PHOENIX -- It's easy to see that Mike Tomlin really, really loves coaching.
What fans witness on the sideline during Sunday afternoons in the fall and winter is just a sliver of it. He commands respect during each and every practice at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex on the South Side. And, as we're seeing throughout the offseason events such as the Senior Bowl, NFL Combine and various pro days, Tomlin lives and breathes for every bit of action throughout the year, whether it's in or out of season.
"I love it all. I do," Tomlin said during his sit-down meeting with reporters Sunday afternoon. "I love team building, man. I love team development. I love division of labor. Just all the steps of the process, the things to get excited about and challenges to meet. I think that's one of the things that keeps this profession from being stale over the course of a 12-month calendar. The urgency that's required and each segment of team development and assembly is awesome and fun."
But, Tomlin's own passion for coaching goes beyond any need to stroke his own ego or fulfill some innate desire for success. He genuinely cares about the coaching profession. That's been more than evident in recent months.
If you've ever paid attention to Tomlin's press conferences or any meetings with the media, you might be on the constant lookout for the next Tomlinism or trying to decipher wordy answers that really don't provide any hearty details. But, when Tomlin fields a question about coaching, the profession of coaching, or the "coaching fraternity," as he's dubbed it in the past, he can't hide just how much he cares about the health of the profession and its future throughout the league.
I asked Tomlin during Monday morning's breakfast roundtable at the NFL's annual meeting about how much pride he takes in helping coaches grow and develop, whether it's giving them a position that helps catapult them to a better job elsewhere or grooming coaches within his own staff.
His response is worth 86 seconds of your time:
"I just think it’s part of the coaching vocation. When you're in a position of leadership, you are responsible for the growth and development of those that work with you and be a part of their story," Tomlin answered. "I've been fortunate enough to receive assistance from quality guys that nurtured my growth and development -- Tony Dungy, Jon Gruden, Rod Marinelli, others, Monte Kiffin. So, I try to be that for those that I work with, to challenge them, but also to support them and to provide them opportunities to grow to not have them in a box, to acknowledge that we're all very much in development, players and coaches. You have to give them the opportunity to put that development on display.
"So we have to have a high level of urgency, particularly this time of year. We have an opportunity to step back from the day-to-day rigors of in-season schedule and look at aspects of play and aspects of teaching and analyze it and pick it apart in an effort to move forward."
That answer isn't lip service for the coaching community. There has been tangible evidence of Tomlin giving multiple coaches new and expanded opportunities, whether it's for the betterment of the Steelers or not.
One instance that certainly doesn't help the Steelers is losing Brian Flores to the Vikings as he took their vacant defensive coordinator position earlier this offseason. Flores' impact in the Steelers locker room can't be replaced. This is a coach worthy of a head coaching position in the NFL filling a senior assistant role. There isn't another Flores to fill that spot.
"I think more than anything, I think oftentimes when you're replacing a dynamic guy like Flo, you change the profile of the replacement in an effort to acknowledge the transition and not make comparables," Tomlin explained. "I've done it before in the past."
Tomlin referred to the time in which wide receivers coach Scottie Montgomery, now an assistant head coach and running backs coach for the Lions, left the Steelers to take on a new challenge as associate head coach, offensive coordinator in the passing game and wide receivers coach in the college ranks for Duke. Tomlin's reaction was to go another way and replace him with an established "sage," as Tomlin described, in Richard Mann.
Even though Flores didn't necessarily need to grow and develop in Pittsburgh, Tomlin gave him a platform to reset and jumpstart his career after he was fired from the Dolphins. It's not another Montgomery/Mann situation, but Tomlin knew the chances of a one-and-done scenario were pretty high.
And, now, Tomlin is taking the opportunity to move on and attack this transition in a similar fashion.
"Sometimes when I’ve got a dynamic coach and I lose them, in an effort to replace them, I'll simply change the profile to just stay away from comparisons and things of that nature," Tomlin explained. "Because when you go through changes, it’s going to be different. I embrace the differences. Difference does not always necessarily mean better or worse. It just simply means different."
This time around, "different" is going from an established coach to a young up-and-comer in Aaron Curry. The former top-five overall draft pick has become a respected coach during his short career as an assistant, earning heaps of praise from Pete Carroll during his time in Seattle. Curry is actually replacing Flores and Jerry Olsavsky, who was not retained when Curry was officially named inside linebackers coach.
Tomlin viewed this as an opportunity to groom another younger coach and give him a bigger opportunity in Pittsburgh.
"I just love the upside," Tomlin said. "He’s a guy who's relatively new to the coaching business, but is not new to football. He’s been involved in it from a player perspective in just about every way that you could be involved in it. It's reasonable to expect him to bring that expertise and experience into his coaching. He's a younger guy and is able to do some physical things from a coaching perspective that could kind of add to his abilities to relate."
Opportunity has been the theme on Tomlin's staff lately. Hiring Curry is a representation of that. But, there are two other examples that are already existing on his staff.
Coming off a season in which the Steelers were tied for the league lead in interceptions, Tomlin has made secondary coach Grady Brown a very busy man this offseason. It started with earning the nod as defensive coordinator for the national team at the Senior Bowl. Brown was also one of five coaches chosen to go to the Combine and participate in running drills with the prospects on the field.
Brown is by no means new to the coaching profession. He boasts two decades of coaching experience in which he's served as secondary coach, outside linebackers coach or defensive coordinator at several colleges, including Houston, McNeese State, Old Dominion, Louisville, Birmingham Southern, South Carolina, Southern Miss and Alabama State. But, in the limited time Brown has been the secondary coach in Pittsburgh, he's given Tomlin a reason to become invested in his growth.
Denzel Martin is another coach on Tomlin's staff that has seen increased opportunity. Martin accompanied Brown at the Senior Bowl as his linebackers coach, and then was one of the other five coaches alongside Brown at the Combine, doing the same thing on the field at Lucas Oil Stadium. Then, on March 20, Tomlin promoted Martin, removing the "assistant" in front of outside linebackers coach.
"Both guys have continually gotten better and have shown the ability to meet the demands of the roles that they hold. So, it's reasonable to expect them to add more responsibility and that's what we've done," Tomlin said. "I take personally their growth and development as coaches, and so it's important for me to put them in positions to grow and develop and participating in things such as the Senior Bowl and elevated roles is a major component of that. The first game I called at the professional level was the Senior Bowl when I was a secondary coach of the Bucs. So, I have that perspective and I want to be contributors to their growth and development. I take a lot of pride in that."
First and foremost, Tomlin has a job to do as head coach of the Steelers. And, despite the lack of playoff success since the team's last Super Bowl appearance in February 2011, Tomlin has still established himself as one of the best coaches in the league and a future Hall of Famer. Just as Dungy previously did for him, Tomlin is taking pride in paying it forward. Whether or not any of these coaches turn into his long-term assistants or become head coaches elsewhere, Tomlin accepts the responsibility of nurturing growth on his staff.
As Tomlin said, it's just part of the job. And, it's a good thing that there are younger coaches on the staff worthy of earning elevated roles.
"I'm excited about the growth within our staff, the expanded roles and some of the individuals that you mentioned, but also, I expect it," Tomlin said. "It's needed, because if we want to continually move forward, that's a component of it as well. We tell our players all the time, they’re either getting better or getting worse, and it's the same for us."