Al Michaels believes Mike Tomlin would be a natural fit in broadcasting if he ever decided to make the jump. Edit by Liam McGuire, Comeback Media

Pittsburgh Steelers fans might’ve had more Mike Tomlin than they can handle, but the same can’t be said for broadcasters, particularly Al Michaels.

While the future of the 80-year-old Michaels remains uncertain, as he’ll continue with Amazon Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football coverage for the 2025 NFL season and possibly beyond, Michaels knows broadcasting gold when he sees it — and hears it.

And Tomlin? He’s exactly that.

“In a meeting with Mike, and this goes all the way back to when he took the job in 2007, he’s very interesting,” said Michaels during a recent appearance on the Sports Media with Richard Deitsch podcast. “And what he will do — especially in recent years — we’ll go in there’s a dance you can do in these meetings, who’s not gonna play… Mike will come in and he will give you the answers to all of the questions you have without you asking those questions.

“So, it’s very efficient for us. He’ll know what we want to know. And Mike will take the mic for maybe four or five or six minutes, whatever it takes to bring us up to speed with all of the things that he knows that we need to know. The other thing about Mike, is he’s so facile of tongue. I mean, he’s unbelievably well-read. I’ve always said — and I’ve said this on the air — if I had a debate team, I would make him my captain.”

Michaels also shared his admiration for Tomlin’s ability to elevate even the most mundane expressions into something special.

“All of these years, you have two or three running backs and they’re sharing time, everybody would call it, ‘Running Back by Committee.’ No, Mike called it ‘Distribution of Labor,’ which is just a beautiful way to describe the same thing without using a cliché,” added Michaels.

That’s the Tomlin touch — turning the ordinary into the extraordinary.

And as he reminisced about Tomlin, he found another memorable in his Rolodex, this one involving James Harrison.

“And the other thing was, I’ll never forget when James Harrison, who was a long-time Steeler and, of course, made that great play in the Super Bowl back in ’08, and then he went to, I think, to [Cincinnati] for a year, and then he came back to Pittsburgh,” Michaels noted. “So, he was kind of at the end of the line, and he wasn’t going to play every play, but he wanted to. At some point during the season, Harrison was upset that he wasn’t getting enough playing time, and it became a story in Pittsburgh.

“And we’re doing a game there, and I ask Mike about it, ‘What do you make of Harrison saying he wants to play more?’ And he said — and this is when Harrison is 34 or 35 years old and was a great pass rusher — ‘You know, you have a Ferrari in the garage; you don’t take it out to go to the grocery store.’ Which was another way of saying, ‘I don’t need him on first or second down; just let him come in and rush the passer.’ It was just so perfectly put.”

Clearly, Tomlin could be an asset in just about any setting.

If he ever decides to enter the media, Michaels believes he and Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay would be “fantastic.” His endorsement echoes Sean McManus, the former CBS Sports chairman, who previously said that the two sitting head coaches would be “terrific” in the broadcast booth.

“Those two are one and two, can’t miss,” said Michaels.

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.