The Steelers have a tradition of sticking with their head coaches for much longer than most teams and they have a tradition of talking about contract extensions with those coaches when there are two years left on their contract.
That’s where things stand with Mike Tomlin’s deal heading into the 2019 season, but team owner Art Rooney II indicated there aren’t any immediate plans to talk about any adjustments to the deal.
“Those are things we’ll get to sort of later in the offseason, so we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Rooney said, via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Extension discussions aren’t on hold across the board as Rooney said “we feel good about” extending Ben Roethlisberger’s contract when the subject was broached. Given that and changes to the coaching staff, speculation that Tomlin’s seat has gotten hotter will probably continue but Rooney did push back at a suggestion that the team was a circus in 2018.
“It’s nonsense,” Rooney said. “We didn’t achieve our goal of winning the division but we finished half a game out and had a lot of opportunities to get there.”
There’s been talk about expanding the coaching staff since the end of the season and Rooney said he thinks it is important to have someone on the coaching staff to help with game management, although he added that such an addition might have other responsibilities as well.