Tomlin Spoke the Tortured Language of Pittsburgh

The three men who sit near the top of the NFL leaderboard for most consecutive playoff losses as head coaches all have strong ties to Southwestern Pennsylvania. Legendary Browns and Chiefs coach Marty Schottenheimer, who dropped six games in a row, was born in Canonsburg and played college ball at Pitt. Longtime Bengals coach Marvin Lewis, once the sole record holder at seven, grew up in McDonald, four miles east. Mike Tomlin, as of Monday night, has spent two decades in the Steel City and now shares Lewis’ dubious distinction. He announced his resignation on Tuesday, one day after the Steelers lost 30-6 to Houston in the most lopsided home playoff defeat in franchise history.

For a window in the mid-2010s, Pittsburgh's stellar offense masked its structural deficiencies. The Killer B's — Ben Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown, and Le'Veon Bell — formed the most dynamic assemblage of offensive talent that Pittsburgh has ever fielded. Brown recorded 7,347 receiving yards and 52 touchdowns between 2014 and 2017. Bell averaged 129 yards from scrimmage per game between 2013 and 2017, the highest by any player since the merger over a five-year stretch. They won three division titles. They reached one AFC Championship Game, losing 36-17 to New England. Neither Brown nor Bell won a championship in Pittsburgh. Both eventually played in a Super Bowl against each other as backups for other teams.

The defense was usually better than the offense, as Steelers defenses had been since the 1970s. But this too followed a pattern of declining returns. Tomlin inherited Hall of Famer Dick LeBeau's increasingly shopworn and over-aggressive 3-4 system and retained him until 2014. The defenses that followed produced fewer turnovers, fewer dominant units. The team that once employed Joe Greene, Jack Lambert, Rod Woodson, James Harrison, and Troy Polamalu finished the 2025 season allowing 414 total yards in the wild card round to Houston.

What Tomlin gave Pittsburgh, more than wins or losses, was language. His weekly press conferences were true civic theater, a catalog of circular aphorisms that reporters transcribed and fans repeated. "The standard is the standard" became so ubiquitous the team had it engraved on the Heinz Field locker room walls. He talked about iron sharpening iron, about running to adversity, about "a fine line between drinking wine and squashing grapes." He said "if we're going to play in kitchens we're going to deal with heat." He counseled blinkers to cut off their own eyelids.

Steelers defensive back Ryan Clark once explained "the standard is the standard" to ESPN: "No one knows what the hell that truly means sometimes." He acknowledged it signified something about accountability, about demanding more from yourself than circumstances demand. That's Pittsburgh in a sentence. The region peaked in population around 1950, when steel production meant everything. Some historians argue Pittsburgh's economic zenith came earlier, in the 1920s, when its share of steel production peaked, or the 1880s, when it was truly a rising metropolis in a young country. The precise date varies. What doesn't vary is the direction: down, slowly, for most of a century.

Pittsburghers hate change. They value loyalty beyond reason. They kept Tomlin for nine years after his last playoff win because they kept Bill Cowher for fifteen years and Chuck Noll for twenty-three and owner Art Rooney kept paying the bills for forty years without a championship before the dynasty of the 1970s. The franchise has employed three head coaches since 1969. Now it will find a fourth. Art Rooney II, the founder's great-grandson, said Tomlin's "track record of never having a losing season in 19 years will likely never be duplicated." He's probably right., but whether that record represents unparalleled success or reliable mediocrity depends on what you're measuring.

Tomlin was the union worker who did his job well enough to stick around, who carried himself with pride, who showed up every day and met the minimum requirements while never quite delivering what a changing job market demanded. The NFL is a cutthroat business with no sentimentality and no tenure. Other cities fire coaches after two bad seasons. Pittsburgh let Tomlin lose seven straight playoff games across nine years because the Steelers don’t fire people, because loyalty matters there, because the standard is the standard even when the standard has slipped. Meanwhile, the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins had no problem jettisoning Mike Sullivan, a two-time Stanley Cup winner who had missed the playoffs for three years and enjoyed one losing season, and the Pirates have cycled through an array of can’t-win-for-losing managers since their early-90s heyday. 

"While this chapter comes to a close," Tomlin said in his resignation statement, "my respect and love for the Pittsburgh Steelers will never change." The feeling is mutual. The city will remember him fondly, the way it remembers everything fondly, the way it enshrines even its so-so past because the far gloomier present keeps disappointing. 

History stops for no one. Not for a region that’s been touting its renaissance for so long it might as well be a stillbirth. Not for a franchise built on Art Rooney’s racetrack money and stubborn Irish persistence. Not for a coach who proved, over nineteen years, that survival and success are not the same thing in this multi-billion dollar version of an autumn game for schoolboys.

Oliver Bateman is a historian and journalist based in Pittsburgh. He blogs, vlogs, and podcasts at his Substack, Oliver Bateman Does the Work.