Monday night’s win gave them an 8-7-1 record on the year, which isn’t good enough to have them in playoff position but it is good enough to assure Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin will finish his 15th straight season without a losing record.
That’s one more year than Marty Schottenheimer managed while coaching the Browns and Chiefs, which gives Tomlin the longest run without a losing record to open a career of any coach. On Tuesday, Tomlin was asked if that’s a meaningful accomplishment to him and he responded by saying that making the playoffs is more meaningful.
“Not as I sit here today, and I say that humbly,” Tomlin said, via Brooke Pryor or ESPN.com. “Our agenda, this year, is to get into single elimination tournament and then pit our skills against others in that single elimination tournament in an effort to win the World Championship. That’s our mentality every year. And so with that mentality, it’s just certain hardware that you expect to pick up along the way. And if you don’t, you’d be seriously disappointed. That’s just an expectation that we have here in Pittsburgh.”
Tomlin’s guided the Steelers into the tournament nine times in his first 14 years. Missing out this year would make it three of the last four years without an invitation to the dance and 2022 will be the first year that Tomlin will try to extend the streak without the expectation of having Ben Roethlisberger as the team’s quarterback.
