With Mike Tomlin Stepping Down, The Pittsburgh Steelers Are Looking For A New Head Coach For The First Time Since The iPhone Was Released

What a run.

The Pittsburgh Steelers announced today that head coach Mike Tomlin would be stepping down after 19 years, a run that made him the longest-tenured head coach in the league.

There have been rumblings about Tomlin’s future in Pittsburgh for a while now. Steelers fans were getting restless after losing 7 playoff games in a row, dating back to 2016 when the team advanced to the AFC Championship before losing to the eventual Super Bowl winners, the New England Patriots.

The Steelers have remained competitive, having made the playoffs in 7 of the last 10 seasons. But lately they haven’t been able to get over the hump to advance past the wild card round, something that was clearly weighing heavily on fans’ minds as they watched the Steelers once again make an early exit from the playoffs last night with a lopsided loss to the Houston Texans in the AFC Wild Card round.

There have been “Fire Tomlin” chants over the past couple years, but after 19 years at the helm it seemed unlikely that owner Art Rooney and GM Omar Khan would part ways with their longtime head coach this season, particularly given the crowded market of teams who are searching for a new head coach and the lack of perceived “star power” in the coaching market this offseason.

Then there was Tomlin’s record: It’s hard to justify moving on from a head coach who has never had a losing record in 19 seasons.

But at the end of the day, it was apparently Tomlin who made the decision to step down, reportedly amid growing discomfort with the calls for his firing and the support that he felt like he had as head coach.

Tomlin, whose entire head coaching career has been spent with the Steelers, has a career record of 201-126-2 as a head coach, and will no doubt be a hot commodity should be choose to throw his name in the ring for open jobs (though because he resigned, the Steelers still hold his contract and would be able to negotiate a trade if he wants to go to another team).

It’s practically unheard of these days for coaches to stay with an NFL team as long as Tomlin was with the Steelers. He was the longest-tenured head coach in the league, ahead of now-former Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh (who was fired after missing the playoffs, coincidentally due to a loss to the Steelers) and Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid, who has been with his team for 13 season.

Just how long was Tomlin with the Steelers? Well the last time the team conducted a head coaching search, the first iPhone hadn’t even been released yet: Apple released the game-changing technology in June of 2007, nearly 6 months AFTER Tomlin was hired away from his defensive coordinator position with the Minnesota Vikings.

What else has changed over Tomlin’s 19-year career with the Steelers? Well the top country song at the time was “Watching You” by Rodney Atkins, and one of country music’s biggest superstars, Ella Langley, was only 6 years old at the time Tomlin was hired.

Instagram was still three years away when Tomlin was first hired as the Steelers head coach, and the Great Recession of 2008 was still a year away.

Tomlin was hired before Barack Obama was elected president, and a full 10 years before Donald Trump was inaugurated as president for his first term. In fact, there have been three different presidents and five presidential elections since then.

And back in the country music world, the year that Mike Tomlin was hired, the CMA Horizon Award (now known as New Artist of the Year) went to…Taylor Swift.

It seems like we’re seeing coaches getting fired sooner and sooner these days, so it’s hard to tell when, if ever, we’ll see an NFL coach stay with one team as long as Tomlin was with the Steelers. But there’s no doubt that if he still has a desire to coach, there’s a team (and probably multiple) that would welcome his services.The post With Mike Tomlin Stepping Down, The Pittsburgh Steelers Are Looking For A New Head Coach For The First Time Since The iPhone Was Released first appeared on Whiskey Riff.