The Pittsburgh Steelers have been coached by Mike Tomlin for 16 seasons. Coach Tomlin has demonstrated an abundance of positive traits during that tenure. He is an exceptional motivator and inspires tremendous personal loyalty. Tomlin has won a lot of regular season games for the Steelers and he does have a Super Bowl victory to his credit. Even his most vocal critics can not deny that at one time he was an elite head coach.
Mike Florio joined the PM Team W/Poni & Mueller for his weekly appearance Wednesday afternoon. The Pro Football Talk founder discussed the recent hiring of Sean Payton and Demeco Ryans by the Denver Broncos and Houston Texans. During the discussion, Florio, who is one of Tomlin’s staunchest longtime defenders, dropped a bombshell.
“A great coach is worth 20-25 million,” Florio said. "The great coaches are making that much money. We never really know the full picture, there is a certain amount of collusion on coaching contracts. The owners funnel money to coaches in other ways.”
Tomlin made $11.5 million in 2022 and was among the highest-paid coaches in professional sports. The recent acquisitions of NFL teams from ownership groups that have endlessly deep pockets are starting to be felt across the league. Larger and larger contracts are being handed to head coaches of NFL teams and elite coaches are going to benefit. The Steelers are a family-run business and while they would be worth billions on the open market, the Rooney Family isn’t selling. They also aren't expected to overpay for a head coach.
The salary cap only applies to players. Richer teams can assemble excellent coaching staff by throwing huge contracts at head coaches and assistants. Those teams could then swing the balance of power throughout the league and complicate the traditional coaching pipelines. That will drastically affect how teams like Pittsburgh do business. The Steelers have been exceedingly loyal to head coaches, the question is in the future will their coaches return the favor?
“Bottom line is, I don’t think the Steelers are ever going to be at the top of the market,” Florio concluded his thought. “I think if Tomlin ever wants to get to the top of the market, he is going to have to go somewhere else."
"I don’t know how you pull that off unless you do the Sean Payton. You quit for a year or two, the next team comes back and deals with the Steelers."
"There would be a strong debate on whether he would be worthy of that top-end money. Some would argue persuasively that should be exclusive to Bill Belichick and offensive coaches who have shown they can do it at a high level."
"I continue to believe that Tomlin is in the range of better coaches, I just don’t know that anyone would pay him 20-25 million. I just think a small handful of guys are going to get that.”
This is quite the reversal from Florio who earlier this year defended Tomlin as a top-five coach in the NFL. In professional football money talks and bs walks. Tomlin has a long track record of success but when even an adamant advocate for the coach can’t justify one of the top salaries in football for him, what are they saying about his ability?
It has been postulated that Tomlin and other defensive coaches are dinosaurs that don’t bring much value to the fantasy football-fueled direction of the current NFL. Florio seems to subscribe to this theory. Defensive-minded coaches like Tomlin and Pete Carroll lead successful teams that are competitive but not seen as true Super Bowl contenders.
The league has fallen in love with scoring and would seemingly prefer a free-wheeling style of football without the headaches of those big mean defenders hurting their chances to win on Sunday. A decade ago, the Steelers were competing for championships and fantasy football was a quirky game for fans.
The NFL has since faced the CTE lawsuit, fantasy football and gambling have exploded and the league now claims to have made changes to the game under the guise of player safety that is, at best, enforced inconsistently.
It is much more likely that the ratings that they have gained across the board in what used to be less meaningful matchups nationally are driving the changes. Casual fans are tuning into awful games on Thursdays and Mondays to see if an individual player can win your weekly fantasy matchup, but it’s eyeballs on the product. The NFL is first and foremost a business.
According to many who get paid to talk and write about the NFL, the modern NFL has been passed by Tomlin and other defensive coaches. Coaches like Tomlin and Ryans will still get jobs. They will be employed to build a culture and get the team back on track. When they get close, they will be tossed over for a hot offensive coordinator because of the new myth that defensive coaches can’t get you to the Super Bowl.
Maybe it is true, Bill Belichick is struggling without Tom Brady. Carroll rebounded strongly with Geno Smith but they haven’t sniffed playoff success in years and Tomlin has not won a playoff game in seven years. It is not a compelling argument for the defense. It doesn’t mean that Steeler fans who still love old-school football have to like it.
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