{"id":331242,"date":"2025-12-05T03:16:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T03:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/331242\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T03:16:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T03:16:07","slug":"if-art-rooney-ii-decides-its-time-to-move-on-from-mike-tomlin-whos-the-next-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/331242\/","title":{"rendered":"If Art Rooney II decides it’s time to move on from Mike Tomlin, who’s the next coach?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the outside noise regarding the status of Steelers coach Mike Tomlin increases, the question becomes whether owner Art Rooney II will hear it.<\/p>\n

Making things louder is the involvement of voices like former Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, and former Steelers linebacker James Harrison. Roethlisberger recently said on his podcast it\u2019s perhaps time for a fresh start<\/a>, for the team and for Tomlin.<\/p>\n

Harrison shared a similar sentiment on his podcast with Joe Haden, via ESPN.com: \u201cI have never been a person that thought Coach Tomlin was a great coach. I thought he was a good [coach]. . . . A good coach gets you to play to your potential. And right now, the players we have on that team I have seen play, they\u2019re not playing up to their potential. . . . Something has to be done, and I know the Steelers historically don\u2019t move on from coaches. But I think it\u2019s time that history be made<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The history of the last 56 years is that the Steelers stubbornly resist change. Three coaches since 1969. It\u2019s their thing. It\u2019s the high-school hairdo they won\u2019t change. The jacket<\/a> on which they once got a compliment and will never take off.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s something that occurred to me this morning, while discussing the situation with Andrew Fillipponi of 93.7 The Fan on PFT Live. <\/p>\n

Rooney was born in 1952, two weeks to the day before the Steelers started the first season with Joe Bach as the new head coach. In 1954, Walt Kiesling took the job. Three years later, it was Buddy Parker. After seven years (the longest tenure for any Steelers coach at the time, by far), Mike Nixon replaced Parker. One 2-12 season later, Bill Austin embarked on a three-year run that ended with a record of 11-28-3.<\/p>\n

In all, the Steelers had 15 coaching changes in the 35 years from 1933 through 1968.<\/p>\n

Then came Chuck Noll, hired by the Steelers when Rooney was 16. And the instability the team had during Rooney\u2019s early years became a 23-year run under Noll.<\/p>\n

If not enough of those yellow seats behind Rooney are filled during the two remaining 2025 home games (including a Week 15 Monday nighter that could get very ugly if they lose to the Ravens on Sunday), and if Rooney decides it really is time for a change, what happens next?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s always been the most practical impediment to moving on from Tomlin. Will the Steelers find a better coach?<\/p>\n

Fillipponi suggested that Notre Dame\u2019s Marcus Freeman could be the next guy. Whoever it is, the job will be very attractive because the Steelers don\u2019t fire coaches. They\u2019ll have many coaches to choose from. They\u2019ll need to choose right, like they did in 2007 when it came down to Tomlin or Russ Grimm.<\/p>\n

The risk of not hiring the right one could keep Rooney from getting to the point where he hires a new one. As he was growing up, the Steelers couldn\u2019t get it right. Fear of getting it wrong all over again, and sparking a return of the revolving door of decades gone by, could be one of the reasons Rooney will show patience. <\/p>\n

Even if his customers have gotten to the point where they collectively have little, if any.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the outside noise regarding the status of Steelers coach Mike Tomlin increases, the question becomes whether owner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-331242","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-nfl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}