{"id":19226,"date":"2025-10-30T00:46:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T00:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/19226\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T00:46:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T00:46:18","slug":"florio-one-move-wouldve-prevented-mike-tomlin-from-becoming-the-steelers-head-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/19226\/","title":{"rendered":"Florio: One Move Would’ve Prevented Mike Tomlin From Becoming The Steelers’ Head Coach"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is Mike Tomlin\u2019s 19th season as the Pittsburgh Steelers\u2019 head coach. He\u2019s been a staple of the NFL for years. However, some people have grown frustrated with Tomlin. The Steelers haven\u2019t won a playoff game since the 2016 season, and Tomlin gets a lot of the blame for that failure.<\/a> While he\u2019s been in Pittsburgh for almost 20 years, Mike Florio recently revealed that Tomlin almost got a different head coaching job before many Steelers fans knew his name.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was pushing for Mike Tomlin to be coach of the Steelers in 2007,\u201d Florio said Wednesday on his Pro Football Talk podcast.<\/a> \u201cRemember, they had the whole, it was gonna be Russ Grimm, and then it wasn\u2019t. I was banging the drum for Tomlin.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found out, years later, that there was actually some conversation in Minnesota about telling Brad Childress after one year, \u2018Thanks for everything, now leave. We\u2019re gonna make your one-year defensive coordinator the head coach in order to keep him from becoming the coach of the Steelers.\u2019 That conversation actually happened within the walls of the Vikings\u2019 organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before becoming head coach of the Steelers, Tomlin spent one season as the Vikings\u2019 defensive coordinator<\/a>. He was young, and that was his first NFL coordinator job. In contrast, Childress was a veteran who got his first NFL coaching job in 1985. However, 2006 was his first year as an NFL head coach and the Vikings went 6-10.<\/p>\n

It wouldn\u2019t have been too surprising to see the Vikings move on from Childress, especially if they liked Tomlin so much. The NFL world would\u2019ve been very different if the Vikings had actually pulled the trigger on that decision.<\/p>\n

Going back to 2007, the Steelers saw head coach Bill Cowher retire. They looked poised to promote Grimm,<\/a> who had been their offensive line coach since 2001, to head coach. However, Tomlin came in and really impressed the Steelers in his interviews. That caused them to pivot from Grimm and hire Tomlin.<\/p>\n

The rest is history. Tomlin went on to win a Super Bowl in his second season with the Steelers, and he\u2019s become one of the best head coaches in the NFL. Meanwhile, Childress led the Vikings to several middling years. His best season with them came in 2009 when the Vikings went 12-4 and almost made it to the Super Bowl. However, they went 6-10 the following year, and Childress got fired before the season ended.<\/p>\n

It would\u2019ve been interesting to see what the Steelers would\u2019ve done had the Vikings fired Childress and promoted Tomlin. Today, some Steelers fans likely think that would\u2019ve been better<\/a> for Pittsburgh. Despite his flaws, Tomlin has continued to raise the Steelers\u2019 floor. He helped them go to two Super Bowls and win seven AFC North titles. His impact on the Steelers shouldn\u2019t be understated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is Mike Tomlin\u2019s 19th season as the Pittsburgh Steelers\u2019 head coach. He\u2019s been a staple of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[13475,13476,7405,4968,73,75,74,1833,13477,995],"class_list":["post-19226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-brad-childress","tag-mike-florio","tag-mike-tomlin","tag-minnesota-vikings","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-pittsburgh-steelers","tag-pro-football-talk","tag-trending"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}