Steelers’ Art Rooney II keeps it real on potential Mike Tomlin trade

Recently, the Pittsburgh Steelers received a jolt when it was reported that head coach Mike Tomlin would be stepping down after 19 seasons at the helm in Pittsburgh. The news came just hours after the Steelers’ 2025 season ended with an ugly home loss at the hands of the Houston Texans in the Wild Card round of the AFC playoffs.

Although it’s a rarity, it is possible for an NFL team to trade its head coach, and recently, Steelers team owner Art Rooney II kept it honest about whether this idea has crossed his mind.

“Mike indicated that he did not anticipate coaching, at least in the near future. … If something like that comes up, we’ll deal with it when it comes up. But right now, it doesn’t appear to be on his radar,” said Rooney II, per NFL insider Tom Pelissero on X, formerly Twitter.

Meanwhile, Rooney II also spoke on his immediate reaction when he learned that Tomlin would be stepping down.

“I wasn’t shocked, but I wasn’t expecting that conversation, either,” he said.

“I was certainly willing to take another run at it next year with Mike. That’s what I was expecting to talk about yesterday,” he added.

Tomlin famously never recorded a losing season in his nearly two decades at the helm in Pittsburgh, but concerns about the team’s propensity to taper off down the stretch of seasons and then flame out early in the playoffs had begun to become too much to ignore for many fans in recent years.

The Steelers haven’t won a playoff game since the 2016-17 divisional round, and it remains to be seen what direction the team will choose to go in for their next head coach, as well as their quarterback position, with many speculating that Monday’s loss might have been Aaron Rodgers’ last game in the NFL.

Overall, these are certainly strange times in Pittsburgh.

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