Football
Many details have trickled out to the public about Mike Tomlin’s final meeting with the Steelers this past week. The most direct comes from Christian Kuntz, the team’s long snapper. Reporters have indicated this or that, but he, as a player that Tomlin directly addressed, got it straight from the horse’s mouth.
And according to Kuntz, Tomlin was very clear that he has no intention of coaching anywhere else. Now, intentions are one thing, and time has a way of shifting them. But the overall message was that he felt he did all he could and thought his leaving would be better for the Steelers—for the players.
“I don’t know how much I’m allowed to share. But I will [say], he did make a point that he had no desire to really coach another football team, but the group of guys he was looking at, with this group of guys”, Kuntz said on his podcast when asked if Mike Tomlin gave any indication that he planned to coach again.
“He did say that to us. Can things change? You get offered $20 million—he’ll get any coaching job he wants. Whatever the hell he wants to do, the dude’s gonna do”, he added. “But he did make a point to tell us in there that he was stepping down and he had no intentions of coaching any other guys than the guys he was looking at”.
On Friday, Mike Tomlin was already well into Dad Mode, attending his daughter’s gymnastics event. They upset LSU in the process, ranked 2nd compared to Harley Tomlin’s UGA, ranked 8th. It sounds like he has big plans to be a gym dad for the near future, but we’ll see what happens.
It does matter to the Steelers whether Tomlin coaches again. For one thing, they won’t want to play his teams, considering they wanted to keep it going with him. For another, should he return to the NFL, they retain his rights. Depending on the language of his contract, if another team wanted to hire him, they would have to trade for him.
As the Steelers’ head coach for 19 seasons, Mike Tomlin went 193-114-2, tying Chuck Noll for the all-time franchise win record. He won eight division titles, made the postseason 13 times, reached the Super Bowl twice, and won it once. He remains the youngest head coach to ever win the Super Bowl, though he ended his tenure with more dubious records.
According to reporters, Tomlin basically told his players in their final meeting that part of his decision to resign was to benefit the franchise. Year after year of coming up short, and likely not wanting to start over, he seems to have understood what the Steelers need as a franchise right now and what he would be unable to provide. He tried to start over with Kenny Pickett, and that turned into Russell Wilson and Aaron Rodgers. When those plans failed, he realized it was time for somebody else to lead.
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