Excelling in studio, Mike Tomlin not expected in broadcast booth anytime soon

He might’ve just finished working his third regular-season game for NBC, but former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin is still providing “bulletin board material” for AFC North locker rooms.

The Super Bowl-winning head coach made waves in Week 1 after quoting his former star wide receiver, JuJu Smith-Schuster, saying “the Browns is the Browns” following Cleveland’s lopsided loss against Jacksonville. Fast-forward one week, and the Browns earned an improbable win against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, to which first-year head coach Todd Monken had some words for Tomlin in his postgame press conference.

“Browns are gonna Browns? F*ck that, OK!” Monken emphatically declared.

Tomlin, seen as the pinnacle of consistency and levelheadedness throughout his tenure in Pittsburgh, was never the one to provide any extra motivation for an opposing team, regularly showering praise on his opponent’s personnel in the days leading up to a game. But on Sunday, Tomlin struck a different tack. He embraced his new role as media talking head, even relishing the fact that what he said got through to the Cleveland locker room.

“I’m glad that I can still motivate although I’m not coaching anymore,” Tomlin quipped during NBC’s Football Night in America pregame show. Discussing the incident again during halftime of Sunday Night Football, Tomlin delighted in Monken’s reaction for a second time. “I can provide bulletin board material with no personal consequence,” he said.

The whole sequence seems to support the idea that Tomlin is happy as a clam in his new role in the NBC studio, away from the week-to-week grind and pressure of being an NFL head coach. As his NBC colleague Devin McCourty noted in an interview last week, Tomlin is savoring his newfound freedoms, staying up late to watch Hawaii games on Saturday night, sleeping in on Sunday mornings, attending family reunions for the first time in three decades, and oh yeah, working on that Minecraft city of his.

As the viewing public continues to bear witness to Tomlin’s second act, and how much the former coach seems to be enjoying his new television gig, questions over how his role at NBC could evolve have begun to surface. In particular, some have speculated that Tomlin could be in line for a run as an analyst in NBC’s booth during weeks when lead analyst Cris Collinsworth takes off, or when the network has a second game (this writer included).

However, that will not be the case, at least this season.

Awful Announcing has learned NBC knows Tomlin prefers working in the studio over calling games in a booth, per a source familiar with Tomlin’s thinking. The network hasn’t discussed putting Tomlin in the booth this season, another source adds.

That doesn’t mean Tomlin or NBC couldn’t have a change of heart. Tomlin is under a multiyear contract with the network, a deal backloaded to incentivize the former coach to stay on TV through the inevitable courtship he’ll get from NFL teams desperate for a new head coach in future offseasons. Collinsworth is signed with NBC through February 2030, the next time the network is scheduled to air a Super Bowl. Collinsworth will be 71 when he calls that game, and NBC would be wise to have a succession plan in place if their longtime lead analyst decides to hang it up then and there.

Tomlin is still in his television infancy, and there’s always a possibility he’d become interested in the booth down the line. But with calling games in the booth comes a lot more work. Booth analysts travel every week, meet with coaches and players from both teams, study 53-man rosters, and grind film. Studio analysts, on the other hand, can strike a better work-life balance. Tomlin will still travel on-site to Sunday Night Football each week, but he doesn’t have to sit through production meetings with both teams, doesn’t have to be overly concerned with knowing every player on the two-deep, and won’t have to spend every waking hour looking at All-22 tape of whichever teams he’d be calling that week.

If we’ve learned anything about Mike Tomlin in the past few weeks, it’s that he’s enjoying his life of leisure while still being involved in the league. NBC’s studio strikes that balance in a way the booth wouldn’t.

So when it comes to Tomlin potentially entering the booth, perhaps it’s best to quote the man himself.

“Never say never, but never.”