Steelers HC Mike Tomlin linked to Giants’ vacant head coach job after Brian Daboll firing
November 11, 2025
Steelers HC Mike Tomlin linked to Giants’ vacant head coach job after Brian Daboll firing
44 comments
“Linked” as in some random talking head said they think it makes sense.
He’s the Doc Rivers of the NFL
Don’t mind me, just saving y’all some clicks.
The Giants have always preferred tough-guy coaches in the mold of Bill Parcells and Tom Coughlin, leaders who could impose their will on a dire situation and inspire men to do things their minds were telling them they could not do.
The franchise won all four of its Super Bowl titles with Parcells and Coughlin, former Giants assistants, and they could have won more championships — a lot more — if they didn’t miss what they had on their own staffs in resident hard-asses Vince Lombardi and Bill Belichick.
But as much as interim coach Mike Kafka deserves a fair-and-square shot after replacing the fired Brian Daboll on Monday, the Giants will almost certainly find their next full-time head coach, as they say, outside the building.
And since co-owner and team president John Mara summoned Daboll into his office to deliver the bad news face-to-face, giving himself, partner Steve Tisch and general manager Joe Schoen (the luckiest 20-40-1 GM in the history of sports) a two-month head start on the search, it’s a good time to play fantasy football.
In that game, the best available result would be the Giants naming Mike Tomlin as their next head coach in January.
The Steelers coach has ripped off 18 consecutive non-losing seasons (15 of them winning seasons) and is working on No. 19. He is a card-carrying tough guy and a two-time Super Bowl participant and one-time champ who would be a human firewall against the disastrous seasons the Giants regularly serve up to their paying customers. Pairing a young franchise quarterback-to-be in Jaxson Dart with Tomlin’s institutional knowledge on what it takes to succeed in the NFL would be the Giants’ best bet for long-term bliss.
Now come your regularly-scheduled disclaimers. Tomlin is under contract in Pittsburgh for two more seasons. Given that the Rooney family has employed three head coaches since the close of the 1968 season – three – it’s unlikely Tomlin will be fired if he fails to win any playoff games for a ninth straight year.
His career regular-season winning percentage (.628) is still a tick better than that of the Hall of Famer who preceded him, Bill Cowher (.623), and a lot better than that of the Hall of Famer who preceded Cowher, Chuck Noll (.566). So if Tomlin were to leave Pittsburgh, chances are he’d be leading the conversation.
And purely from the outside looking in, Tomlin seems to check a lot of boxes for the prototypical coach in need of a fresh challenge. And that was true before the dreadful national TV performance against the Chargers that left the Steelers at 5-4 and in line for yet another 10-7 or 9-8 season punctuated by a one-and-done postseason exit.
Tomlin and the Steelers are locked in a cycle of relative mediocrity that, unscientific surveys would show, has worn down their fan base. If the coach decides to break that cycle, the Giants and their dynamic young quarterback should make all the sense in the world to him.
For starters, the Giants and Steelers are close NFL cousins with founding fathers who were among the league’s first guardians. The Maras are the Rooneys, and the Rooneys are the Maras, and you don’t need to be Rooney Mara, the award-winning actress and great-granddaughter of both teams’ founders, to understand that the franchises would make for agreeable business partners in a compensation deal.
Tomlin would be worth the price.
The Giants absolutely cannot afford to miss on this hire. They cannot afford to hire another Daboll, another Joe Judge, another Pat Shurmur, another Ben McAdoo. They need a head coach with winning NFL experience this time, whether or not Bill Belichick is a part of that discussion. If they want to include big winners in college, then Dart’s former coach at Ole Miss, Lane Kiffin, should be at the top of that list next to Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman.
But the Giants’ walk-off home run hire here is the 53-year-old Tomlin, who is two decades younger than Belichick and whose program did not crater after Ben Roethlisberger’s departure like Belichick’s did after Tom Brady’s.
Of course, the Giants would never have been in this position had they hired current Chargers general manager and then-Ravens executive Joe Hortiz as GM in 2022, when they signed up Schoen instead. Hortiz wanted to bring current Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh, then at Michigan, to the Giants. Schoen wanted to go with Daboll.
How did that work out?
