Former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin will be joining the Football Night in America broadcast team for NBC Sports this fall, following his retirement from coaching in January, and on Sunday, he broke his silence about his decision to step away from the Steelers and coaching.
Tomlin, in his debut appearance on NBC, sat down with Maria Taylor during Sunday’s NBA Showtime pregame show to break the news publicly about him joining the broadcast crew and discuss his decision to step down after 19 seasons leading the Steelers. Taylor asked Tomlin if there was a “blink” moment that caused him to decide to leave coaching at this time.
“It’s probably not an overnight decision, but it’s probably not something that I could articulate or share with people,” he said. “There’s a loneliness with leadership. I just thought it was a good time for me personally, and by that, I just mean where I am in life. 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, 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.”
As far as his new television job, Tomlin said he hopes it will be a way for him to stay engaged with the game. In addition to announcing his hire, Taylor announced that the entire NBC crew will broadcast on-location in 2025. Football Night in America had previously been based in a studio.
“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, traveling to different venues and getting that feel for the environment,” Tomlin said “And lastly, I just thought it’d 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. There’s gonna be some anxiety about stepping into a new space, but good anxiety. It’s good to uncomfortable. There’s grow associated with that. And so, man, I’m fired up about it.”
Tomlin will replace another former Steelers coach, Tony Dungy , on the NBC Football Night in America panel, though it sounds as if the entire show is getting a shake-up.
This article originally appeared on Steelers Now : Mike Tomlin Breaks Silence on Retirement from Steelers
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