Mike Tomlin will be back to coach the Pittsburgh Steelers for another season. That's what he told his team in a Tuesday meeting during which he also said that speculation about his stepping aside was "unfounded," according to NFL Media.
The 2024 season will be Tomlin's 18th as head coach of the Steelers. Incredibly, he has never finished a season with a below .500 record, having gone 173-100-2 during his time at the helm and won a Super Bowl following the 2008 season, his second as the team's head coach.
However, the team has seemingly moved further away from contention in recent years. Pittsburgh has failed to make the playoffs in three of the past six seasons, and has not won a playoff game since 2016.
The offense has fallen into near-total disrepair during that time, with the end of the Ben Roethlisberger era and beginning of the Kenny Pickett era yielding some of the worst attacks in the league. His hiring of offensive coordinator Matt Canada (and the retaining of Canada even with the offense seemingly beyond hope) did not work out at all, and the team has largely proven unable to modernize the attack in the years since Roethlisberger's prime.
Tomlin will be heading into the final year of his deal next season, and while there has hardly ever been speculation that he could be fired by the Steelers, in recent seasons there have been questions about whether he would call it quits. He appears to have told his team those questions were misguided, but things could obviously change between now and the end of next season if a new contract is not coming his way and the Steelers again fail to win a postseason contest.
