There were many who had wanted Mike Tomlin gone from the Pittsburgh Steelers for years. But even with all the preamble, it was still a huge shock to learn that Tomlin was the one to step down from his position as head football coach after almost two decades on the job. Tomlin departs the Steel City with his legacy largely intact. He did have seven straight playoff losses, but he remained competitive every season, going 19 years without a losing record.
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And let’s not forget that Super Bowl championship in 2008. While Tomlin was not able to reach those heights again and his team’s ceiling remained lower than spoiled Steelers fans would have liked, he was perhaps the greatest floor-raising coach in NFL history.
He is criticized for losing badly in the playoffs in his final few trips. But maybe, what really happened was that he was such a good coach that, even with rosters that had no business being anywhere near the postseason, he consistently brought them there anyway.
Unlike his long-time rival and fellow unemployed coach, John Harbaugh, it was clear that Tomlin still had the love of his players as well. So much so that one of his former guys, Ben Roethlisberger, came up with a conspiracy theory to suggest Tomlin made this final move to leave Pittsburgh for the players as well.
“People are gonna run with this, but it’s just a conspiracy theory,” Roethlisberger said on the Chanel Seven podcast. “What if Tomlin wanted to take the pressure and the blame off the players, and so he said, ‘You know what, I’m gonna walk away so that they don’t talk about the game anymore. They only talk about me.'”
Big Ben and his co-host laughed at the real-life possibility of something like that happening. It was a conspiracy theory after all. But for Big Ben to suggest that just goes to show what kind of coach Tomlin is and how his players viewed him.
Case in point, Tomlin was probably the biggest and main reason that Aaron Rodgers decided to come to Pittsburgh in 2025. And Roethlisberger believes that with Tomlin leaving, that means the “Rodgers era” in Western Pennsylvania is likely to be over after just one year.
“I believe that this is the end of the Aaron Rodgers era in Pittsburgh,” suggested the former QB. “I could be wrong! This is just because Tomlin is gone, I feel like there was something there between those two. Which is why Aaron, I believe, came [to Steel City]. He liked playing for Coach T. So I think that’s probably the end of Aaron, in my opinion, here in Pittsburgh.”
Rodgers had a topsy-turvy season, but he delivered the goods late in the year in December and early January. He just couldn’t keep the magic going for one more game. Now, the Steelers embark on a journey they’ve only taken thrice since the Summer of Love in ’69: hiring a new head coach.
They will hope they can nail that hire as well as they did in 2007. That’s when they brought on a little-known Minnesota Vikings defensive assistant named Mike Tomlin. He went on to record 193 regular-season wins, tied for ninth-most all-time along with another Steelers legend, Chuck Noll. Though Tomlin achieved the feat in 33 fewer games.
Tomlin was truly one-of-one. His Tomlinisms will continue to ring out and echo across Western Pennsylvania and the wider football world for decades to come, and Pittsburgh will not see his like again. Those who were calling for his firing got their wish.
But as they say, be careful what you wish for. ‘Cause you just might get it.
