Mike Tomlin knows how to win in the NFL because he never suffered a losing season in any of his 19 years as the Pittsburgh Steelers head coach. He’s also winning as a TV analyst on NBC’s Sunday Night Football pregame show.
And it could be he’s winning so much that he’s using the latter to return to the former.
Tomlin on Sunday night did something most former-coaches-turned-broadcasters not named Rex Ryan rarely do: He criticized a current coach.
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Tomlin analyzed the end of the Baltimore Ravens 34-31 victory over the Dallas Cowboys and laid the loss at the feet of the coaching staff, which obviously is led by head coach Brian Schottenheimer.
“The sequence played by the Dallas Cowboys at the end of the game in Rio was somewhat negligent, to be quite honest with you,” Tomlin said.
Tomlin explained how a game that was tied at 31 with seven seconds remaining in regulation should not have turned into a loss until “strategically, Dallas helped [Baltimore] in that circumstance.”
How? The Cowboys’ disaster began with the fact their kickoff went into the end zone for a touchback rather than remaining on the field, where precious seconds would have ticked off the clock.
“Baltimore gets the ball on the 35-yard-line, and they had this really significant play down the middle of the field to their No. 1 receiver, Zay Flowers,” Tomlin said. “But let’s really analyze it for a minute. Man, the Dallas Cowboys are playing outside leverage man-to-man.
“They got caught in some one-on-ones, Zay Flowers won, and they put them in position to kick that game-winning field goal.”
The ultimate decision on what coverage the defense plays and whether to avoid coverage that doesn’t make sense, falls on Schottenheimer.
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Following the loss, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones requested (demanded?) an explanation of what exactly his coach was thinking. Is Jones satisfied with the explanation he got?
“Well, there is no explanation you’re satisfied with,” Jones said during his regular Tuesday appearance on 105.3 The Fan in the Metroplex. “None. Let’s be sure that we all understand that.”
Uh-oh.
“They don’t have one that they’re satisfied with. We made mistakes during that time. There’s no question about it. So there is no explanation…”
This is where the possibility that Tomlin highlighting his fellow coach’s mistake to millions of people on TV’s most popular weekly broadcast makes him look good. Because being able to explain what should have happened, sends the message that’s how he would have handled it as the Cowboys coach.
We are not reporting that Tomlin is focused on putting himself in position to be the next Cowboys coach. But he surely didn’t hurt himself with this segment, if that is his intent.
Tomlin hasn’t said he wants to get back into coaching next year. Then again, he hasn’t said he doesn’t.
But if he does eventually want a coaching comeback, one way to help, is by highlighting that he wouldn’t lose a game another coach, who displeased ownership, just lost.
Anyone reading this might doubt a former coach would use his position as a broadcaster to help himself land a job he covets. Except, it has happened before.
In 1995, former Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson would often comment on the Fox pregame show about how talented the Miami Dolphins were and how they should be performing better and winning more.
The obvious implication was that then-coach Don Shula should be doing better than the 9-5 record he eventually milked out of his team.
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People in Miami saw through it. They understood Johnson, who had coached at the University of Miami and lived in Key West, liked the idea of returning to coaching with the Dolphins.
And it worked. Johnson’s work on TV fed a public relations campaign that painted him as an upgrade. Shula was ultimately forced out in January 1996 and Johnson was hired one week later.
Shula, believing he had been undermined, never forgave Johnson.
The question now is whether Tomlin will continue to critique Schottenheimer and his staff, adding to more speculation that he’s focused on their job.
That would make him a more interesting analyst and maybe even the next Dallas Cowboys coach.
