State of the Steelers: What organization's past tells us about Mike Tomlin's future

THE FIRST CHANTS calling for coach Mike Tomlin's job started with 10 minutes and 16 seconds left in the fourth quarter of the Week 13 loss to the Buffalo Bills, as Kenneth Gainwell's two-yard loss on fourth down sent the Pittsburgh Steelers offense jogging off their home field after yet another fruitless possession.

Seven days later, the 53-year-old coach blew a kiss to the camera in the wake of a 27-22 Week 14 victory as a Baltimore crowd, discontent with its own coach, silently streamed out of M&T Bank Stadium.

Though the Steelers (7-6) enter Monday night's game against the Miami Dolphins (8:20 p.m. ET, ESPN) atop the AFC North standings and return to the same home field where those chants happened, it has been that kind of roller-coaster season for Tomlin and the Steelers -- at least on the outside.

Internally, however, multiple players, coaches and staffers describe a steady, normal operation, the kind that has been in place over the past 19 years with Tomlin at the helm.

"There's no panic in the building," one source told ESPN NFL insider Jeremy Fowler. "That's how weeks like [Week 14] pay off. The people there [including owner Art Rooney II] aren't on social media. It's business-like there. Mike identifies what the problem is and he digs into the film with his staff to fix it. It's really that simple."

"I understand my role as a leader to be what my guys need me to be," Tomlin said days after beating the Ravens. "And certainly when you're coming off a negative performance, they need stability and belief."

And it's that same stability created by routine and transparency that has endeared Tomlin to hundreds of players and kept him entrenched in an organization that mirrors the values of its head coach.

"It's a very knee-jerk reaction league where if you're not winning, you're out," quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who has a unique perspective from his time in Green Bay and with the New York Jets, said this week. "And they've won here for a long time. There's been some 8-8 seasons as well, but -- doesn't seem like it from afar -- there wasn't any, 'We had to make wholesale changes.'

"I'm a firm believer that if you choose the right people to lead, and you have the right process, you don't have to make changes. ... Because for the most part, it leads to rebuilding or dysfunction that can kind of break some of the foundational characteristics of winning organizations like the Steelers are."

But while that stability is viewed as an asset inside the building, it's also a major contributor to the fan angst that audibly boiled over two weeks ago. Fans didn't just chant "Fire Tomlin" because they were frustrated with their team's position in the game; they were frustrated with the team's seemingly unchanged position in the NFL over the past decade.

Though he has never had a losing season and won Super Bowl XLIII in his second season in 2008, Tomlin hasn't won a playoff game since beating an Alex Smith-led Kansas City Chiefs team in the divisional round of the 2016 playoffs. A week later, the Steelers got blown out by the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game. The Steelers haven't come close to a conference championship weekend since. Instead, they were one-and-done in five postseason appearances over the past eight seasons, and they were outscored 101-52 in their past three wild-card losses.

"People always want change, and not see it through or they're just done with it," said Ramon Foster, a former Steelers offensive lineman who started 145 games for Tomlin from 2009-19. "I get it. It's the same song and the same spot on the dance floor, and you work a hole in the ground, so you feel like you need an entire new house. And maybe it's just the floors you need to refurbish. [Change] may be good for Coach Tomlin, but I don't know if it's good for the Steelers and the fans and the city. Coaches like him don't just grow from under the next coaches' tree."

As the organization nears 15 years since its last Super Bowl appearance -- coincidentally a loss to a Rodgers-led Packers team -- and 17 years since Tomlin added the franchise's sixth Lombardi Trophy to the case, fan unrest has seemingly never been higher. Prominent former players have publicly speculated that it might be time for Tomlin to move on. And yet, with Tomlin still under contract through at least the 2026 season with a club option decision on 2027 due early next year, there is nothing to suggest the organization with just three head coaches since 1969 will break from precedent and move on from their head coach, no matter how loud the outside noise gets.

"To be blunt, we don't care at all," Steelers wide receiver Calvin Austin III said. "We're always behind Coach T. The whole world could be chanting 'Fire Coach T,' and we're going to be with Coach T. At the end of the day, that's all that matters. The players in this locker room, we're behind him."

ONLY TWO ACTIVE Steelers players have won playoff games under Tomlin: Cameron Heyward and Chris Boswell.

