Michael A. Pettaway Tomlin, an American football coach who was born on March 15, 1972, is the head coach of the National Football League’s (NFL) Pittsburgh Steelers. He joined the Steelers in 2007, and since then, he has guided the team to two Super Bowl appearances, seven division titles, three AFC Championship Games, eleven playoff runs, and a championship in Super Bowl XLIII. Tomlin broke the record as the youngest head coach to win a Super Bowl when he won the game at the age of 36 in Super Bowl LVI. With seventeen consecutive winning seasons to start a coaching career, Tomlin owns the record. He has also never experienced a losing season. Only two players have ever had such streaks: Tom Landry (age 21) and Bill Belichick (age 19).
As the younger of two sons—his brother Eddie is three and a half years older—Tomlin was born in Hampton, Virginia, in [1]. In the 1960s, Ed Tomlin, their father, was a football player at Hampton Institute. He was selected by the Baltimore Colts and went on to play in the Canadian Football League for the Montreal Alouettes. The 63-year-old older Tomlin passed away in Ocala, Florida, in January 2012 following what seemed to be a heart attack. But Tomlin was raised by his mother and stepfather, Julia and Leslie Copeland, who got married when Tomlin was six years old, and seldom met his biological father.
Tomlin completed his education at Newport News, Virginia’s Denbigh High School in 1990. He earned a sociology degree from the College of William and Mary in 1995.
Under head coach Bill Stewart, Tomlin started his coaching career in 1995 at Virginia Military Institute as the wide receiver coach. Tomlin worked with the defensive backs and special teams during his tenure as a graduate assistant at the University of Memphis in 1996. Tomlin was hired by Arkansas State University in 1997 to teach its defensive backs after serving for a brief period as a member of the coaching staff at the University of Tennessee at Martin. Before joining the University of Cincinnati as their defensive backs coach, he spent two seasons there.
Under head coach Tony Dungy, Tomlin was hired in 2001 to coach the defensive backs for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It was there that he was first exposed to the Tampa 2 system, which he would later deploy in his coaching career.
Under new head coach Jon Gruden, Tomlin was kept on, and the Bucs led the NFL in total defense (fewest yards allowed per game) in 2002 and 2005. Under Tomlin’s leadership, the defense’s overall ranking never fell below sixth. Three of the five interceptions the Buccaneers’ Super Bowl XXXVII winning team recovered for scores. This was a Super Bowl record for the franchise.