steelers medical team has discovered Mike Tomlin with …

Michael Pettaway Tomlin (born March 15, 1972) is an American football coach who is the head coach for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the National Football League (NFL). Since joining the Steelers in 2007, he has led the team to eleven playoff runs, seven division titles, three AFC Championship Games, two Super Bowl appearances, and a title in Super Bowl XLIII. At age 36, Tomlin became the youngest head coach to win the Super Bowl, a record which was later broken by Sean McVay in Super Bowl LVI. Tomlin holds the record for most consecutive non-losing seasons to begin a coaching career with 17 and has never had a losing season. Only Tom Landry (21) and Bill Belichick (19) have had longer such streaks at any point in their coaching careers. Upon Belichick’s departure from the New England Patriots following the 2023 season, Tomlin is the NFL’s longest-tenured active head coach.

Early life

Tomlin was born in Hampton, Virginia,^[1] the younger of two sons; his brother, Eddie, is three and a half years older. Their father, Ed Tomlin, played football at Hampton Institute in the 1960s, was drafted by the Baltimore Colts, and later played for the Montreal Alouettes in the Canadian Football League. The elder Tomlin died in January 2012 from an apparent heart attack in Ocala, Florida, at the age of 63. However, Tomlin hardly knew his birth father and was raised by his mother and stepfather, Julia and Leslie Copeland, who married when Tomlin was six years old.

Tomlin graduated in 1990 from Denbigh High School in Newport News, Virginia. He graduated from the College of William and Mary with a sociology degree in 1995,^[2] becoming a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. As a wide receiver, Tomlin was a second-team All-Yankee Conference selection in 1994.

College football

Tomlin’s coaching career began in 1995 as the wide receiver coach at Virginia Military Institute under head coach Bill Stewart. Tomlin spent the 1996 season as a graduate assistant at the University of Memphis, where he worked with the defensive backs and special teams. Following a brief stint on the University of Tennessee at Martin‘s coaching staff, Tomlin was hired by Arkansas State University in 1997 to coach its defensive backs. He stayed there for two seasons, before being hired as defensive backs coach by the University of Cincinnati.

Positions coach

Tomlin was hired as the defensive backs coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2001 under head coach Tony Dungy, where Tomlin first learned the Tampa 2 defense that he would use in later coaching jobs.^[3]

Tomlin was retained under new head coach Jon Gruden, and in 2002 and 2005, the Buccaneers led the NFL in total defense (fewest yards allowed per game). During Tomlin’s tenure, the defense never ranked worse than sixth overall. When the Buccaneers won Super Bowl XXXVII in January 2003, the team recorded a Super Bowl-record five interceptions, three of which were returned for touchdowns.^[4]

Head coach

After spending 2006 as the Vikings’ defensive coordinator, Tomlin was selected to interview for the vacant head coaching position with the 2005 Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers. With only a year of experience as a defensive coordinator, Tomlin was hired on January 27, 2007, to become the 16th head coach in franchise history, replacing Bill Cowher, who retired after spending 15 years with the team. Tomlin had also interviewed for the head coaching vacancy with the Miami Dolphins, a job that eventually went to former Indiana head coach Cam Cameron. With Tomlin, the Steelers continued a trend of hiring head coaches in their 30s. The others were Cowher (age 34 in 1992), Chuck Noll (38 in 1969), Bill Austin (38 in 1966), John Michelosen (32 in 1948), Jim Leonard (35 in 1945), Aldo Donelli (33 in 1941), Walt Kiesling (35 in 1939), Johnny “Blood” McNally (33 in 1937), and Joe Bach (34 in 1935).^{[citation needed]}

Tomlin is the 10th African-American head coach in NFL history and the first for the Steelers franchise. Steelers owner Dan Rooney has served as the head of the NFL’s diversity committee and proposed the Rooney Rule, requiring that teams interview at least one minority candidate when hiring a new head coach. Although Tomlin’s ascension to an NFL head coaching job has been cited as evidence of the rule working as intended,^[9] Rooney himself disputed this, as he had already interviewed a minority candidate prior to interviewing Tomlin.^[10]

The Rooney Rule dictates that for all head-coaching openings, each team must interview at least one minority candidate. But here’s what’s interesting: The coach who might be the Rooney Rule’s greatest advertisement didn’t benefit from it. “Let me say this: Mike Tomlin was not part of the Rooney Rule,” Rooney said. “We had already interviewed Ron Rivera [then the Bears’ defensive coordinator], and so that fulfilled the obligation,” Rooney said. “We went on, had heard about Mike, called him in and talked to him. He was very impressive.”