Since that 2016 divisional win, the Steelers have several notable regular seasons with no playoff success to show for it. In 2017, Antonio Brown led the league in receiving yards as the defense ranked fifth in yards allowed (306.9) and the offense ranked third in total yards (377.9). Yet, the Steelers were stunned by the Jacksonville Jaguars in a wild-card shootout. A year later, Ben Roethlisberger led the league in passing yards (5,129) and the defense led the league with 52 sacks. But the Steelers finished 9-6 as Le'Veon Bell held out the entire season and Brown imploded.

"Winning a championship is as hard as hell," said Foster, who played in eight playoff games after losing in Super Bowl XLV. "I went in my second year, and after that game when the confetti was flowing and I was going to the losing locker room, I said, 'I'll be back.' I never went back. ... It ain't as easy as it seems."

The seven years of playoff futility since the loss to the Jaguars have largely been marked by remarkable defenses and inconsistency at the quarterback position: Roethlisberger's season-ending right elbow injury, his return and then retirement, first-rounder Kenny Pickett's disappointing tenure and the failed Russell Wilson and Justin Fields experiments.

Tomlin's messaging and drive, though, were constants.

"I don't know if you'll find a more pure football coach when it comes down to understanding what's at task, what the tasks are, and pushing us players to do it," Foster said. "... He never undersold anybody. Does each coach have their flaws? Absolutely. And Coach T has his too, but the intent on his goals always remained the same, and that's winning a damn Super Bowl."

This offseason, in a charge led by Tomlin and general manager Omar Khan, the Steelers courted and eventually landed Rodgers in a bid to change their postseason fortunes. The typically conservative organization also made uncharacteristic moves, spending money and draft picks to land wide receiver DK Metcalf and noteworthy, yet aging, defensive players in defensive back Jalen Ramsey and cornerback Darius Slay.

The defense, one Tomlin boasted could be capable of "historic things" during a training camp radio interview, fell woefully short of expectations as the 2025 season opened. Even so, the Rodgers-led offense put up enough points to help the Steelers to a 4-1 start.

And the defense Tomlin handpicked to match up with Cincinnati Bengals receivers Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins surrendered 33 points to a Joe Flacco-led offense in a Thursday night Week 7 loss. Ten days later, in another prime-time game, the unit gave up 35 points in a loss to the Green Bay Packers at Acrisure Stadium.

Just as the unit started to show improvement, Rodgers began to look every bit of his 41 years with a dismal performance in a Sunday night Week 10 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers. A week later he fractured his left wrist against the Bengals and was on the sideline for the Week 12 loss to the Chicago Bears. He was ineffective in his return against the Bills, prompting boobirds that preceded the fourth-quarter "Fire Tomlin" chants. Following the loss to the Bills, former players including Roethlisberger and pass rusher James Harrison suggested the organization should consider moving on from Tomlin.

"Maybe it's a clean-house time. Maybe it's time," Roethlisberger said on his "Footbahlin with Ben Roethlisberger" podcast. "I like Coach Tomlin. I have a lot of respect for Coach Tomlin, but maybe it's best for him, too."

And Harrison, who played under Tomlin for parts of 10 seasons in Pittsburgh, said that "something has to be done."

"I have never been a person that thought Coach Tomlin was a great coach," Harrison said on his "Deebo and Joe" podcast. "I thought he was a good [coach]. ... A good coach gets you to play to your potential. And right now, the players we have on that team I have seen play; they're not playing up to their potential. A great coach gets you to play to your potential."

Current players, though, downplayed the words of the former Steeler greats.

"I don't worry about anybody who's not in the locker room," Heyward said. "It's not a dis at them. I think we just got to worry about the guys in here and focus at the job at hand. There's a lot of football to be played. Not running from that. Our job, we got to answer for it. Keep it moving."

Now, though, the Steelers enter Monday night's game coming off a critical win against the Ravens in which Rodgers put together his best game of the season and the defense made timely, splash plays that atoned for inconsistency in the run defense.

"He didn't get out of character and say, 'Oh the sky is falling and we have to act completely different,'" said Heyward of Tomlin's message leading up to the win against the Ravens. "Our message is the same. Get better. Own your mistakes.

"Everybody talks about what Tomlin needs to do. It's what the players have to do. I think it starts with our leadership. We own our mistakes. When we lose, we take it the worst. It shouldn't be Coach Tomlin. "Players play, coaches coach."

DESPITE AN INCREASINGLY restless fanbase desperate to break an eight-year playoff win drought and Tomlin's assertion earlier this week that he has been on the "hot seat for 19 years," the history of the Steelers organization and the Rooney family suggests Tomlin isn't going anywhere -- unless he's on board with a mutual separation.

