Earlier this month, Mike Tomlin was asked what he had learned about his receivers in the absence of the group’s star, George Pickens, through injury. It was not the first time Tomlin’s team had been questioned this season, and it will probably not be the last. As ever though, the Pittsburgh Steelers head coach expressed his faith in his players. “We believe in our group. I have said that repeatedly and maybe you will start believing me,” he replied.
“We have a bunch of guys who want to be the reason we are successful,” the 52-year-old continued. The message pointed to trust as an essential pillar of his coaching style, as Tomlin could just as easily have been speaking in preseason when quizzed about the dangers of a supposed has-been and a never-was – Russell Wilson and Justin Fields respectively – fighting for the right to be the Steelers’ starting quarterback. The uplifting power of Tomlin’s trust remains the same, whether for a backup wideout or for Fields in a crucial fourth and short. If you join the Steelers you become better. It is that simple truth that has helped earn another visit to the postseason while extending Tomlin’s historic run of never having a losing season in almost 20 years as Steelers head coach.
Pittsburgh are back in the playoffs, after Miami and Indianapolis quietly exited the race on Sunday, despite doubts over Wilson and Fields, despite a lack of stars in offensive skill positions and despite a fierce schedule. With his immense body of work, Tomlin’s plan at quarterback should have been trusted from the outset, even when the loser of the preseason tussle, Fields, started Week 1 in place of the injured Wilson.
After all, trust in Tomlin usually pays off. Keith Butler, the Steelers’ defensive coordinator from 2015-22, explains as much as he details his career-changing experience working with a fresh-faced 24-year-old graduate assistant, 16 years his junior. “My history with Mike goes back well before the Steelers,” Butler says, jumping at the chance to share his history with his great friend. “When I got out of playing with the Seahawks I didn’t want to move my family around all over the country to coach. So my thoughts were to try and spend my career at the University of Memphis. There were guys that are just getting out of college who help the coaching staff, as they’re trying to get in the business, as graduate assistants. Mike did that with us and even as a [graduate assistant] I thought he did a good job of learning from the staff. He was willing to learn.”
Even in his first steps in coaching, Tomlin marked himself out as a leader. The pair would then reunite, with Butler coaching linebackers, when Pittsburgh picked Tomlin to take over as head coach in 2007. In his sophomore 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, expands on how Tomlin keeps hold of hearts and minds in the locker room.
“Coach Tomlin has the appropriate amount of confidence,” the former tight end says, “and that trickles down to everybody on the roster. When you know the coach has confidence and belief in you that goes a really long way.
“He is open and honest about what he expects from his players. He’s always able to find ways to motivate individuals. And it’s different every year. It’s 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 those he needs to push with another guy to keep them motivated, to keep them hungry, to keep them on edge. That’s not easy to do.”
It has certainly been different this year 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 power to scrape by. The offense was all but mothballed and since then Tomlin’s typically explosive Steelers have swerved back to the more conservative ideology that clinched the Super Bowl for Bill Cowher in the 2005 season and Tomlin three years later.
Pittsburgh just needed a capable quarterback to put the offense in a position to win games rather than tread water. Cynicism was understandable, considering Tomlin had not played quarterback whisperer in his first 15 seasons. Then along came Pickett. It is 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 recording a 14-10 record in Pittsburgh. These strange figures speak of Pickett holding incredible self-belief despite a clearly limited ability to throw the ball.
The man who helped instil that belief and squeeze out every drop of Pickett’s talent was surely Tomlin. The idea he could do the same for Wilson, a faded Super Bowl winning quarterback who still has bucketloads of throwing power, becomes less strange when viewed through the lens of Pickett’s often technically grim play that also, occasionally, reached unlikely glory.
You could say Tomlin has restored an appropriate amount of Wilson’s confidence. That’s essential grounding for the Steelers as they bid to not just make up the numbers in January, where they have failed so often recently – their last postseason victory came in 2017 against the Chiefs, when Alex Smith was still the Kansas City quarterback, and Pittsburgh have lost five straight postseason games since then. Tomlin’s soft defense-first reset and the return of Pickens to correct recent struggles in scoring will be crucial as they bid to clinch the AFC North title on Saturday. A win over Baltimore would let that confidence bubble up a little further with, as Miller puts it, the team “battle-tested and ready” for the postseason.
