Tuesday, August 21, 2007

For Pittsburgh's Tomlin, it's all about the details

Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin walks on the field before before a preseason game against the Packers earlier this month. Tomlin will hope to be on the Pittsburgh sidelines for a long time, like his predecessors Bill Cowher and Chuck Knoll.

By Chris Colston, USA TODAY
August/21/2007

LATROBE, Pa. — The bass thumped from a portable stereo, a cool rap groove, when Mike Tomlin entered the room the morning of Oct. 30, 2002.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers were in the middle of their Super Bowl season. Coach Jon Gruden likes to split the 16-game schedule into quarters, and for each quarter he assigns an assistant as "head coach" for the big Wednesday team meeting that sets the tone for the week.

Tomlin and linebackers coach Joe Barry drew the third quarter. So with the music blasting, they and their "posse" — assistant coaches Raheem Morris and Joe Woods — burst in wearing matching black T-shirts riffing off the "third quarter" theme. "Something the players could relate to," Bucs cornerback Ronde Barber says.

The entrance grabbed players' attention. Tomlin, then 30, spoke and his confidence proved rapturous.

"Some guys can have that kind of presence in a meeting room, with his positional players," says Denver Broncos safety John Lynch, a member of that Bucs team. "But when Mike stepped in front of everybody his thoughts were precise, succinct, and he never faltered in his delivery. It's a talent and he pulled it off. That was the first time I thought, 'Wow, this guy is going to be a special head coach one day.' "

But the ranks are filled with qualified assistants. For Tomlin, 35, to leapfrog them and become coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers fascinates many who follow the NFL. One reason he commands the respect: Every detail matters.

It also helps explain why, for the love of Art Rooney Sr., Tomlin wears a long-sleeved shirt and black pants in the stifling August heat of training camp. "The man in black," cornerback Deshea Townsend says. "He's a cool cat."

So much interest in his wardrobe perplexes Tomlin, who says he always has dressed this way.

"All of a sudden, it's newsworthy," he says. "That's been the most surprising thing about the job for me at this point — that it's a big deal what clothes I choose to work in."

But Tomlin's style has a purpose: to create consistency. "It's a little mental warfare on my part," he says, then cracks a smile. "All I have to do is get through training camp. After that, this is appropriate wear."

Such thinking might explain how Tomlin landed one of the NFL's most prestigious jobs. Low-profile stops at Virginia Military Institute, Memphis, Arkansas State and the University of Cincinnati and one year as an NFL coordinator exposed him to many situations; he held six jobs in his first seven years of coaching.

But during that NFL championship season, working with players such as Barber, Lynch, Brian Kelly and Super Bowl XXXVII MVP Dexter Jackson, Tomlin began to get a better sense of his destiny.

"I had a great room, but it was a hard room to coach," Tomlin says. "If you stand in front of Lynch and Barber and Kelly every day, it doesn't matter if there are 50 other guys in the room. That's a tough crowd.

"They had a desire to be great, and they demanded that you deliver for them. That's when I realized I might be capable of doing something like this."

Tomlin's authenticity won over Barber.

"He wasn't phony, and some coaches don't have that quality," Barber says. "Mike always seemed like he loved what he was doing and loved the guys he worked with. Some part of him rubbed off on us.

"To me, that's a great head coach's quality, and you could see that in him from the very beginning."

Having said that, even Barber raised his eyebrows when Tomlin landed the Steelers job.

"Surprise is the wrong word because I knew he'd be there at a young age," Barber says. "But this year? No. Next year, I thought maybe."

Rising to the top

When Steelers coach Bill Cowher left after 15 years, the franchise had two good candidates on staff to replace him: offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt and offensive line coach Russ Grimm.

But if one team does due diligence in the hiring process, it is the Steelers. The Rooney Rule, which forces teams to interview minorities for head coaching vacancies, is named after Steelers Chairman Dan Rooney.

"Let's bring Tomlin in and see how he looks," Rooney said.

Steelers players were watching the hiring process.

"It wasn't like we were going to go on strike if he didn't get the job," safety Ryan Clark says. "But the majority of players are of African-American descent, so it's something we looked at."

Tomlin, who keeps boxes loaded with old coaching planners and notebooks and has a log of every practice, impressed the Rooneys enough to reach the second round as one of five finalists.

"The second interview did it," Rooney says. "He was prepared and understood what we were saying. He just really sold us."

