The Pittsburgh Steelers have been very fortunate over the last 55 years to have just three head coaches. Chuck Noll and Bill Cowher are already in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and Mike Tomlin will likely join them shortly after he calls it a career. Each coach brought a slightly different style, but they all preached the same message of physicality and accountability for which the organization has been known.
Troy Polamalu was coached by Cowher and Tomlin with the changeover happening in January 2007, following the fourth season of his career. He was asked about the differences between the two coaches on the most recent episode of Cameron Heyward’s Not Just Football podcast, and it turns out they were pretty similar.
“To be honest, there’s not too much difference between them when all said and done,” Polamalu said. “In terms of the level of accountability, the way that they challenge players, the way they value physicality, violence, and the way that they preach that in a very direct way about how that defines us differently from everybody else. They’re very similar in those ways.”
When I think of Cowher, I remember him getting fired up on the sidelines. He would yell at the officials and his players at times. That isn’t something you see from Tomlin as often. But behind closed doors, Polamalu is suggesting they preach a very similar message. Cowher’s accountability may have manifested itself in a more visible form on the sidelines, but that doesn’t mean Tomlin doesn’t drill the same message.
Polamalu went on to outline the biggest difference between the two coaches.
“Tomlin would come to our DB meetings,” Polamalu said. “I learned so much from Coach Tomlin that I was like, ‘Oh man, I had no idea.’ There’s even more that you could incorporate into your game this late in your career. And it was stuff that I was like, ‘Man, if I had been doing this earlier in my career, I would have been a way better player.'”
There is a pretty strong narrative or belief that many hold that Tomlin is a player’s coach, and his biggest asset is being a coach players want to play for. That may be true, but people often use it as a way to diminish what he brings as an X’s and O’s guy. Don’t take it from me, this is coming straight from HOF safety Troy Polamalu.
“When you have coach Tomlin, who starts opening up to the position groups, it’s like, oh no, this is how you see cover, this is how you see protections and how it affects routes and all these sorts of things,” Polamalu said.
Tomlin had a background as a DB coach and defensive coordinator prior to becoming the head coach in Pittsburgh. He used that knowledge to get heavily involved in the DB meetings, and that was with Dick LeBeau, a Hall of Famer, already being in the room. The fact that Polamalu says he was still very much learning and evolving his game deep into his career with the guidance of Tomlin speaks volumes about his football knowledge and what he has to offer as an X’s and O’s guy.
There is a reason that Art Rooney II wants to extend Tomlin’s contract, and it isn’t just because people like having him around.
