Steelers’ Mike Tomlin Enters ‘Endangered’ Territory

PITTSBURGH — Mike Tomlin has been synonymous with football in the Pittsburgh Steelers community ever since he took the head coach position in 2007 following Bill Cowher’s resignation.

Now the longest tenured head coach in the NFL following Bill Belichick’s retirement, Tomlin has inserted himself into the upper echelon of NFL coaches according to many. His Steelers teams have never had a losing season in 17 seasons, the best of any first coaching job and third best all time behind Belichick’s 19 and Tom Landry’s 21.

That being said, Cody Benjamin of CBS Sports believes that things could be changing for the face of the Steelers franchise.

In his ranking of all 32 NFL Head Coaches by their resume in big games, Tomlin ranked 11th, behind Coaches like Zac Taylor and Sean McDermott. He slots Tomlin in at 11th within the “Endangered Champions” category, that includes Sean Payton, Mike McCarthy and himse

“These coaches reached the mountaintop years ago, and they may still guide playoff appearances with regularity, but they’ve recently struggled to convert postseason entries into ultimate glory.” Benjamin wrote about the “Endangered Champions” category.

Citing the playoff win drought since the 2017 AFC Wild Card, Benjamin put tomlin at the top of his category, sitting just behind Zac Taylor. Taylor was put in front of him due to a 71% winning percentage, but the sample size of just 7 appearances makes Taylor hard to judge.

“Tomlin is unique in that he’s both 1.) already entrenched as an all-timer, and 2.) still widely respected as one of the game’s best motivators. Even so, his Steelers have proven more scrappy than special for a long time now. Since an AFC title-game bid in 2017, he’s gone 0-4 in playoff games over the last six years.” Benjamin wrote.

Many fans see the upcoming season as a pivotal year for Tomlin’s career and future with the team. Much of the blame was placed on Matt Canada and the quarterbacks last season, and the front office seems to have made a decent amount of moves in the right direction. With the fan base hoping to regain a sense of consistent playoff success going forward, the expectations are quite high.

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