The Pittsburgh Steelers were two years removed from winning Super Bowl XL in 2007. The organization had finally added one for the thumb after 25 years of trying, but they were coming off an eight-win follow up season, and Bill Cowher had agreed to end his tenure as the head coach. Pittsburgh had a franchise quarterback and one of the best defenses in league history. The opening was one of the most coveted jobs in all of sports. The team was loaded, and when the Rooney Family committed to a coach, the job security was unmatched in professional sports.
wmsportsblog
Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin got his start as the secondary coach for Tampa Bay.
Ken Whisenhunt, the offensive coordinator for the previous three seasons, was considered one of the job's finalists. Russ Grimm, a Hall of Fame offensive lineman and a Steelers assistant since 2001, was also in the running. Ron Rivera, the defensive coordinator of the Chicago Bears, was in the mix. Still, the Bears were in the midst of a Super Bowl run, which limited his opportunity to conduct a second interview. The final candidate had no ties directly to Pittsburgh other than working under Tony Dungy with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The first-year defensive coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings, Mike Tomlin, emerged as the final candidate.
Tomlin: The Soul Of A Football Coach on amazon
Steelers' Mike Tomlin is the subject of a new book by John Harris.
In the recently released book Tomlin: The Soul Of A Football Coach by John Harris, Tomlin’s mother, Julia Copeland, was not enthusiastic about his chances to secure the Pittsburgh Steelers head coaching job. It is not because she doubted her son’s capability to do the job. Copeland was not optimistic about his chances because of his relative inexperience compared to Whisenhunt, Rivera, and Grimm.
“When he was interviewing for the Steelers job, I was trying to prepare him,” Copeland told Chuck Finder of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “I really didn’t think he was going to get it. You don’t go from being a coordinator in one year to head coach.”
Whisenhunt essentially disqualified himself as a finalist when he met with the Arizona Cardinals for the second time on January 12th, 2007. He was hired just two days later on the 14th, and it came down to the popular incumbent offensive line coach Grimm, who had been with the team for six seasons, and Tomlin, a young defensive coordinator. According to a misleading article from the Associated Press, Grimm was considered the front-runner by Art Rooney II. It was merely an assumption as the organization made it plain that they were conducting a second round of interviews with Grimm, Rivera, and Tomlin.
It wasn't the last time during the hiring process that the media needed to be corrected about who would be the Steelers' head coach. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published conflicting stories on January 20th and the 21st. The Tribune-Review reported that the Steelers selected Tomlin, and the Post-Gazette reported that Grimm had been tapped as the next man to lead the organization forward. The print media was getting it just as wrong as the digital counterparts they disparage today. Nothing much has changed except that we read articles on our phones instead of folded paper.
Steelers.com
Pittsburgh Steelers Head Coach Mike Tomlin had to endure confusion during his hiring process.
17 years later, it is still hard to believe that there was so much confusion surrounding hiring the Steelers' head coach. Tomlin took the opportunity to address the controversy in his introductory press conference and remind reporters that it was entirely driven by the media. He also couldn't resist a good-natured jab at the Keystone cop reporting.
"Not confusing for me. The Rooney's were very upfront about the hiring process," Tomlin said. At times, I thought some of the reports, the false reports, were comical. It wasn't necessarily funny when they weren't going in my favor, but it's part of the process."
Tomlin persevered through the process and surprised the NFL and, perhaps more importantly, his mother by achieving one of only 32 positions at the highest level of football. No matter how you feel about his tenure as the Steelers' head coach, it is hard to rate his hiring as anything but an overwhelming success for the organization.
Tomlin appeared in two Super Bowls in his first five years as a coach and is closing in on Chuck Noll as the all-time wins leader for the franchise. That is pretty good for a guy whose mother wasn't convinced he would get the job.
What do you think, Steeler Nation? Did the Rooney family make the right call in 2007 when they surprised Tomlin's mother and the media by hiring him? Please comment below or on my Twitter/X: @thebubbasq.
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