If you can’t relate to your players and lead a locker room, any head coach will find it hard to keep their job for long. Being a head coach in the NFL is a unique, difficult role. Not only does a coach need to understand how to manage a game but also keep control of his locker room. Few have done that better than longtime Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin.
Miles Killebrew is coming up on his fifth year in Pittsburgh, and he’s had plenty of time to experience Mike Tomlin’s coaching. On Wednesday, Killebrew had some high praise for his head coach.
“Listen, Coach Tomlin is a leader that’s gonna go down as one of the best leaders that the league has seen,” Killebrew said, via Dave Stevens Speaks on YouTube. “So I’m honored to be on his team. I don’t care what anybody says. I think he deserves all of his roses.”
Killebrew doesn’t care what anybody has to say about Tomlin, which means there’s a lot he doesn’t care about. Tomlin’s been quite the hot topic this offseason. He’s still never had a losing season in Pittsburgh. Steelers fans are growing weary of that storyline, though, since it hasn’t translated to any sort of playoff success.
Killebrew did share some insight on how different his experience has been in Pittsburgh, compared to his former team, the Detroit Lions. Steelers fans obviously have higher expectations than simply having a winning season. He does put the Steelers’ general success into perspective, though.
“I don’t think they [fans] can really understand just how consistently dominant you have to be to have a winning season every year,” Killebrew said. “I mean, that’s a hard thing to do. I’ve experienced loss. I was on the Lions before they got Dan Campbell, so I know what it’s like.”
While Dan Campbell has turned things around tremendously in Detroit, the Lions’ struggles before his tenure were well known. During Killebrew’s first two years there, the Lions did finish with a winning record. From 2018-2020 though, Detroit won a combined 14 games and finished last in the division each year.
Killebrew went from a losing situation to Pittsburgh, where he’s yet to experience a losing season in four seasons. Steelers fans don’t care about regular-season success; they want playoff wins. It’s hard to blame anyone for that, given how successful Pittsburgh’s been for decades. Still, Killebrew does put things in perspective. He gives us a chance to recognize how Tomlin’s been able to steer the franchise toward contention, something that’s hard to do over the course of two decades.
