Steelers Now
PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers strongly backed his head coach Mike Tomlin after Monday night’s 30-6 playoff loss to the Houston Texans. Rodgers thinks it’s a joke that people are calling for Tomlin’s job.
“When I first got in the league, there wouldn’t be conversation about whether those guys were on the hot seat,” Rodgers said, who added his former Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur to the conversation. “But the way that the league is covered now and the way that there’s snap decisions and the validity given to the Twitter experts and all the experts on TV now who make it seem like they know what the hell they’re talking about, to me that’s an absolute joke.
“For either of those two guys to be on the hot seat is really apropos of where we’re at as a society and as a league because obviously Matt has done a lot of great things in Green Bay, and we had a lot of success. Mike T. has had more success than damn near anybody in the league for the last 19, 20 years. More than that, though, when you have the right guy and the culture is right, you don’t think about making a change.
“But there’s a lot of pressure that comes from the outside, and obviously that sways decisions from time to time,” Rodgers continued. “But that’s not how I would do things and not how the league used to be.”
Despite Rodgers claim, the year after he got in the league Marty Schottenheimer was fired after a 14-2 season with the San Diego Chargers because of playoff failure. Schottenheimer never coached in the NFL again.
Tomlin’s seven straight playoff losses are tied with former Cincinnati Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis for the most in NFL history.
Rodgers then abruptly ended his press conference after another Tomlin question.
“I’ve answered that a number of times, I’ve talked extensively about how I feel about Mike,” Rodgers said. “And I just did in that f—— answer. Thanks.”
Alan Saunders and Brendan Howe provided reporting from Pittsburgh.
This article originally appeared on Steelers Now: Aaron Rodgers Sounds Off on Critics of Mike Tomlin: ‘Absolute Joke’
