One of the NFL’s winningest and most venerable franchises is at a crossroads perhaps unrivaled in franchise history after another blowout playoff loss.
The Steelers fell to Houston, 30–6 on Monday in the final NFL wild-card game, marking the team’s seventh straight playoff loss, with those games having an average margin of defeat of more than 15 points and Pittsburgh never holding a second-half lead in any of them.
Despite not having a losing regular-season record in the entire 19-season tenure of head coach Mike Tomlin, Pittsburgh has not won a playoff game since the 2016 divisional round.
That good-but-not-great run has significantly amplified the impatience of Steelers fans, as Tomlin has now tied former Bengals coach Marvin Lewis for the longest postseason losing streak in NFL history. As the Texans put the finishing touches on their dominant victory Monday, Pittsburgh fans at Acrisure Stadium began a loud “Fire Tomlin!” chant. That continued the unrest surrounding Tomlin that rose during the regular season.
Tomlin said he has not made a decision about his future, nor have the Steelers. Even before the plan for the 2026 season is determined, Tomlin is increasingly eyed as a future broadcasting star.
“I’m not even in that mindset as I sit here,” Tomlin said. “I’m more in the mindset of what transpired in this stadium and certainly what we did and didn’t do. Not [in] a big-picture mentality.”
Tomlin, who earns $16 million annually and is under contract through the 2027 season, is the NFL’s longest tenured coach—a status that has grown over the rest of the league after the Ravens recently fired John Harbaugh after 18 years there. The agreement for the 2027 season, however, is a Steelers team option—one that must be exercised by March 1.
The Steelers have long prized organizational stability, and Tomlin is just one of three people to hold that post with the team since 1969. (Chuck Noll, who won four Super Bowls, and Bill Cowher, who also won a Lombardi Trophy, are the other two.)
Quarterback Issues
Pittsburgh, meanwhile, also has a significant decision to make about who will play quarterback in 2026. A one-year, $13.65 million contract for future Pro Football Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers is now done. While Rodgers showed occasional flashes of brilliance that led him to four NFL Most Valuable Player awards, he ultimately was not able to change the team’s trajectory of the past decade.
Rodgers, too, has not made a decision about his future, and the Steelers’ quarterback depth chart includes backups Mason Rudolph and Will Howard, the latter being a 2025 draftee out of Ohio State.
“I’m not going to make any emotional decisions,” Rodgers said after the loss to the Texans. “[I’m] disappointed, obviously. Such a fun year. A lot of adversity but a lot of fun. [It’s] been a great year overall in my life, and this is a really good part of that, coming here and being a part of this team. So, it’s disappointing to be sitting here with the season over.”
Rodgers, however, pushed back on the scrutiny surrounding Tomlin.
“Mike T. has more success than damn near anybody in the league for the last 19, 20 years,” he said. “More than that, though, when you have the right guy and the culture is right, you don’t think about making a change, but there’s a lot of pressure that comes from the outside and obviously that sways decisions from time to time. But it’s not how I would do things and not how the league used to be.”
