Background and career
Michael Pettaway Tomlin (born March 15, 1972) is an American former professional football coach who was the head coach for the Pittsburgh Steelers of the National Football League (NFL) from 2007 to 2025. During his 19 seasons as head coach, Tomlin never finished with a losing record, the longest streak in NFL history. He began his NFL career as defensive assistant before joining the Steelers. Tomlin led Pittsburgh to 13 playoff appearances, eight division titles, three AFC Championship Games, two Super Bowl appearances, and a title in Super Bowl XLIII. At age 36, Tomlin was the youngest head coach to win the Super Bowl at the time. He is also tied with Chuck Noll for the most regular season wins in franchise history. Following his resignation, Tomlin became an analyst on NBC's Football Night in America.
Tomlin was born on March 15, 1972, in Hampton, Virginia, the younger of two sons; his brother, Eddie, is three and a half years older. Tomlin's father, Ed, played football at Hampton Institute in the 1960s, was drafted by the Baltimore Colts, and later played for the Montreal Alouettes in the Canadian Football League. Ed died in January 2012 at age 63 from an apparent heart attack in Ocala, Florida. However, Tomlin hardly knew his birth father and was raised by his mother and stepfather, Julia and Leslie Copeland, who married when Tomlin was six years old. Tomlin graduated from Denbigh High School in Newport News, Virginia in 1990. He graduated from the College of William and Mary with a sociology degree five years later, becoming a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. As a wide receiver, Tomlin was a second-team All-Yankee Conference selection in 1994.
Tomlin's coaching career began in 1995 as the wide receiver coach at Virginia Military Institute under head coach Bill Stewart. Tomlin spent the following season as a graduate assistant at the University of Memphis, where he worked with the defensive backs and special teams. Tomlin was hired by Arkansas State University in 1997 to coach its defensive backs. He stayed there for two seasons before being hired as the defensive backs coach by the University of Cincinnati.
In 2001, Tomlin was hired as the defensive backs coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers under head coach Tony Dungy, where Tomlin first learned the Tampa 2 defense that he would use in later coaching jobs. Tomlin was retained under new head coach Jon Gruden, and in 2002 and 2005, the Buccaneers led the NFL in total defense (fewest yards allowed per game). During Tomlin's tenure, the defense never ranked worse than sixth overall. When the Buccaneers won Super Bowl XXXVII in January 2003, they recorded a Super Bowl-record five interceptions, three of which were returned for touchdowns.
In 2006, Tomlin was selected by Minnesota Vikings head coach Brad Childress to be his defensive coordinator. Two of the players on the Vikings roster were older than Tomlin, and Tomlin had been a teammate of Vikings safety Darren Sharper while at William and Mary. The Vikings finished the season with the NFL's eighth-best overall defense, but had the unusual distinction of finishing as the top-ranked defense against the run and the worst-ranked defense against the pass.
After spending 2006 as the Vikings' defensive coordinator, Tomlin was selected to interview for the vacant head coaching position with the 2005 Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers. With only a year of experience as a defensive coordinator, Tomlin was hired on January 27, 2007, to become the 16th head coach in franchise history, replacing Bill Cowher, who retired after spending 15 years with the team. Tomlin had also interviewed for the head coaching vacancy with the Miami Dolphins, a job that eventually went to former Indiana head coach Cam Cameron. With Tomlin, the Steelers continued a trend of hiring head coaches in their 30s. The others were Cowher (age 34 in 1992), Chuck Noll (38 in 1969), Bill Austin (38 in 1966), John Michelosen (32 in 1948), Jim Leonard (35 in 1945), Aldo Donelli (33 in 1941), Walt Kiesling (35 in 1939), Johnny Blood (33 in 1937), and Joe Bach (34 in 1935). Tomlin is the 10th African-American head coach in NFL history and the first for the Steelers. Then-Steelers owner Dan Rooney had served as the head of the NFL's diversity committee and proposed the Rooney Rule, requiring that teams interview at least one minority candidate when hiring a new head coach. Although Tomlin's ascension to an NFL head coaching job has been cited as evidence of the rule working as intended, Rooney himself disputed this, as he had already interviewed a minority candidate prior to interviewing Tomlin.