In fairness, Daboll had a Coach of the Year debut that included a big playoff victory in Minnesota. But he lost 25 of his last 31 games. Nobody can survive that, with or without the fourth-quarter collapses and with or without the Dart concussion in Chicago. In the end Sunday, all huddled up against the elements, Daboll looked like a guy who was about to trudge up a mountain in the Himalayas … while knowing it wasn’t going to end up a successful climb.
He had to go. The Giants owed it to the players who put their bodies on the line every week to find a coach who can put them in position to win. Finally.
In a joint statement from Tisch and Mara, who announced in late September that he was undergoing treatment for cancer, the Giants owners said that Schoen will “lead the search for a new head coach” (though don’t be surprised if his status gets reviewed again if Kafka’s Giants finish 1-6) and that ownership “will work to deliver a significantly improved product.”
Toward that end, the evidence says the Giants already have their next Eli Manning. Now they need their next Coughlin. Their next Parcells.
WHAT YOU SHOULD READ NEXT
Who is Mike Kafka? Meet the Giants’ interim head coach replacing Brian Daboll
Who is Mike Kafka? Meet the Giants’ interim head coach replacing Brian Daboll
Kafka, a former NFL QB, has a chance to prove what he can do as an NFL head coach.
Tomlin fits the profile. Last time the Giants had an opening, Brian Flores accused them of conducting a sham interview with him in the racial-discrimination lawsuit he filed against the league, even though Mara had personally reached out to the former Dolphins head coach before that interview to assure him he was a serious candidate.
But facts are facts: The Giants have been playing football for a long, long time and have never had a Black head coach.
Tomlin shouldn’t be pursued for that reason. He just happens to be the best fit in every context.
At some point this week, the 2-8 Giants should give an off-the-record head’s up to their good friends and relatives in the Rooney family that this would be something they’d like to discuss at season’s end.
Just in case Mike Tomlin, a certain Pittsburgh Hall of Famer, wants to become a legend in New York.
Trade Coach T and let me be head coach
These articles pop up every time the Steelers are doing badly and a coach gets fired. Sports ‘journalists’ write articles with absolutely no evidence. Not gonna happen.
Cool we will ask for 2 first round picks. We will settle for a 1st and 2nd round pick.
Lmfao if he didn’t take the blank checkbook USC offered him he wouldn’t take one from Mara lol.
They can have him for a first.
Just like he was linked to USC job
If he thinks he’s on the way out anyway, it might not be beyond the realms of possibility
“linked” ?
What does that mean?
And, in what context?
Don’t give me hope.
If we could get a couple firsts for him I’d do it
Give us two first and he’s yours
Good, let it come true…bye bye Mike.
Four first round picks and Dart sounds good to me.
I wish
Never say never, but never.
Certainly he is eager to rekindle his relationship with Russel Wilson
Pls take him
He’s the Russell Wilson of NFL head coaches. Won an early Super Bowl with a stacked team, but saw no more success once the team was actually his. Sure he got a ring and has been generally successful, but no one is scared of playing Russ or Mike when the games really matter in January.
But none of that matters. Tomlin will coach here as long as he wants. The Rooneys are infatuated with the idea of HC stability. They prioritize that over any hope for a better regime.
Dumbest shit I’ve heard this week. This is clickbait garbage.
My ass
He is already a millionaire and is the one HC in the NFL with total job security.
Total internet BS
It’s probably a good fit if dart can be as good as he seems, but idk if Mike goes straight into another job if he leaves
I just linked me to the empty Steelers job when he leaves.
Click-bait.
Lmao yeah ok. I’m sure the Giants would love Mike to help develop that young offense
Yes A change of scenery would do both parties good
So who said it, Colin cowherd? Lol
It would make sense for everyone involved, tbh.
Per anonymous source, I have also been linked to the job.
Good luck with that. Rooney foolishly gave Tomlin a no trade clause in his contract. The Bears tried to trade for Tomlin this past offseason. Tomlin declined so they got Ben Johnson instead. They can’t trade Tomlin unless he agrees to it.
44 comments
“Linked” as in some random talking head said they think it makes sense.
He’s the Doc Rivers of the NFL
Don’t mind me, just saving y’all some clicks.
