On Monday, Mike Tomlin appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “Let me get comfortable, man. This is unbelievable,” Tomlin said before reacting to a montage of his “Tomlinisms” from his 19-year tenure as head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Tomlin joined NBC’s Football Night in America and made his NBC debut in April. On Aug. 6, Tomlin made his FNIA debut as part of the 2026 Pro Football Hall of Fame Game broadcast and earned rave reviews. The Super Bowl champion is getting really comfortable, really quickly in broadcast.
NBC wants to make him so comfortable that he never wants to leave, according to Andrew Marchand.
Marchand named Tomlin as the “biggest NFL TV signing” of this offseason on the latest Everybody Loves Sports Media episode. “I mean, he’s been a guy who network executives have been looking at for a long time. When I’d ask them — probably going back a decade — ‘Who’s No. 1 on your list who is an active either player or coach?’ Tomlin was almost always No. 1.”
“NBC snares him, big-money deal,” Marchand continued. “I think a little backloaded, so they want him to stay. That’s an incentive for him to stay. Could he go back to coaching? He says no, but we’ll see. I think he’ll be under the spotlight.”
🏈📺 Interesting nugget on Tomlin’s NBC deal as he could be in TV forever or back on the sidelines next year …
Full pod 👇👇 https://t.co/6lAhsqBj6B pic.twitter.com/A6xX33WO7V
— Andrew Marchand (@AndrewMarchand) August 17, 2026
Tomlin stepped down from his Steelers post after the team’s blowout loss to the Houston Texans in the AFC wild-card round in January. He walked away as a top-10 winningest coach in NFL history with 201 career wins, including the playoffs, and never had a losing season.
In the days after Tomlin departed the Steelers, NFL insider Jay Glazer reported that Tomlin was “done” and had “been done” with the NFL, nipping any rumors of a return to coaching. Tomlin addressed it himself while in the booth with Cris Collinsworth and Mike Tirico during the Hall of Fame Game.
Mike Tomlin on if he might get the itch to coach again. #Steelers #NFL pic.twitter.com/drHJudVyrw
— Steelers Depot 7⃣ (@Steelersdepot) August 7, 2026
“I haven’t thought a whole lot about it yet because I don’t feel like I’m missing anything yet,” Tomlin said. “You know, when those regular-season balls start snapping, that’s when I’ll start getting a little twitchy a little bit.”
Much can change in a year, but as it stands, Tomlin seems primed to follow in Bill Cowher’s footsteps. In January 2007, Cowher resigned as Steelers head coach and joined The NFL Today on CBS the following month. For years, hope and rumors persisted that Cowher would eventually become an NFL head coach again. Nearly 20 years later, he remains on CBS, comfortable as ever.
About Megan Armstrong
Since first getting published as a student by the Kansas City Star in 2013, Megan Armstrong has gone wherever curiosity and stories have taken her, specializing in sports, media, music, and culture coverage. She also has an extensive background in interviewing and profiling public figures. Her work has appeared in Billboard, Boardroom, Bleacher Report, Esquire, GQ, GRAMMY.com, NYLON, Newsweek, Teen Vogue, The Hollywood Reporter, UPROXX, and elsewhere.