Although he had been the Minnesota Vikings' defensive coordinator for only one season, Tomlin felt confident.

"But I didn't know about the landscape of getting a head job," Tomlin says. "I didn't know if it was politics. And if that was the case, I didn't know how to play those politics."

With the Rooneys, it was all about competence; that Tomlin was then 34 didn't bother them.

"We don't have a prohibition against hiring young coaches," Rooney says. "Chuck Noll was 35, Bill was 34. Mike fell into the same age bracket they did. But that's not why you hire somebody, because they can relate to younger players. You hire them because they can do the job regardless of age."

Then Rooney adds, "If we didn't hire him this year, somebody else would soon."

On Jan. 22, Tomlin joined Romeo Crennel, Tony Dungy, Herman Edwards, Marvin Lewis and Lovie Smith as the NFL's African-American head coaches. Whisenhunt landed in Arizona, bringing Grimm with him.

Transition has bumpy moments

Tomlin's two-a-day schedule with first-week contact was different from how Cowher ran the show. The transition took some adjustment for many Steelers veterans.

"We're still feeling each other out, still learning the process, the schedule," says Pro Bowl guard Alan Faneca, who favored Whisenhunt or Grimm for the job. "For a while there, it was like, 'What are we going to do today?' So many guys had been doing the same thing day in and day out."

Tomlin acknowledged some bumpy moments: "It's human nature to resist change. We're all creatures of habit."

But the Rooney stamp of approval lent credence to the movement.

"The Rooneys are smart. In the last (40) years, they've had three coaches," Steelers defensive end Brett Keisel says. "You have to trust them. The decision shocked a lot of guys. … But this was the direction they wanted to go in, and I don't think there is a soul on this team who will question the Rooneys' opinion on this."

Clark says the Steelers have someone "who understands where we are in life. Sometimes, with older coaches, they're far removed from being 26, 27 and having to deal with the things we deal with. But he also has the expertise of a guy who's been in the league for 20, 30 years. I think it was a hire based on merit, not on color."

Starring role

The Steelers are beginning to see what the Rooneys saw in the coach and what his William & Mary teammates saw when Tomlin played wide receiver from 1990-94: a facile mind, attention to detail, his ability to relate to people of different ages and backgrounds. He is a fit 6-2, with a beard trimmed along his jaw, a stylish mustache, twinkling eyes behind Versace sunglasses.

"I worked side-by-side with him for five straight years in Tampa," says Barry, now the Detroit Lions defensive coordinator and a rising star himself. "In that situation, you see people's moods, their good days and bad. And every single day, I knew what I was getting with Mike Tomlin: someone who is smart, tough and consistent."

In an alternate life, Clark sees Tomlin running a Fortune 500 company.

"Some people are better at giving orders than taking them," Clark says. "And it seems like he's pretty good at giving them. If he wasn't a football coach, he'd have to be somewhere, bossing somebody around."

But the most striking thing about Tomlin is… what, exactly?

Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger nodded when posed this question.

"He has a presence, without being boisterous," Roethlisberger says. "There is something about him that makes you want to know what he's thinking."

William & Mary teammate and Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity brother Terry Hammons sensed something, too.

"You can feel his presence when he walks into a room," Hammons says. "You might not know who he is or what he does, but you get the sense he's special. … I don't want to sound too cheesy, but he has an aura about him.

"How do I explain this? Some coaches feel they need to control situations by screaming. Mike doesn't need to do that. There might be a gymnastics meet going on inside his body, but you wouldn't be able to tell by the look on his face."

Townsend senses it, too. He says Tomlin has the charisma of an actor — "A Denzel Washington type."

"An actor? Yeah — I think so," tight end Heath Miller says. "That's actually pretty good. … I think he'd do well."

Tomlin laughs when he hears this. He considers himself "nerdy" because he loves crossword puzzles.

But in Pittsburgh, he has achieved celebrity status. When movie star Will Smith accompanied Tomlin to dinner at a local restaurant, fans mobbed their table — to meet Tomlin. According to Hammons, Smith told Tomlin it was the first time in 20 years he had eaten in a restaurant and hadn't been asked for his autograph.

"The irony is, Mike had been to the restaurant once before but couldn't enjoy it because fans kept interrupting him," Hammons says. "He figured if he took Will Smith, he'd have a peaceful meal."
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