Mike Tomlin tells Steelers that speculation about his future was ‘unfounded,’ he’ll return in 2024, per report

Mike Tomlin will return for another season coaching the Pittsburgh Steelers. He told his team in a meeting Tuesday that speculation about his departure was “baseless,” according to NFL Media. The 2024 season will be Tomlin’s 18th season as coach of the Steelers. Remarkably, he never finished a season with a record below .500. During his tenure as head coach, he went 173-100-2 and won the Super Bowl following the 2008 season, his second as the team’s head coach. However, in recent years the team seems to have been further removed from the competition. Pittsburgh has missed the playoffs in three of the past six seasons and hasn’t won a playoff game since 2016. As the Ben Roethlisberger era ended and the Kenny Pickett era began, their offense declined almost completely, producing one of the worst offenses in the league. The hiring of offensive coordinator Matt Canada didn’t work out (despite Canada’s offense looking hopeless) and the team failed to upgrade its offense in the years following Roethlisberger’s heyday. Tomlin is set to enter the final year of his contract next season, and while there has been no speculation that he could be fired by the Steelers, there have been questions about him being let go in recent seasons. He apparently told his team that such questions are misleading. But unless a new contract goes his way and the Steelers win another postseason game, things could certainly change between now and the end of next season.