It’s not often that a head coach is able to string together 19 consecutive non-losing seasons. In fact, only three play callers have ever managed to achieve that feat: Tom Landry (21), Bill Belichick (19), and, as of Week 15 of the 2025 regular season, Mike Tomlin.
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The career-long head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers has long been revered as one of the best regular-season competitors in the history of football, but his lack of playoff success tends to overshadow that. Should the Steel Curtain fail to find a playoff win this season, it will have been a decade since they last saw one, so even though the team is right back in the postseason mix heading into Week 18, there are still murmurings of Tomlin potentially leaving the team.
According to the NFL’s premier insider, Adam Schefter, a Week 18 loss to the Baltimore Ravens wouldn’t just end the Steelers’ season, it would also bring the departure of Tomlin within “the realm of possibility.” Rather than Pittsburgh firing Tomlin, however, Schefter believes it is actually more likely that the 19-year veteran would leave the league altogether to go work in television.
During his most recent appearance on the Pat McAfee Show, Schefter detailed the potential outcomes for both Tomlin and his divisional rival, John Harbaugh, in which explained
“One of those owners is going to want to have a conversation about what went wrong… it may be Tomlin or Harbaugh that goes to their owner and tells them they want to move on to another team or TV… Those things are possible.”
While he did suggest that this is still more unlikely than not, the report still adds that much more flavor to the winner-takes-all match-up between the Steelers and the Ravens. Of course, the real implications of this decision won’t show up until well after this season is over.
For as much as the Steelers have struggled in the postseason throughout the past 10 years, there’s still something to be said for the fact that Tomlin has always been able to ensure them a chance at competing. There’s a fine line between mediocrity and consistency, and Tomlin has been dancing along that line for quite some time now.
There’s no telling what a Tomlin-less Steelers team could look like. After all, we haven’t seen that for nearly two decades, so everyone will be in uncharted territory on this one.
Suffice to say, Pittsburgh will have to decide if it’s willing to stick with the devil it knows, or risk venturing into the unknown in hopes of potentially finding something better, which is anything but guaranteed. That’s somewhat of a scary proposition for a storied franchise that is fighting for its relevancy in the modern age, but it’s one that they’ll have to contend with, regardless as to what this Sunday may bring.