The Giants have always preferred tough-guy coaches in the mold of Bill Parcells and Tom Coughlin, leaders who could impose their will on a dire situation and inspire men to do things their minds were telling them they could not do.
The franchise won all four of its Super Bowl titles with Parcells and Coughlin, former Giants assistants, and they could have won more championships — a lot more — if they didn’t miss what they had on their own staffs in resident hard-asses Vince Lombardi and Bill Belichick.
But as much as interim coach Mike Kafka deserves a fair-and-square shot after replacing the fired Brian Daboll on Monday, the Giants will almost certainly find their next full-time head coach, as they say, outside the building.
And since co-owner and team president John Mara summoned Daboll into his office to deliver the bad news face-to-face, giving himself, partner Steve Tisch and general manager Joe Schoen (the luckiest 20-40-1 GM in the history of sports) a two-month head start on the search, it’s a good time to play fantasy football.
In that game, the best available result would be the Giants naming Mike Tomlin as their next head coach in January.
The Steelers coach has ripped off 18 consecutive non-losing seasons (15 of them winning seasons) and is working on No. 19. He is a card-carrying tough guy and a two-time Super Bowl participant and one-time champ who would be a human firewall against the disastrous seasons the Giants regularly serve up to their paying customers. Pairing a young franchise quarterback-to-be in Jaxson Dart with Tomlin’s institutional knowledge on what it takes to succeed in the NFL would be the Giants’ best bet for long-term bliss.
Now come your regularly-scheduled disclaimers. Tomlin is under contract in Pittsburgh for two more seasons. Given that the Rooney family has employed three head coaches since the close of the 1968 season – three – it’s unlikely Tomlin will be fired if he fails to win any playoff games for a ninth straight year.
His career regular-season winning percentage (.628) is still a tick better than that of the Hall of Famer who preceded him, Bill Cowher (.623), and a lot better than that of the Hall of Famer who preceded Cowher, Chuck Noll (.566). So if Tomlin were to leave Pittsburgh, chances are he’d be leading the conversation.
And purely from the outside looking in, Tomlin seems to check a lot of boxes for the prototypical coach in need of a fresh challenge. And that was true before the dreadful national TV performance against the Chargers that left the Steelers at 5-4 and in line for yet another 10-7 or 9-8 season punctuated by a one-and-done postseason exit.
Tomlin and the Steelers are locked in a cycle of relative mediocrity that, unscientific surveys would show, has worn down their fan base. If the coach decides to break that cycle, the Giants and their dynamic young quarterback should make all the sense in the world to him.
For starters, the Giants and Steelers are close NFL cousins with founding fathers who were among the league’s first guardians. The Maras are the Rooneys, and the Rooneys are the Maras, and you don’t need to be Rooney Mara, the award-winning actress and great-granddaughter of both teams’ founders, to understand that the franchises would make for agreeable business partners in a compensation deal.
Tomlin would be worth the price.
The Giants absolutely cannot afford to miss on this hire. They cannot afford to hire another Daboll, another Joe Judge, another Pat Shurmur, another Ben McAdoo. They need a head coach with winning NFL experience this time, whether or not Bill Belichick is a part of that discussion. If they want to include big winners in college, then Dart’s former coach at Ole Miss, Lane Kiffin, should be at the top of that list next to Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman.
But the Giants’ walk-off home run hire here is the 53-year-old Tomlin, who is two decades younger than Belichick and whose program did not crater after Ben Roethlisberger’s departure like Belichick’s did after Tom Brady’s.
Of course, the Giants would never have been in this position had they hired current Chargers general manager and then-Ravens executive Joe Hortiz as GM in 2022, when they signed up Schoen instead. Hortiz wanted to bring current Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh, then at Michigan, to the Giants. Schoen wanted to go with Daboll.
How did that work out?
In fairness, Daboll had a Coach of the Year debut that included a big playoff victory in Minnesota. But he lost 25 of his last 31 games. Nobody can survive that, with or without the fourth-quarter collapses and with or without the Dart concussion in Chicago. In the end Sunday, all huddled up against the elements, Daboll looked like a guy who was about to trudge up a mountain in the Himalayas … while knowing it wasn’t going to end up a successful climb.
He had to go. The Giants owed it to the players who put their bodies on the line every week to find a coach who can put them in position to win. Finally.
