Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin isn’t on the hot seat yet, but the front office is certainly getting a little restless with the lack of playoff success.
The Steelers haven’t won a playoff game in seven years. It’s the longest playoff win drought since pre-1972 for the franchise.
“We’ve had enough of this,” Steelers president Art Rooney II said about no playoff wins in seven years during a season-ending press conference. “It’s time to get some wins; it’s time to take these next steps.”
Rooney pointed to Tomlin’s ability to keep the team afloat through adversity, and he certainly feels that his messaging still gets across.
“The players still respond to Mike and that’s No. 1,” Rooney said. “He still has the key characteristics that we saw when we hired him. He can keep the attention of a group of 20-year-olds for a whole season and keep them in the fight the whole way. Still feel good about Mike. Obviously, if I didn’t, we’d make change. If we didn’t think Mike was able to lead us to a championship, he wouldn’t be here. That’s why he’s here.”
While Rooney has full faith in Tomlin, Myles Simmons of Pro Football Talk thinks things could get loud for Tomlin if the Steelers get off to a slow start in 2024 and the Russell Wilson/Justin Fields quarterback plan fails.
“This is a team that we think of as good, but the Steelers haven’t had postseason success in a long time. They’ve been on that cusp of good/mediocre. They’re kind of like the best bad team. If they don’t get better, demonstratively with Russell Wilson at QB, it might get loud for Mike Tomlin,” Simmons said in a recent NFL on NBC segment.
The 52-year-old is entering his 18th season as the Steelers head coach. He has a career record of 173-100-2 and is tied for 11th in NFL history for most coaching wins. But he needs to find a way to break the streak of playoff futility. Without that, all of the regular season accolades are largely fruitless.
If the Steelers streak of not winning a playoff game continues and the Wilson/Fields QB plan blows up into flames, Tomlin’s job very well could be in jeopardy.