Mike Tomlin decided 19 seasons were enough.
The longtime Pittsburgh Steelers head coach announced he would be stepping down on Jan. 13, the day after the Steelers were blown out by the Houston Texans, 30-6, in the AFC Wild Card round. Tomlin took his Super Bowl XLIII ring and 193-114-2 overall coaching record — he never had a losing record in any of his 19 seasons — and left the NFL altogether, at least for now.
But Tomlin believes four-time NFL MVP quarterback Aaron Rodgers has one more in him.
Sunday evening, NBC‘s Maria Taylor confirmed the already-leaked news that Tomlin will be joining the “Football Night In America” broadcast team on NBC and Peacock for the 2026 NFL season. Taylor couldn’t let Tomlin’s debut segment come and go without asking him to weigh in on who will be the Steelers’ QB1 next season.
“Man, if you’ve got a gun to my head, I’d say it’s AR,” Tomlin said, referencing Rodgers. “I just think being around him for the 12 months that I was around him, he’s got a love affair with the game of football. And not only the game, but the process. The informal moments. The development of younger guys. The interaction with teammates. I think he has an addiction to that, and there’s only one way to feed it. Certainly, he is still capable and in really good shape. And so, I think, at the end of the day, he’ll play football.”
If there’s one process Rodgers, 42, unequivocally loves, it’s elongated decision-making.
Rodgers waited until June last offseason to sign a one-year contract with the Steelers. Given what’s happened — or rather, not happened — for the past three months, the Steelers will likely wait until June again before Rodgers makes his formal decision about whether to return for a second season in Pittsburgh and his 22nd season overall.
Rodgers repeatedly stated last year that the opportunity to play for Tomlin was a major deciding factor in signing with the Steelers. According to The Athletic’s Mike DeFabo, Rodgers was one of many emotional Steelers players when Tomlin informed the team of his decision to step down in January.
“Inside the team meeting room Tuesday, Rodgers, through sobs, mustered a two-word message to deliver to his coach: ‘I’m sorry,’ several players heard him say. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,'” DeFabo wrote.
Back with Taylor, Tomlin revealed why he walked away from coaching.
“It’s probably not an overnight decision, but it’s probably not something that I could articulate or share with people,” Tomlin said. “There’s a loneliness with leadership. I just thought it was a good time for me personally — and by that, I mean just where I am in life — and I thought it was a good time for the organization, to be quite honest with you.”
Tomlin continued, “We didn’t have a lot of success in the playoffs in recent years, and there’s just some veteran players there, man, guys like Cam Heyward and T.J. Watt and [Chris] Boswell, that I thought were worthy of the excitement and the optimism associated with new leadership.”
The Steelers hired former Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy as Tomlin’s successor. For those keeping score at home, McCarthy coached Rodgers in Green Bay from 2006 to 2018, and they won the Super Bowl together 15 years ago.
As of now, the Steelers’ quarterback room holds veteran backup Mason Rudolph, 2025 sixth-round pick Will Howard, and former Penn State quarterback Drew Allar, whom the Steelers drafted in the third round of the 2026 NFL Draft on Friday night.
See the full list of the 2026 Steelers draftees here, and watch Tomlin’s full debut NBC segment below.
Related Articles
