EEarlier this month, Mike Tomlin was asked what he learned about his receivers during the absence of the group’s star, George Pickens, due to injury. It wasn’t the first time this season that Tomlin’s team has been questioned, and it probably won’t be the last. As always, the Pittsburgh Steelers head coach expressed confidence in his players. “We believe in our group. I’ve said that repeatedly and maybe you’re starting to believe me,” he replied.
“We have some guys who want to be the reason we are successful,” the 52-year-old continued. The message indicated that confidence was an essential pillar of his coaching style, as Tomlin might as well have been speaking in preseason when questioned about the dangers of a so-called ‘has-been’ and ‘never-was’ battle ( Russell Wilson and Justin Fields respectively). for the right to be the Steelers’ starting quarterback. The uplifting power of Tomlin’s confidence remains the same whether it’s against a backup wideout or Fields on a crucial fourth-and-short spot. If you join the Steelers, you’ll get better. It’s that simple truth that helped fuel another trip to the postseason while extending Tomlin’s historic streak of never-losing seasons in nearly two decades as Steelers head coach.
Pittsburgh is back in the playoffsafter Miami and Indianapolis quietly exited the race on Sunday, despite doubts about Wilson and Fields, despite a lack of stars in offensive skill positions and despite a tough schedule. With his vast body of work, Tomlin’s plan at quarterback should have been trusted from the start, even when the loser of the preseason battle, Fields, started Week 1 in place of the injured Wilson.
After all, trusting Tomlin usually pays off. Keith Butler, the Steelers’ defensive coordinator from 2015-2022, explains as much as his career-changing experience working with a fresh-faced 24-year-old graduate assistant 16 years his junior. “My history with Mike goes back way before the Steelers,” Butler says, taking the opportunity to share his history with his good friend. “When I retired from playing for the Seahawks, I didn’t want to move my family across the country to coach. So my thoughts were to try to spend my career at the University of Memphis. There were guys right out of college who were helping the coaching staff as they tried to get into the business as graduate assistants. Mike did that to us and even if [graduate assistant] I thought he learned well from the staff. He was willing to learn.”
Even in his first steps into coaching, Tomlin established himself as a leader. The pair would then reunite, with Butler coaching linebackers, when Pittsburgh selected Tomlin to take over as head coach in 2007. In his second season, their journey would reach an unmatchable high by winning Super Bowl XLIII.
Heath Miller, who collected his second ring with the Steelers in that game, explains how Tomlin holds hearts and minds in the locker room.
“Coach Tomlin has the right amount of confidence,” says the former tight end, “and that radiates to everyone on the roster. If you know that the coach has confidence in you, you will go very far.
“He is open and honest about what he expects from his players. He always knows how to find ways to motivate people. And it’s different every year. It is different on an individual basis. He’s a really good people person, so he can get to know guys and know what buttons might work on this guy, and what buttons he needs to push with another guy to keep them motivated, to keep them hungry, to keep them to keep tense. That’s not easy to do.”
This year was certainly different in Pittsburgh. Several seasons of soul searching in the post-Ben Roethlisberger era led Tomlin to return to his defensive roots. With a placeholder in Kenny Pickett at quarterback, he turned to TJ Watt and a methodically rebuilt defensive force to get by. The offense was virtually shut down and since then, Tomlin’s typically explosive Steelers have returned to the more conservative ideology that won the Super Bowl for Bill Cowher in the 2005 season and Tomlin three years later.
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Pittsburgh simply needed a capable quarterback to put the offense in a position to win games instead of treading water. Cynicism was understandable, considering Tomlin hadn’t played a quarterback whisperer in his first 15 seasons. Then came Pickett. It’s a minor miracle that the now Eagles backup threw 13 touchdowns and 13 interceptions with a dismal QB rating of 78.7, while also producing six fourth-quarter comeback wins while compiling a 14-10 record recorded in Pittsburgh. These strange figures speak of Pickett having incredible self-confidence despite a clearly limited ability to throw the ball.
The man who helped instill that belief and squeeze out every drop of Pickett’s talent was undoubtedly Tomlin. The idea that he could do the same for Wilson, a faded Super Bowl-winning quarterback who still possesses tremendous throwing power, becomes less strange when viewed through the lens of Pickett’s often technically grim play that also occasionally boasts improbable glory. reached.
You could say Tomlin has restored an appropriate amount of Wilson’s confidence. That’s a critical foundation for the Steelers as they try to not just make up the numbers in January, where they’ve failed so often lately. Their last postseason win came in 2017 against the Chiefs, when Alex Smith was still Kansas City’s quarterback, and Pittsburgh has lost five consecutive postseason games since then. Tomlin’s soft initial reset on defense and Pickens’ return to correct recent scoring woes will be crucial in their bid to capture the AFC North title on Saturday. A win over Baltimore would bubble up that confidence a little further as the team is, as Miller puts it, “tested and ready” for the postseason.