Former Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, who hasn’t been around much since leaving his long-held position in the Steel City, will be more visible come fall.
Coach T has joined NBC’s Football Night in America, where he will collaborate with Devin McCourty, Jason Garrett, and Maria Taylor on Sunday night pregame coverage. Last week, Andrew Marchand of The Athletic was the first to report on the hire.
Tomlin made an appearance on Sunday during NBC Sports’ coverage of the NBA playoffs to talk about his plans to become a broadcaster, how he spent the NFL draft, and—most importantly—his departure from the Steelers.
When Maria Taylor inquired as to how Tomlin knew it was time to hang up, he replied:
“It’s probably not an overnight decision, but it’s probably not something that I could articulate or share with people”. “There’s just 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. We didn’t have a lot of success in the playoffs in recent years, and there’s just some veteran players there—guys like Cam Heyward and T.J. Watt and [Chris Boswell]—that I thought were worthy of the optimism and the excitement associated with new leadership.”
“I just thought it’d be a great way to stay connected to the game and the awesome people in it. Players, coaches, executives. And excited about doing that on Sunday night and traveling to venues and getting that feel for the environment,”
“And lastly, I just thought it would be awesome to share insight with fellow football lovers. I love to talk football, and so that’s just an exciting component for me. I gotta admit, though, it’s going to be some anxiety about stepping into a new space, but good anxiety. Y’know? It’s good to be uncomfortable, to grow, to associate it with that. But man, I’m fired up about it.”
Mike Tomlin joins Maria Taylor to talk about his new role on Football Night In America on NBC and Peacock! 🙌 pic.twitter.com/dxiLKFQlw4
— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) April 26, 2026
Shortly after the Steelers’ postseason ended (again) in the wild-card round, Tomlin resigned as head coach in January. Only Art Rooney II, the team president, spoke to the media at the time, and he stated that he would have kept Tomlin on for another deal if the coach had desired it.
