Smith/Haley on Tomlin
Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2026 2:08 pm
Nothing really Earth shattering, but there's one pretty interesting nugget in here from Haley which we all kind of suspect is how Tomlin already approached games. It says a lot about his overall approach though, again, anyone who really watched the Steelers over the years kind of already knew it. Just confirms things for us as we do kind of look back and do a post-mortem on a long ass era of Steelers football.
https://www.si.com/nfl/mike-tomlin-secr ... g-steelers
Smith:
“It just came down to this—he had his own unique relationship with every player and every coach”, Arthur Smith told Albert Breer for Sports Illustrated after the news of Mike Tomlin’s resignation broke. “He’s just a very approachable person. And then he’s got a lot of empathy, and I think he took everybody on, and he saw that person as an individual. And that’s why he had his own relationship with them”.
“He did that with all three phases—where he would talk through what he saw and give you his opinion for, defensively, how they were built and stuff that we’re doing schematically”, he said, after Tomlin would emerge from his private office watching and cutting up film to distribute to his coaches for the week to kick things into gear. “He did a good job of kind of setting the table for the entire team. And it carried over in his team meetings”.
Haley (more of a summary from the writer:
On Friday afternoons, the Steelers’ offensive coordinator knew it was coming—and Todd Haley had been in the role long enough to the point where, by the end, he’d actually ask the question, preemptively, rather than wait for Mike Tomlin to spit out the answer.
How many points do we need this week, Mike?
In a world built on complicated and coded work and jargon, the Steelers’ coach wanted to boil it down, just before the game, into simple terms. He knew it’d help the OC do his job.
“When I got to Pittsburgh and A.B. would do something frustrating—and I’d be frustrated, whether he’s late to a meeting, whatever it was—Mike T would come in and shut the door and say, Hey, relax, it’s gonna be O.K., I’ll handle it,” said Haley, Tomlin’s OC from 2012 to ’18. “I really learned how to have more patience with players, and with some of those off-the-field-type things, not let that affect me. He would say, Just coach the player.
“At that time, I probably needed to hear that. But you’re exactly right. I mean, his ability to manage people, I think, is incredible. And that doesn’t just mean players. I think everybody involved, with the little conversations he’d have.”
Also, Tomlin confirming in a roundabout way his own influence on the draft:
“I got a bunch of relationships,” Tomlin said. “Those [schools] are consistently in the mix for a reason, and they got guys coming into the draft every year, so they become routine stops. And in the midst of those routine stops, you got time to do some side projects and gain some understanding. … I stay connected to college football coaches. I learn a lot from them. When I’m evaluating in the spring, and going out and preparing for the draft, I’m also studying programs and coaches and seeing what’s important to them, and the lives of the people they work with. Because invariably those are gonna be some of the people that I work with.
“That’s a process that I start anew every year. Got good relationships with guys that coach in college, so, Hey, take me to your social media coordinator, let me spend five minutes with them and see the points of emphasis they’re making to the 18-year-olds.”
https://www.si.com/nfl/mike-tomlin-secr ... g-steelers
Smith:
“It just came down to this—he had his own unique relationship with every player and every coach”, Arthur Smith told Albert Breer for Sports Illustrated after the news of Mike Tomlin’s resignation broke. “He’s just a very approachable person. And then he’s got a lot of empathy, and I think he took everybody on, and he saw that person as an individual. And that’s why he had his own relationship with them”.
“He did that with all three phases—where he would talk through what he saw and give you his opinion for, defensively, how they were built and stuff that we’re doing schematically”, he said, after Tomlin would emerge from his private office watching and cutting up film to distribute to his coaches for the week to kick things into gear. “He did a good job of kind of setting the table for the entire team. And it carried over in his team meetings”.
Haley (more of a summary from the writer:
On Friday afternoons, the Steelers’ offensive coordinator knew it was coming—and Todd Haley had been in the role long enough to the point where, by the end, he’d actually ask the question, preemptively, rather than wait for Mike Tomlin to spit out the answer.
How many points do we need this week, Mike?
In a world built on complicated and coded work and jargon, the Steelers’ coach wanted to boil it down, just before the game, into simple terms. He knew it’d help the OC do his job.
“When I got to Pittsburgh and A.B. would do something frustrating—and I’d be frustrated, whether he’s late to a meeting, whatever it was—Mike T would come in and shut the door and say, Hey, relax, it’s gonna be O.K., I’ll handle it,” said Haley, Tomlin’s OC from 2012 to ’18. “I really learned how to have more patience with players, and with some of those off-the-field-type things, not let that affect me. He would say, Just coach the player.
“At that time, I probably needed to hear that. But you’re exactly right. I mean, his ability to manage people, I think, is incredible. And that doesn’t just mean players. I think everybody involved, with the little conversations he’d have.”
Also, Tomlin confirming in a roundabout way his own influence on the draft:
“I got a bunch of relationships,” Tomlin said. “Those [schools] are consistently in the mix for a reason, and they got guys coming into the draft every year, so they become routine stops. And in the midst of those routine stops, you got time to do some side projects and gain some understanding. … I stay connected to college football coaches. I learn a lot from them. When I’m evaluating in the spring, and going out and preparing for the draft, I’m also studying programs and coaches and seeing what’s important to them, and the lives of the people they work with. Because invariably those are gonna be some of the people that I work with.
“That’s a process that I start anew every year. Got good relationships with guys that coach in college, so, Hey, take me to your social media coordinator, let me spend five minutes with them and see the points of emphasis they’re making to the 18-year-olds.”