One of the major criticisms of Mike Tomlin during his tenure is his coaching tree. Typically in the NFL, we see long-standing and excellent coaches develop their offensive and defensive coordinators into coaching candidates for other teams to poach. This is a copycat league, so teams want to emulate the success of other franchises. For a Steelers team that has had so much head coach stability, it is shocking that teams rarely look to Pittsburgh for their coaching hires.
A lot of this comes down to the direction of the team. Despite success on paper, the Steelers tend to underperform, and their assistant coaches seem like distant thoughts in the head coach talks. The offense is a slightly better situation, as Mike Tomlin seems more willing to add notable names there.
While Randy Fichtner and Matt Canada were relative unknowns, they are sandwiched between Todd Haley and Arthur Smith, both former head coaches. Smith is even getting some interviews to be a head coach this year.
The defense has been a different story since they forced out Dick LeBeau. Keith Butler was given the reigns, and he never made much noise. He was a fine linebackers coach, but his ability to scheme up an entire defense was lackluster. They turned to Teryl Austin afterward, and like Butler, he has never even remotely been viewed as a candidate to move up the coaching ranks.
Steelers fumbled a great coaching opportunity
However, there was one coach that the team let get away, and it looks like one of the biggest disasters in recent history for the defense. Brian Flores had one of the most unceremonial head coaching firings in recent years. Despite the Dolphins exceeding all expectations with him at the helm despite a weak roster, he was fired. He came out and claimed that Miami wanted him to lose games for draft spots though. This seemingly blacklisted him from a lot of teams, but the Steelers added him as a defensive assistant.
Their defense was the lone strength in an otherwise miserable season. This was Kenny Pickett’s rookie season, and the offense was a complete trainwreck. Because of the stout and advantageous defense though, Pittsburgh won nine games. That offseason, he was poached by the Vikings to be their defensive coordinator.
His time in Minnesota hasn’t been perfect. His secondary has been lackluster and ravaged by injuries, so teams have been able to exploit them through the air. That said, his defense still ranks highly. The reason is that they generate a lot of pressure, sacks, stop the run, and force turnovers. You can get by with a mediocre secondary if you are winning like that everywhere else.
Flores now finds himself as a prime head coaching candidate this offseason, while the Steelers could potentially fire Austin because of how bad the defense has been down this stretch. So the question looms large: why did Pittsburgh allow Flores to leave in the first place?
While it would have been an uncharacteristic move, the team could have let go of Austin in favor of Flores. Looking back on it, that would have easily been the smartest move. Considering the talent on this defense, we could have had a much better unit these past two years, and who knows how that would have impacted the final results. Add in the draft picks you can receive when a minority coach gets promoted to head coach elsewhere and the Steelers clearly didn’t play this out right.
Instead, we settled for mediocrity, and as a result, we have seen mediocre results. While Flores gets head coaching considerations, Austin will be lucky to have a job if Pittsburgh fires him. While there are plenty of reasons to praise Tomlin as a coach, one of his biggest failures has been his coaching staff. Letting go of Flores is just another example of that failure.