Former Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin has largely stayed out of the public eye since stepping down from his position in January. However, he certainly hasn’t been forgotten by those he coached.
In a Feb. 17 episode of the Bullseye View podcast, former Steelers wide receiver Nate Washington said he was recently part of a Zoom call with Mike Tomlin and over 70 people, where they thanked the former coach.
“We literally just had a Zoom call with Mike T. with over 70 people … just to say thank you to Mike T, all individually,” Washington said. “We stayed on that phone for two hours, almost. That’s what type of, not only culture, the Steelers have, but the man Mike T. was. He touched a lot of lives. Not just young guys, but older guys as well. He’s a very inspirational person. Very motivational.”
Washington talked about what made Tomlin stand out as a coach. “When Coach (Bill) Cowher was there — it was really only like three, four guys who spoke to Coach Cowher. I’m not saying he was one of those ‘high in the ivory tower while we’re standing low’ type of people, but that just was his aura,” he said. “You don’t just run up to Coach Cowher and start talking to him, having a conversation with him. … Having Coach Tomlin come in, and he’s walking around station to station, drill to drill, twirling his whistle, walking up to you like, ‘What’s going on.’”
“You feel a little closer,” Washington said of Tomlin’s relationship with players. “And I told him on that Zoom call … that built my confidence. Having a head coach that would actually walk up to me before games and be like, ‘Hey, let’s get it today.’ That did something to my energy; that boosted my confidence. It didn’t make me feel like I was one of the guys in the back, but at any given point of any moment, I could be a starter.”
Washington played from 2005-08 with the Steelers, logging 1,705 receiving yards over his four years in Pittsburgh and playing at both the end of the Cowher era and the start of Tomlin’s. He was also a part of two Super Bowl-winning teams.
Washington would go on to record a 1,000-yard season in 2011 with the Tennessee Titans, where he spent the bulk of his prime.
While Washington spent most of the Steelers portion of the podcast talking about the impact Tomlin had as well as the state of Black head coaches in the NFL, he also mentioned the ongoing Joey Porter Sr./Ben Roethlisberger drama that multiple former players have commented on.
“The narrative that this is blindsiding to any parties — we can throw that out the window,” Washington said. “This is really moreso a public thing now.”