Five months after a wild-card loss to the Bills, Tomlin signed a three-year extension, tying him to the organization through the 2027 season. The final season is a club option, sources told ESPN's Adam Schefter, with a decision due on that by March 1, 2026. The option year, though, has been a feature of Tomlin's previous contracts. In the past, one source told ESPN, the team has typically picked up the option. In this case, if the Steelers don't pick up the option, and Tomlin has success in 2026, the team would still "most likely" extend him, the source said.

The Steelers have had just three head coaches since 1969 -- the fewest number of head coaches in that span of any franchise across the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL. The Steelers' previous two head coaches left on their own terms as both Bill Cowher and Chuck Noll opted for retirement after lengthy runs with the team.

The Rooney family last fired a head coach in 1968, dismissing Bill Austin after three seasons when he won just two games in 1968. Even then, Art Rooney, who was in charge of the organization at the time, was reluctant to fire Austin because Austin got along so well with those in the franchise.

"The only problem that we've had is that we didn't win enough ball games," Art Rooney Sr. said at the time. Until the organization found stability beginning with Noll's hire in 1969, the Steelers went through 15 coaching changes beginning with the organization's inception in 1933.

Noll led the Steelers for 23 seasons before announcing his retirement in December 1991. He transformed a team that went 1-13 in his first season in 1969 to a four-time Super Bowl-winning team in the 1970s. But he finished his tenure with just one playoff berth and four losing seasons in his final seven seasons. His last playoff win came in the 1989 wild-card round in an overtime victory against the Houston Oilers.

Following a 5-11 season and last-place finish in the division in 1988, Noll fired four assistants, and then-defensive coordinator Tony Dungy resigned. At the time, Dan Rooney, who took over as the team president in 1975, reaffirmed his faith in his longtime head coach.

"I am pleased that Chuck Noll will continue as our head coach and remain with the Steelers until he retires from football," he said in a prepared statement in January 1989. "He has done a great job for the Steelers and has represented the city well. I have much confidence in his ability to lead this team back to the top."

Despite fan restlessness as Noll went 16-16 in his final two seasons, the Rooney family allowed the coach to leave on his own terms after more than two decades of unprecedented success and service to the organization.

"The end has to come sometime for everyone," Noll said at the time. "For me, this is it. This is when it happened."

Until his retirement, Noll had the longest uninterrupted tenure of any active head coach or manager in pro football, baseball, basketball or hockey. Earlier this year, Tomlin became the longest tenured head coach of the four U.S. pro sports leagues when the San Antonio Spurs' Gregg Popovich retired.

"If there's one thing athletes, in my personal opinion, don't like, it's instability," Foster said. "And if you're changing coaches and changing the messaging time and time again, you find yourself almost in just sports purgatory."

Cowher, who succeeded Noll, stepped down after 15 seasons at the helm of the Steelers franchise, citing a desire to spend more time with his family. He never coached again.

Less than a year before he announced his resignation, Cowher lifted the Lombardi Trophy as confetti fell at Detroit's Ford Field. But he followed the Super Bowl XL title with an 8-8 season in 2006 and missed the playoffs for the fifth time in his tenure as coach. In addition to winning eight division titles and two AFC Championships, he also had two one-and-done exits in the playoffs (1992, 1993) and four home losses in AFC title games.

"We've had some disappointments, and I feel bad about that," Cowher said in his resignation news conference, "but that was the fuel that brought me back."

Tomlin, too, is wired that way. It's what keeps him going.

"It's never been about survival for coach Tomlin," Foster said. "It has always been about getting a Super Bowl trophy. I feel the human element of a guy like him -- and he'll never say it or admit it, especially publicly say it -- but being removed from Coach Cowher's players, to be his own team, with his own GM, with his own quarterback, with his own coaches is I think something that every coach desires to do. And that's just the way he's always approached it with us -- is he wants the best for us as people, players, and as a team."

FACING QUESTIONS A year ago after Tomlin's fifth consecutive one-and-done playoff appearance, team president Art Rooney II pointed to the coach's track record of success -- including never having a losing season -- as the reason Tomlin is still the right person for the job.

Tomlin's record is 190-113-2, and he has won 19 playoff games. He's just four victories away from eclipsing Noll's franchise-leading 193 wins.

"When you look at how many games Mike has won in this league, you don't win that many games if you're not a good coach," Rooney said in January. "And I know he's frustrated, like we all are, just not being able to take that next step. But we still feel good about him being a leader and still think he has the strengths that he always had in terms of being able to lead a team.

"On the other side of the coin, you look at the fact that we have six, seven, eight teams a year that turn their coaches over. It's never a good strategy."