How you do it

 Raise a glass this morning to the people who get it, who can see home truth beyond the glare of ego, who jump instead of making those around them push.

Raise a glass. Raise a glass to Mike Tomlin, who showed everyone how you do it yesterday.

After 19 seasons in Pittsburgh, during which he never lost more than he won with one of the NFL's most iconic franchises, he stepped down as the Steelers' head coach yesterday. He still had a year (plus options) left on his contract, but decided it was time to move on. Maybe the pitiless grind of the gig -- and it is pitiless -- finally had worn him down. Or maybe he just decided he wasn't getting the job done to his own satisfaction, and that maybe a fresh voice was needed.

The latter, of course, is pure speculation, although not particularly fanciful speculation. It seemed to jibe with who Tomlin has been across almost two decades that he both sensed the end coming, and didn't want the Rooney family to be the bad guys of the piece. So he relieved them of that responsibility.

Not that the Rooneys were certain to be the bad guys. Even after the Steelers' latest playoff flameout -- an embarrassing 30-6 loss at home Monday night to the Houston Texans -- there was no immediate sense that Tomlin was going to walk the plank for it. The clamor for a regime change had never been louder, but the Rooneys have always operated by their own clock. You own a football team for well over half a century, you don't let anyone tell you what time it is.

So maybe they'd have reluctantly decided it was indeed time for a regime change, and maybe they wouldn't have. But Tomlin made the point moot.

You lose 30-6 at home in the playoffs, the message is both loud and clear: Something has to change. And so Tomlin changed it.

He'll leave behind that incredible run of 19 straight winning seasons, leavened by seven straight playoff losses. The last time Tomlin's Steelers won a playoff game was a full decade ago, when they beat the pre-Patrick Mahomes Chiefs in the divisional round enroute to a loss to the Patriots in the AFC championship.

That's an unconscionably thirsty dry spell for a franchise with six Lombardi Trophies in its possession. And no one could have been more acutely aware of that than Mike Tomlin, only the third head coach the Steelers have had in 57 years.

Chuck Noll. Bill Cowher. Tomlin. That's all, y'all, since 1969.

Now?

Now there are two jobless coaches out there with a combined 39 years of head coaching experience: John Harbaugh, unexpectedly fired by the Ravens after an underwhelming 2025 season, and Tomlin. Only one, however, is back on the market.

Tomlin, still only 53, will be taking 2026 off. 

Can't say he hasn't earned it. Can't say that at all.