Pittsburgh Steelers: Art Rooney stands behind Mike Tomlin as head coach
By Derek Snyder
Pittsburgh Steelers team president Art Rooney II answered some tough questions about his head coach this week. Take a look at what he said.
Even though the Pittsburgh Steelers lost in the AFC Divisional Round to the Jacksonville Jaguars, the black and gold finished the regular season with an impressive 13-3 record. No, the Steelers didn’t ultimately reach their goal of winning their seventh Lombardi Trophy, but they didn’t have a bad year either.
Still, there has been some talk around Pittsburgh that fans aren’t too pleased with how Mike Tomlin handled certain in-game situations in 2017. For example, the Steelers close loss to the New England Patriots in mid-December.
Regardless of the general speculation of Tomlin’s job security at the Steelers head coach, team president Art Rooney II stood behind his head coach in an interview with Bob Labriola from Pittsburgh’s official website.
Take a look at what Rooney said about Tomlin below:
"“As I said before, I think when you win 13 games in this league, it’s kind of hard to ignore that (because) you had this one loss in the playoffs,” said Rooney. “The fact of the matter is, as I’ve said before, we played against a good team and we turned the ball over in places early that led to scores on their end. I do not want to over-simplify it, but to me in both of the Jacksonville games, turnovers were probably our biggest issue. Part of that is Mike’s problem, but that’s mostly the guys on the field who have to make sure it doesn’t happen. And some of it was good plays by Jacksonville, so there’s a lot that goes into it. Anybody who wants to look at Mike’s track record since he’s been our coach, I think the record speaks for itself.”"
I don’t know about you, but to me, it sounds like Pittsburgh doesn’t plan on Tomlin going anywhere in the near future. At the end of the day, that may be a good thing for the Steelers anyways.
This Steelers franchise has been extremely faithful to their head coaches in the past, which is a main reason why they’ve only had three head coaches since the mid-70’s. Whether you agree with it or not, that kind of stability is a large reason why Pittsburgh currently has more Lombardi Trophies than any other franchise in the NFL.
Needless to say, this may be the vote-of-confidence Tomlin needs to get his team back to the Super Bowl in 2018.
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With that said, how do you feel about Art Rooney’s comments, Steelers fans? Do you agree with his decision to stand behind Tomlin as the team’s head coach.