Following his team’s defeat in the AFC Wild Card Playoffs earlier this month, Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney II revealed a great deal about his mentality.
After reports that longtime head coach Mike Tomlin and Rooney would get divorced in the offseason, Rooney made it very plain that he still believes in their relationship.
So, still feel good about Mike. Obviously if I didn’t, [we] would make a change, but if we didn’t think Mike was able to lead us to a championship, he wouldn’t be here, and that’s why he is here,” Rooney said, via ESPN.
In the very same breath, Rooney also made it clear that he is not happy with the lack of recent success in the NFL Playoffs. It speaks to the job Tomlin has done and how Pittsburgh has not been viewed as a legitimate Super Bowl contender for the better part of the past decade.
“Certainly, there’s a resolve there and a determination there,” Rooney said of Tomlin. “And I think I said before, I think all of us that have been around for a little while are anxious to take this next step — and getting a little impatient — and we need to see the kind of improvement we all want to see. Mike believes that as firmly as anybody else in the building.”
Pittsburgh has not won a playoff game since all the way back in 2016 when the team ultimately fell to the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game. Since then, the team is 0-4 in the playoffs. That’s not acceptable for Rooney or Tomlin.
“It’ll be done when it gets done,” Rooney said. “Those things are hard to speculate how long it’ll take. At this point, I don’t see it getting done before the [offensive] coordinator’s hired. I think that’s going to happen sooner rather than later.”
Tomlin is entering the final year of his current contract after spending the past 17 seasons as the Steelers’ head coach. It’s a foreign situation for him.
Whether this means that the Super Bowl-winning head coach heads into the 2024 season as a lame duck remains to be seen. While highly unlikely, Rooney’s comments on Monday did very little to change things.
