For 19 seasons, Mike Tomlin was the Pittsburgh Steelers’ head coach. He has always been known to be a no-nonsense guy, famed for dropping the oddest of takes in the media. But now that he has swapped that persona for a talkative NBC analyst, Steelers insider Mark Kaboly believes something is off.
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“Honestly, to me it comes off phony unless something changed,” Kaboly said on his Kaboly + Mack podcast. “What comes off as phony is how he’s suddenly embracing social media, embracing everything, being a human being.
“I can’t help but, every time he opens his mouth, thinking of the 19 past years of the cliches and the sayings and the fluff … The thing is, I’ve said this in the beginning, he’s a guy that I think the national people would love to see. But we’ve just been exposed to so much of the other stuff.”
Tomlin has already looked different away from the football field. He appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and watched Fallon run through some of his old “Tomlinisms.” He has also taken part in NBC’s social-media videos, something fans rarely saw from him during his time as the Steelers’ head coach.
Tomlin made his regular-season debut as an analyst on September 9 during NBC’s Wednesday night season opener between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks, a Super Bowl LX rematch. It was a bit of a hit and a miss for the former head coach.
While he offered his informed takes, he also messed up Jaxon Smith-Njigba’s name, referring to him as “JNS” instead of “JSN,” forcing co-host Maria Taylor to correct him on air. The small mistake quickly became one of the most talked-about moments from his debut.
Kaboly’s co-host, Chris Mack, described the shift in blunter terms.
“Well, he wasn’t a human being for the last 18 years,” Mack said. “He was a ball coach.”
After years of sharing his ‘Tomlinisms’ with the media, which include “the standard is the standard” and “we’re still squirreling those nuts,” seeing and listening to him on the mic does seem odd.
Tomlin has acknowledged the irony of his own transformation directly. In an interview with TODAY’s Craig Melvin, he admitted the entire premise of his new job runs against the instincts he built over two decades in Pittsburgh.
“I’ve trained myself over the years to tune out some of what I refer to as noise,” Tomlin said. “Now, the noise is my business.”
And Tomlin has also said that stepping away has shown him a side of life he never really experienced while coaching.
“It’s certainly not a 32-team league for me, but I’ve also learned to never say never,” Tomlin said. “I love to coach. I love all the challenges of the profession. I love to be a part of growth and development of young people individually. I love the measurement of the seven-day cycle, but also have enjoyed, man, the last six months life on this other side that I had no idea about.”
Tomlin added that there was some anxiety about covering the game as an analyst for the first time, but it was a challenge he was willing to take head-on.
Now, without a Steelers locker room or weekly coaching press conference to protect, Tomlin can talk, joke, and experiment with a side of himself that was mostly kept out of view. That contrast is exactly what makes Kaboly question whether this version of Tomlin is genuine.
However, one can never say never when it comes to Mike Tomlin.
He remains one of the most valuable head coaches in league history, even though his last years with the Steelers were not up to the mark. Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti seemed elated when he learned about Tomlin’s resignation during a press conference, in the wake of John Harbaugh losing his job as the Ravens’ head coach.
“Holy s—, … Wouldn’t that be awesome?” he replied to a reporter who asked if Tomlin could be considered a candidate.
League insider Jason La Canfora also reported that the New York Jets are doing their homework on Tomlin. It’s an awkward pairing, but an interesting one nonetheless.
Will Mike Tomlin consider returning to familiar ground? Or will he want to spread his wings further in the media industry? We will have to wait and watch.