Can the steelers fire Mike Tomlin?

The reason to part ways is that he is coming up on his 20th season as the head coach of the Steelers. It's time.
A supplementary reason the lack of recent success, in the last 5 season he failed to lead a Super Bowl competitive team, but that's just a side note. Not the reason to fire a head coach.

 

Arthur Smith, interim coach..
It would be my luck they would name Teryl Austin as interim.

Mike's projection of a "historic defense" isn't working out so much.
But my gut is telling me he will be here at season's end.
I do get a vibe, that 19 seasons is probably it... barring some miracle turnaround. I know he'd like to make 20.

It remains a mystery as to what actually happens.
A loss like that and fans turn into flesh eating zombies in the bat of an eye.
A big win like Indy turns them back.
It's been a back and forth for some time, people are weary of it. I think even Mr Rooney knows it.

 

Tomlin will retire at the end of the season, if he cares abt this team/ franchise. If not he is the putz we all knew he was

 

Tomlin won't get fired. He will coach until he's done with it. Arthur Smith would be the logical choice as interim... but it's moot. Popcorn ain't getting fired.

Daboll got sh!tcanned today and he was in the process of developing Jaxson Dart into a legit NFL QB. Dart is better now than any QB from Landry Jones, Dobbs, Rudolph onward.... Steelers have drafted and attempted to develop. To add insult to injury.... Daboll has a more recent playoff win than Popcorn.

 

TLDR: They can. But Rooney would still have to pay him ~ $40MM over the next 2.5 seasons until his contract ends.

Remember how reluctant he was to fire Canada? IIRC, his salary was ~ $1.5MM / year. He was eventually fired with ~ 1/2 a season left. So that was $750k out of Rooney's pocket (paying Canada to not coach). And he probably wouldn't have even done that if the Fire Canada chants weren't showing up at basically any public even in Pittsburgh.

Tomlin makes $16MM / year (more than 10x more than Canada). And he's under contract until the end of the 2027 season. The team will pay him until the end of that time whether he coaches for us or not. The remaining value on that contract is ~ $40MM.

IMO, there is very, very close to a 0% chance that Rooney fires Tomlin (1) now ($40MM remaining), (2) this offseason ($32MM remaining), (3) during the 2026 season (if middle of 2026 $24MM remaining), and (4) during the 2026 off season ($16MM remaining).

I think the chances that he gets fired during the 2027 season increase from 0%. But not by much. Rooney would still owe him the pro-rated amount on the $16MM for that season (so $8MM if he was fired mid-2027).

 

It seems like lunacy by the organization if they sign any contract with any non-player that is 100% guaranteed for the full amount over a 3 year period.

You sure that's the contract terms?

 

5 seasons? It's getting closer to the past decade. He's won a postseason game in only 4 of his 18 seasons as HC of the steelers. 6 of those years he didn't even make the postseason. At this rate, you can add this season to those numbers as well because IF his team makes a WC game, they'll get beat down and embarrassed. Just because a coach has been in a place that long isn't reason to get rid of somebody, it's all about results and Tomlin's haven't been up to par for a championship caliber franchise for the majority of his time here - all but 3 seasons out of 19.

 

So the punishment for the fans for a bad contract is.... uncompetitive football for the rest of Tomlin's tenure. Unfortunate.

I don't care what we owe him... sometimes we gotta make a decision that is correct for the franchise. Tomlin is going to get credit for his laurels (he has won a SB a long time ago and has never had a losing season), but he's been a big detriment to this team rebuilding post Ben. The problem is that he needs to surround himself with great coordinators, but also wants to have control of everything... so were stuck with a "motivator" HC that will have mid to poor coordinators.

We shouldn't fire him in season (unless we lose like 4-5 in a row moving forward), however, we SHOULD fire him in the offseason and hire either Klint Kubiak or Jesse Minter, but I don't think we're going to. Take another dip at a young guy with minimal coordinator experience. They can then surround themselves with proven coordinators and start building this team the way they want to.

 

Had to dig deep to find this old thread.

 

I think he gets about 16 million a year. His frigging contract is through 2027 which gives us 2 more wonderful seasons with him. He is 53. Pretty sure he has enough $$$ for rest of life. He needs to take up Golf.

 

You established why they won't fire him quite well and I tend to agree. I also highly doubt they ever trade him as he's not the type of guy that wants to rebuild a 3-4 win team. He'd want to take over a roster with established vets and a nice core of youth, and those type of teams don't typically fire their HC. About the only possible scenario is Tomlin and the Rooney's mutually agree to go their separate ways. And about the only possible scenario is if the Rooney's and Khan want to undertake a rebuild and Tomlin says that he doesn't want to do that path.

 

The Steelers could always trade Tomlin to another team. The media loves him, and I am sure some team out there would love to bring him onboard. The Dolphins come to my mind as a team that would likely be interested in Tomlin if he were made available.

 

Nice find.

 

What about the Dolphins roster, besides the Miami weather, would be appealing for Tomlin? That's a mess that he wouldn't want to inherit.

 

I am hoping that Rooney doesn't extend him, again. I'm not convinced that he won't.

 

So If Tomlin" retires" at the end of the year, What does Rooney owe him?

 

Nada, but I'm sure Tomlin would get something from his buyout.

 

You got all those draft picks and the draft in Pittsburgh next year... if there was ever a year to start clean, it would be after this season.

 

https://www.steelers.com/news/tomlin-signed-to-three-year-extension

 

HMMM.
you damn sure might be right

 

Agree with those who say Tomlin wont get fired. I think he’ll get tired of it and leave voluntarily with a buyout. Specially if he faces a rebuild with a rookie Qb. Not only Qb, replacements are needed for Cam, TJ, the secondary, probably an overhauled receiver corps as well. Tomlin is not going through a couple losing seasons doing that.

 

....because the QB played one of the worst games of his career???

To understand how bad Rodgers was, his rating was worse than any game Pickett played significant snaps in as a Steeler.

 

Supposedly, Tomlin would be hired by another team the next day, so the Steelers would only be responsible for the difference.

 

His sack percentage, pressures, was the highest since week one. That can do a number on a 42 yr old Qb.

 

Here's a link about Tomlin's extension: https://www.steelers.com/news/tomlin-signed-to-three-year-extension

Here's a link about coach's contracts in the NFL and how they are guaranteed (unless fired with cause for things like legal issues): https://www.si.com/nfl/2022/01/19/business-of-football-end-of-season-coaches-fired

It might seem like lunacy, but it's how the NFL operates. Not just the Steelers.

We don't know for sure re: Tomlin specifically because coach's contracts are less public than player's contracts. Perhaps Tomlin's contract has some special language saying he can be fired and his contract won't be guaranteed. But I can't imagine why he'd sign it in that case. He's the 3rd highest paid coach in the league. There's no way he'd opt out of having guarantees that essentially all other coaches (not just head coaches) would have.