PITTSBURGH — Standing at the front of a ballroom in a Pittsburgh-area hotel on Dec. 22, the night before facing the Cincinnati Bengals for the second time, Mike Tomlin delivered the message his team needed to hear.
They were at their lowest point of the season after improbably dropping three consecutive games, including two at home to a pair of the league’s worst teams. Questions about effort and leadership swirled. The third-string quarterback was taking over the starting job after three dismal outings from the backup replacing an injured starter.
The Pittsburgh Steelers were in a bad place, but Tomlin knew just what to say.
His message was simple, yet impactful: “Scared money don’t make money.”
“The time to take chances is now,” special-teamer Miles Killebrew said, translating his head coach. “Essentially, if you’re going to do it, you may as well do it now.”
And that’s exactly what the Steelers did, rattling off three straight wins as they followed their coach’s message, buying into each other and taking calculated risks that paid off.
“He’s our leader, and he sets the trajectory, and it’s kind of his vision, our words, and we ride with whatever he’s saying, we’re selling it,” interim offensive coordinator Eddie Faulkner said.
That knack for saying the right thing at the right time, for consistently preaching a message that isn’t a superficial speech, but one filled with meaningful directives that permeate the soul of his team is a quality that’s endeared Tomlin to locker rooms throughout 17 years at the helm of the Steelers.
This year, Tomlin’s “scared money” motto is the latest iteration of his oft-repeated mantra: “We’re not living in our fears.”
And in a season where questions around Tomlin’s leadership and ability to get through to his locker room churned outside the Steelers’ facility, the coach shut down the naysayers by rallying his team from a 4% chance to make the postseason (per ESPN analytics) to a wild-card matchup with the Buffalo Bills on Sunday afternoon (1 p.m., CBS), beginning with that pivotal pregame speech.
“At that point in time, it was a red arrow around here pointing down,” inside linebacker Myles Jack said. “I think everybody kind of looked themselves in the mirror, kind of focused on their square and what they could do to be better. And as cliche as it sounds, it actually worked and we just started winning games.”
The Steelers responded to Tomlin with a convincing 23-point win against the Bengals — their first victory of more than one score this season. In his postgame news conference, Tomlin peeled back the curtain to reveal the team’s mentality and referenced their new slogan for the first time.
“We came in with that mentality all week,” he said, answering a question about Mason Rudolph‘s aggressiveness in the win. “We talked about scared money not making money, and so that’s kind of the mentality as we went into the week.”
They didn’t stop there, rattling off two more wins against the Seattle Seahawks and Baltimore Ravens to a 10-7 record, securing Tomlin’s 17th straight non-losing season and a playoff berth.
“He has a fascinating way of simplifying things that need to be said in a way that everybody can understand,” Jack said. “Normally when things are said, you kind of say, ‘Well, that doesn’t apply to me. He’s talking about somebody else.’ But everything that comes out of his mouth you can definitely resonate with and look at yourself and be like, you know what? Damn, I could do that a little bit better. Or damn, I do need to focus on this or yeah, if I don’t mess up, you know what I mean? He’s good at keeping people accountable.”
That trait is what makes people inside the Steelers organization shake their heads each time the external chatter heats up about Tomlin’s job security. That happened earlier this season amid the three-game losing streak and news cycle about the lack of effort wide receiver George Pickens showed on the field.
“I’ve been on teams where it’s a real hot seat, and it is pretty much known that that person that’s there today ain’t going to be there next season,” Jack said. “… In my opinion, I would think [Tomlin’s current seat] was freezing, as cold as outside.”
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In telling his team to ignore the outside noise, Tomlin addressed the speculation and criticism head-on. There are no elephants in Mike Tomlin’s meeting room, beginning with the tone-setting gathering Mondays at 2 p.m. That’s part of what makes him a special, effective leader.
“The team meetings are incredible,” T.J. Watt said. “Everybody, I wish they had the chance to sit in those team meetings, and I think it’s just him giving a great message to us, and us running with it and guys having true belief in this locker room and the guys in it.”
He’s consistent at delivering those messages, too. It’s almost haunting, Killebrew said, thinking back to things Tomlin said in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, during training camp and how they seemingly foreshadowed the Steelers’ winding path to the playoffs.
“He never even doubted for a second that we would be in this position,” Killebrew said. “There’s messages that he’s been giving us that have been kind of eerily steadfast, and it’s just crazy to see how it still applies today. Almost as though he had planned it. And obviously I’m not trying to give him too much credit. There’s a lot of things that had to happen, but he never wavered in his message. And I think if anyone expected us to be in this moment going into the playoffs, it was him.”
It’s not just that the Steelers are in the playoffs, but how they got here that shows the team’s ability to embody and embrace its head coach’s words.
Perhaps the most obvious application of Tomlin’s do-or-die motto comes from Rudolph, beginning with his very first pass attempt. The quarterback connected with wide receiver George Pickens for an 86-yard touchdown on the second play of the Bengals win.
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“Coach T talked about it earlier this week; we got to be able to take those shots and kind of let our nuts hang out there,” Cole said after beating Cincinnati. “There just ain’t nothing to lose. Just good to see the success down there, and good to see us complete those shots. It changed the game for us.”
Later in the game, Rudolph completed two third-down passes to Pickens — one on third-and-15 and the other on third-and-1 — that went for 44 yards and a 66-yard touchdown, respectively.
A week later in Seattle, Tomlin urged his offensive staff to call a throw to Pickens on second down in a late-game situation where the entire stadium thought they would run the ball. The move paid off as Rudolph hit Pickens for a 10-yard gain.
“Those are the calculated risks that you take and that one worked out for us,” Faulkner said. In each case, Tomlin and the Steelers were aggressive in the playcall, trusting Rudolph to make the money play. And he didn’t just cash in in those instances: Rudolph has completed 72% of his attempts on third down and is averaging 11.5 yards per attempt on third-down throws.
With Rudolph at quarterback, the Steelers have converted 45% of their third downs, ranking eighth in the league. With Kenny Pickett and Mitch Trubisky starting, the Steelers converted just 35% of third downs, 26th in the NFL.
After a hollow loss to a woeful New England Patriots team, Tomlin stood behind a podium and vowed the Steelers would be back. Externally, his words felt hollow in the moment. Even more so when the team was blown out against the Colts a week later. And yet, inside the building, the team never stopped believing in its coach, and the coach never stopped believing in them.
In a tumultuous season that saw multiple significant injuries to key defensive players, three different quarterbacks and the unprecedented in-season firing of an offensive coordinator, Tomlin’s ability to remain steadfast and confident while daring his group to take necessary risks paid off with a once-improbable playoff berth.
“There’s been a lot of outside noise, but at the end of the day, the guys have been working their asses off and trusting in each other,” Watt said. “It doesn’t matter how depleted we are. We understand that’s happening all over the league. But if we want to win games, it’s going to take the guys in this building, and we’ve really taken and run with it.
“I think none of that’s possible without Mike T at the helm.”
