The NFL’s Most Baffling Winning Team
The Steelers have one of the league’s worst offenses. And one of its worst defenses. They’re 6–3.
Tomlin is a suitable coach to lead a mediocre team with one of the best records in football. If there wasn’t enough fodder for debate regarding whether Mike Tomlin is to blame for the Steelers’ success, failure, or both, this wouldn’t be a Mike Tomlin year. Everyone is correct enough: Tomlin is obstinate and bears some of the blame for the Steelers’ numerous missteps during his leadership. If one measures a coach by his or her capacity to prepare any group of fifty-three players for a single Sunday game in a vacuum, he’s also among the greatest football coaches in history and among the best in the profession at the moment. Tomlin is a legend and a pain in his own ass.
Football fans hold Tomlin in the highest regard imaginable. Tomlin is “the model of consistency in this league,” according to head coach of the Green Bay Packers Matt LaFleur, who made this statement to reporters last week. “If you ask any coach or player in the league, I don’t think there’s anybody that won’t respect him,” he continued. This feeling is typically evident during post-game handshakes, as rival players approach Tomlin in a manner evoking the reception Tom Brady experienced in his latter years in the league. Another frequent occurrence is former Steelers speaking with the media and sharing the lessons they learned from Tomlin.
The journeyman backup quarterback Joshua Dobbs, who is currently the talk of the Twin Cities thanks to his successful fill-in work with the Vikings, claims that Tomlin instilled in him the importance of responding quickly to absurd situations. Other former players cling adoringly to Tomlin’s matter-of-fact encouragement of his troops and his frank criticism of their work. He came out on top in a survey conducted a few years back among Pro Bowl players who stated he was the coach they would most like to have in charge, aside from their own. With the Steelers, Tomlin has overseen a collection of independent, quirky, and—dare I say it—lousy personalities, and he has consistently kept his group from imploding.
It’s simply inconceivable to consider Tomlin as anything other than an all-time coach when you combine those personal qualities with the fact that he consistently wins more games than he loses and won a Super Bowl in 2009. It’s incredible what he’s accomplished this season with a very dismal Steelers team. It’s among the best stretches anyone has ever completed in terms of coaching alone—using the players you have and winning games with them in spite of their shortcomings. Furthermore, Tomlin ought to receive more praise because the Steelers have missed a number of their top players for sizable stretches of the now-half-completed season.
That is nothing new for him; even though Devlin “Duck” Hodges started at quarterback for six of the 16 games in 2019, he managed to keep the Steelers in the playoff hunt until the final week of play. The most memorable moment for Mason Rudolph, who started eight games, was when Myles Garrett of the Browns struck him in the head with a helmet. Tomlin makes the most of what he has, and it’s unlikely that anyone ever will.
There have always been critics of Tomlin, but not to the degree that has seemed inconsistent with his standing as one of the most successful coaches in football history. The most dated and tedious criticism of Tomlin is the one that turns his admiration for his players into a derogatory racial statement. In 2014, Tomlin spoke candidly about the stigma attached to being a “player’s coach” in a field notorious for autocracy. It can be close and cuddly at times or not at all.
Being any of the above doesn’t bother me in the slightest. It gets kind of old and falls into that category for me when they pair “players’ coach” with questions about my hairstyle, what I wear on the sidelines, or what kind of music I like to listen to,” he said.
Growing up in Pittsburgh during the early years of Tomlin’s career, I learned to discount a significant portion of his criticism as being offered in bad faith. However, Tomlin has never claimed that he isn’t a legitimate target in other contexts—he is an NFL coach. It is an uncomfortable drought for a team with six Super Bowl championships that he hasn’t won a playoff game in six years. He’s made some genuinely puzzling hiring choices, the most notorious of which still plagues the Steelers today. The cries for Tomlin to fire offensive coordinator Matt Canada—who in his three years on the job has failed to produce a 400-yard performance—have gotten so loud that FIRE CANADA signs can be seen at sports events that have nothing to do with football.
It’s hard to imagine that if the Steelers hired one of the many competent offensive coaches who occasionally have the ability to orchestrate an offensive explosion, they wouldn’t move the ball better and wouldn’t need to overcome yardage deficits to win every game.
The Steelers employ a collaborative roster-building approach, and Tomlin’s influence is evident throughout the team, to the point where his exceptional coaching is required. One of the worst quarterbacks in the NFL, Kenny Pickett is a second-year Pitt alum, and Tomlin played a part in the Steelers giving him the keys. Naturally, some of the credit for keeping the Steelers in games should go to Tomlin, who has made it possible for Pickett to become an oddball superstar in the fourth quarter of close games. Tomlin is the one who owns that the Steelers are not good in every way. He also acknowledges their propensity to wait until they are close enough to strike before striking.
Still, this is a really bad team that Tomlin helped assemble. The Steelers rank 27th on defense and 26th on offense in yards per play. Their plus-10 turnover margin, which ties them for the best in the league, is their savior. The Steelers have an additional edge in the automatic Chris Boswell, who has helped them win the majority of their games. Tomlin and the front office put together a group that ought to be quite adept at forcing turnovers. (One of the best sack-getters in league history, outside linebacker T.J. Watt, is the highest-paid player.) However, the fact remains that the Steelers, who have one ofthe worst defenses and offenses in the league, have been incredibly fortunate to win six of first nine.
Still, those victories matter. It is improbable that the Steelers will finish 11–6 or 12–5 and lose the yardage war in all 17 games. They’ll eventually have to play well in order to maintain their success. That might not be in them. However, Tomlin’s main point is that the Steelers will almost certainly be involved in the NFL playoffs until the very last week of the regular season, if not later. In Tomlin’s sixteen and a half years, the Steelers have only played one game while out of the playoff picture, and that was back in 2012. How the 2023 Steelers have achieved this seemingly inexplicable success is a fair question to pose. But a far better question in regards to Tomlin.
