since the 1980s. The results are that Tomlin’s seat curiously has only been warm on social media.
Do The Steelers Protect Tomlin From Aggressive Media Questions?
The PM Team w/Poni & Mueller is the afternoon radio program on 93.7 The Fan. It features Andrew Fillipponi, Chris Mueller and producer, Donny Football. The moniker is a pseudonym for Donny Chedrick. After the Steelers embarrassing loss to the Houston Texans on Sunday, he took to social media to lament that the pending press conference would not contain any tough questions for Tomlin.
It’s alright, no hard questions coming for Mike Tomlin. Don’t get your hopes up for a fiery press conference. And that’s not on the media. The Steelers protect Tomlin. He’s untouchable and he knows it. Any hard questions get you permanently put in their doghouse.
— Donny Football (@DonChed54) October 1, 2023
Tomlin is the undisputed champion of press conferences. It is a significant portion of his mystique. Tomlinisms are funny little sayings that the Pittsburgh head coach is famous for uttering. Last week, Tomlin admitted to making up an answer at a press conference because he was tired of answering the same question. Are the Steelers possibly engaging in some not-so-subtle shenanigans to protect Tomlin?
It is hard to believe that savvy media personalities with large platforms, like Mark Kaboly from The Athletic or Brooke Pryor from ESPN, would sit still for that type of treatment. It does beg the question of why the media fawns over Tomlin. Is it all just a scripted show? If a reporter dares to ask the wrong question, are they chastised behind closed doors?
Pittsburgh Steelers YouTube Channel
Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin is annoyed with questions about his offensive coordinator and quarterback after a 26-22 win on Monday Night Football over the Cleveland Browns.
Trust between an NFL team and their beat writers is fragile. The team has to trust reporters not to reveal key points from behind the scenes before games while reporting interesting stories on the team. If a reporter betrays the team's trust, they lose access.
However, if reporters stop asking tough questions under threat of losing access, the fans lose faith, and more importantly, we lose the unvarnished truth. Say it ain't so, Mr Rooney. Somebody please say it ain't so.
What do you think, Steeler Nation? Do you think the Steelers are protecting Tomlin from tough questions? Please comment below or on my Twitter/X: @thebubbasq.
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