In a joint statement from Tisch and Mara, who announced in late September that he was undergoing treatment for cancer, the Giants owners said that Schoen will “lead the search for a new head coach” (though don’t be surprised if his status gets reviewed again if Kafka’s Giants finish 1-6) and that ownership “will work to deliver a significantly improved product.”
Toward that end, the evidence says the Giants already have their next Eli Manning. Now they need their next Coughlin. Their next Parcells.
WHAT YOU SHOULD READ NEXT
Who is Mike Kafka? Meet the Giants’ interim head coach replacing Brian Daboll
Who is Mike Kafka? Meet the Giants’ interim head coach replacing Brian Daboll
Kafka, a former NFL QB, has a chance to prove what he can do as an NFL head coach.
Tomlin fits the profile. Last time the Giants had an opening, Brian Flores accused them of conducting a sham interview with him in the racial-discrimination lawsuit he filed against the league, even though Mara had personally reached out to the former Dolphins head coach before that interview to assure him he was a serious candidate.
But facts are facts: The Giants have been playing football for a long, long time and have never had a Black head coach.
Tomlin shouldn’t be pursued for that reason. He just happens to be the best fit in every context.
At some point this week, the 2-8 Giants should give an off-the-record head’s up to their good friends and relatives in the Rooney family that this would be something they’d like to discuss at season’s end.
Just in case Mike Tomlin, a certain Pittsburgh Hall of Famer, wants to become a legend in New York.
Trade Coach T and let me be head coach
These articles pop up every time the Steelers are doing badly and a coach gets fired. Sports ‘journalists’ write articles with absolutely no evidence. Not gonna happen.
Cool we will ask for 2 first round picks. We will settle for a 1st and 2nd round pick.
Lmfao if he didn’t take the blank checkbook USC offered him he wouldn’t take one from Mara lol.
They can have him for a first.
Just like he was linked to USC job
If he thinks he’s on the way out anyway, it might not be beyond the realms of possibility
“linked” ?
What does that mean?
And, in what context?
Don’t give me hope.
If we could get a couple firsts for him I’d do it
Give us two first and he’s yours
Good, let it come true…bye bye Mike.
Four first round picks and Dart sounds good to me.
I wish
Never say never, but never.
Certainly he is eager to rekindle his relationship with Russel Wilson
Pls take him
He’s the Russell Wilson of NFL head coaches. Won an early Super Bowl with a stacked team, but saw no more success once the team was actually his. Sure he got a ring and has been generally successful, but no one is scared of playing Russ or Mike when the games really matter in January.
But none of that matters. Tomlin will coach here as long as he wants. The Rooneys are infatuated with the idea of HC stability. They prioritize that over any hope for a better regime.
Dumbest shit I’ve heard this week. This is clickbait garbage.
My ass
He is already a millionaire and is the one HC in the NFL with total job security.
Total internet BS
It’s probably a good fit if dart can be as good as he seems, but idk if Mike goes straight into another job if he leaves
I just linked me to the empty Steelers job when he leaves.
Click-bait.
Lmao yeah ok. I’m sure the Giants would love Mike to help develop that young offense
https://preview.redd.it/dsdrd2sbvp0g1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=27265bba6119ccfccce4e3639d33e454c2bcb48b
Yes A change of scenery would do both parties good
So who said it, Colin cowherd? Lol
It would make sense for everyone involved, tbh.
Per anonymous source, I have also been linked to the job.
Good luck with that. Rooney foolishly gave Tomlin a no trade clause in his contract. The Bears tried to trade for Tomlin this past offseason. Tomlin declined so they got Ben Johnson instead. They can’t trade Tomlin unless he agrees to it.
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/43457113/sources-bears-trade-request-mike-tomlin-rebuffed-steelers
Tomlin coaching a NY team would be funny.
Give me 2% of his salary and I’ll do it. Save lots of money.
Define linked
Source: trust me bro
Despite myself, I felt a bright ray of hope before the depressing reality of the integrity (or lack thereof) of sports journalism sunk in.
The disappointment must be like how my wife feels when we push the beds together on my birthday.
Mike Greenberg throwing his name out is not a link to the job.
Giants are really gonna go after Belichick, Tomlin, and Harbaugh
He has a “no trade clause” in his contract