Mike Tomlin reveals what he believes to have been his most challenging season as Steelers coach
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Steelers coach Mike Tomlin made a recent appearance on the L3 Leadership podcast. It was in advance of the Urban Impact ManUp Pittsburgh conference that he does annually.
As noted Monday at SteelersNow.com, Tomlin discussed what he deemed to be the hardest year he’s had coaching in the NFL since he first took over the Steelers job in 2007.
Tomlin chose the 2019 season when Ben Roethlisberger suffered a season-ending elbow injury in Week 2. Tomlin then had to pilot a team with Mason Rudolph and Devlin Hodges under center.
The club didn’t make the playoffs, but it did surprisingly finish 8-8. Tomlin received a lot of praise for keeping the Steelers in the hunt. That said, they were 8-5 after 13 games, and were in prime position for the playoffs before fading badly with a three-game losing streak to close out the year. That tumble included a poor loss to a 5-9 New York Jets team in Week 16
“I think the 2019 season will always stand out for me, professionally speaking,” Tomlin said. “Ben got hurt in the second game, and we got faced with a lot of challenges from a player availability standpoint. It took us a while to kind of gain our traction and find the new normal, if you will, and find a way to do our jobs. You know, I tell my guys all the time, ‘Football is our game, our business is winning.’ Because sometimes when you are not handling business, you can hate the game of football, and I never want our guys to hate the game of football. I’ve got a love affair with football. It’s always been great to me. Sometimes when I’m not winning enough, it’s not as fun. I think the challenges that we faced in ’19 and that specifically I faced in terms of shepherding or leading the group through the things that we faced was an awesome growth experience for me professionally.”
I certainly understand where Tomlin is coming from on all of that. And he is answering the question from his own personal perspective about his own career, so whatever answer he gives is the right one.
But, again, given the circumstances that edition of the franchise faced thanks to Roethlisberger’s injury, it felt like any win they got after Week 2 was gravy.
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Until they played themselves into a playoff position and performed so badly down the stretch, of course. That’s probably what made the year so memorable and painful for Tomlin.
Unfortunately for Tomlin, there were plenty of other candidates. Frankly, the year I expected him to choose was the 2009 season. That team went 9-7 and missed the playoffs, losing to multiple non-playoff teams along the way. It was a blackhole of a campaign in between the Super Bowl title of 2008 and the AFC title of 2010. It was just remarkably bad. Plus, he had to navigate the fallout of Roethlisberger’s first sexual assault allegation in July.
That was followed by Roethlisberger’s suspension after a second accusation prior to the 2010 season when Tomlin got down to his fourth-string quarterback in Charlie Batch by Week 2 of the regular season.
In 2012 and 2013, both of those teams underachieved and missed the playoffs. I thought Tomlin might consider the 2015 season when his team stumbled to an underwhelming 4-4 start, only to rebound to 9-5, yet find themselves needing the Rex Ryan miracle win from the Bills against the Jets to get them in the playoffs.
Then Tomlin somehow navigated a depleted team to victory in Cincinnati (courtesy of that infamous Bengals meltdown) and to the cusp of a stunning win in Denver in the AFC Divisional Round, only to have the Broncos pull off a late game victory after Fitzgerald Toussaint’s fumble. That season was particularly vexing from an emotional standpoint.
The 2017 season was full of chaos with the anthem debacle in Chicago, Le’Veon Bell’s first franchise tag drama, Martavis Bryant’s trade request and demotion, Ryan Shazier’s spinal injury in Cincinnati, the Jesse James controversy versus New England, and the meltdown versus the Jaguars at home in the playoffs.
That season would’ve been enough to drive most coaches to retirement.
Then again, 2018 could’ve as well when the Steelers started 1-2-1 without Bell who refused to play all year. Then they got up to 7-2-1 and still managed to collapse and miss the playoffs, with Antonio Brown’s tumultuous exit at the end of the season being the cherry on the sundae.
To say nothing of having to traverse the disaster of a schedule the Steelers had to deal with during the covid year of 2020.
Yeah. Tomlin has had a few doozies since becoming a head coach in 2007, but none under .500. Some of them he probably could’ve made easier on himself along the way. Others were wildly impacted by circumstances beyond his control.
But if he says 2019 was the most difficult to surf for himself, I’m in no position to disagree.