Earlier this month, Mike Tomlin was asked what he learned about his receivers in the absence of the group’s star George Pickens due to injury. This wasn’t the first time Tomlin’s team was called into question this season, and it likely won’t be the last. As always, the Pittsburgh Steelers head coach expressed his confidence in his players. “We believe in our group. I have said it many times and maybe you will start to believe me,” he replied.
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“We have a group of guys who want to be the reason for our success,” the 52-year-old continued. The message indicated that confidence was a key pillar of his coaching style, since Tomlin might as well have been speaking in preseason when asked about the dangers of a supposed has-been and a has-been – Russell Wilson and Justin Fields respectively – who are fighting. for the right to be the Steelers’ starting quarterback. The uplifting power of Tomlin’s confidence remains the same, whether it’s for a backup wideout or for Fields on a crucial fourth-and-short. If you join the Steelers, you become better. It’s that simple truth that helped earn another trip to the playoffs while extending Tomlin’s historic streak of never having a losing season in nearly 20 years as Steelers head coach.
Pittsburgh is back in the playoffsafter Miami and Indianapolis quietly bowed out of the race on Sunday, despite doubts about Wilson and Fields, despite a lack of stars at the offensive skill positions and despite a busy schedule. With his immense body of work, Tomlin’s plan as a quarterback should have been reliable from the start, even when the loser of the preseason battle, 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 2015-2022, explains it all by detailing his career-changing experience working with a fresh-faced 24-year-old graduate assistant, 16 years his junior. “My history with Mike goes way back before the Steelers,” Butler says, seizing the opportunity to share his story with his great friend. “When I stopped playing with the Seahawks, I didn’t want to move my family across the country to coach. So my thoughts were to try to make a career at the University of Memphis. There were guys right out of college who were helping the coaching staff, while they were trying to get into the business, as graduate assistants. Mike did this with us and even as a graduate assistant, I thought he did a good job learning from the staff. He was ready to learn.
From his first steps as coach, Tomlin established himself as a leader. The duo would then reunite, along with Butler’s linebackers coaches, when Pittsburgh selected Tomlin to take over as head coach in 2007. During his second season, their run would reach an all-time high by winning Super Bowl XLIII .
Heath Miller, who collected his second ring with the Steelers in that game, explains how Tomlin keeps hearts and minds in the locker room.
“Coach Tomlin has enough confidence,” the former tight end says, “and that trickles down to everyone on the roster. When you know coach has confidence in you, that goes a long way.
“He is open and honest about what he expects from his players. He is 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 person, so he can get to know the guys and know which buttons might work on this guy and which ones he needs to push with another guy to keep them motivated, to keep them hungry, to keep them nervous . It’s not easy to do.
It’s 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 space reserved in Kenny Pickett at quarterback, he turned to TJ Watt and a methodically rebuilt defensive powerhouse to get by. The offense was all but mothballed 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.
Pittsburgh just needed a competent quarterback to put the offense in a position to win games rather than tread water. The cynicism was understandable, considering Tomlin hadn’t played quarterback in his first 15 seasons. Then came Pickett. It’s a minor miracle that the Eagles’ now backup threw 13 touchdowns and 13 interceptions with a dismal 78.7 QB rating while also producing six fourth-quarter comeback wins while posting a 14-10 record in Pittsburgh . These strange numbers show that Pickett has incredible confidence despite clearly limited ability to throw the ball.
The man who helped instill this belief and bring out every drop of Pickett’s talent was surely Tomlin. The idea that he could do the same for Wilson, a faded Super Bowl-winning quarterback who still has plenty of throwing power, becomes less strange when viewed through the often technically bleak lens of the game by Pickett who also, at times, achieved improbable glory.
You could say that Tomlin has restored an appropriate amount of Wilson’s confidence. This is a critical foundation for the Steelers, who are trying to not just make up for January numbers where they have so often failed recently – their last playoff victory came in 2017 against the Chiefs, when Alex Smith was still Kansas City’s quarterback, and Pittsburgh. have lost five straight playoff games since then. The soft reset of Tomlin’s defense and the return of Pickens to correct recent scoring struggles will be crucial as they attempt to clinch the AFC North title on Saturday. A win against Baltimore would boost that confidence a little further with, as Miller puts it, the team “battle-tested and ready” for the playoffs.
