{"id":676496,"date":"2026-01-14T12:03:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T12:03:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/676496\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T12:03:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T12:03:18","slug":"john-harbaugh-mike-tomlin-the-curse-of-pretty-good-terry-pluto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/676496\/","title":{"rendered":"John Harbaugh, Mike Tomlin & the curse of \u2018pretty good\u2019 \u2014 Terry Pluto"},"content":{"rendered":"

CLEVELAND, Ohio \u2014 What do Mike Tomlin and John Harbaugh have in common?<\/p>\n

A lot.<\/p>\n

Both have coached in the AFC North seemingly forever. <\/p>\n

Harbaugh ended his 18th season in Baltimore with a 26-24 loss to Pittsburgh in the final regular season game. He then was fired. <\/p>\n

A week later, Tomlin finished his 19th season with Pittsburgh. He decided to \u201cstep down\u201d <\/a>from the head coaching position after a 30-6 loss to Houston in the first round of the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Harbaugh and Tomlin were the two longest-tenured NFL coaches with their current teams until the last eight days.<\/p>\n

Tomlin leaves with a 193-114-2 record and a .628 winning percentage. He never had a losing season. He had records of 10-7 in each of the last three years.<\/p>\n

Harbaugh was fired with a 180-113 record and a .614 winning percentage. His 8-9 record in 2025 was only his third losing season.<\/p>\n

Tomlin and Harbaugh were infected with the virus of \u201cpretty good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Year after year, their teams were at least \u201cpretty good\u201d and sometimes even better than that. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in Cleveland … <\/p>\n

Browns fans would love to have \u201cpretty good\u201d as a baseline for their team in the last two decades.<\/p>\n

Instead, it\u2019s usually pretty bad or awful for fans of the orange helmets. No NFL team has had a worse record since the Browns came back in 1999. <\/p>\n

Three worst teams since 1999:<\/p>\n

Detroit: 175-260-2.<\/p>\n

Raiders: 172-265.<\/p>\n

Browns 146-290-1. <\/p>\n

How we long for \u201cpretty good\u201d on the shores of Lake Erie.<\/p>\n

THE CURSE OF PRETTY GOOD<\/p>\n

The problem with \u201cpretty good\u201d is it soon becomes \u201cnot good enough.\u201d That\u2019s especially true if a team has a taste of great. <\/p>\n

Pittsburgh had it on Feb. 1, 2009, when the Steelers won their last Super Bowl. That was in Tomlin\u2019s second season. Two years later, they were back in the big game \u2013 and lost. <\/p>\n

Since the Super Bowl loss, Tomlin has a 3-10 playoff record. His last playoff victory was in 2016. The Steelers have lost in their last six appearances.<\/p>\n

Harbaugh won the Super Bowl with Baltimore on Feb. 3, 2013.<\/p>\n

Since then, the Ravens are 4-7 in the playoffs. They have not been able to get past the second round.<\/p>\n

In Baltimore and Pittsburgh, \u201cpretty good\u201d began to taste stale. There was a sense that these two veteran coaches had lost their ability to win big playoff games \u2013 despite some strong regular seasons.<\/p>\n

\"ClevelandFormer Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski hugs former Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin after the Browns beat the Steelers in December.
\nJoshua Gunter, cleveland.comSometimes a change is needed <\/p>\n

Both coaches began to hear boos. After Monday\u2019s loss to Houston, there were \u201cFire Tomlin!\u201d chants at the game in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n

Tomlin didn\u2019t wait for the Steelers to make a decision about his future. He knew about his playoff failures. He knew that he still didn\u2019t have a QB, especially since Ben Roethlisberger retired after the 2021 season.<\/p>\n

There was a good chance the 2026 season could be more of the same for Tomlin, and he knew it. Going 10-7 wasn\u2019t good enough when there were no playoff victories to back it up.<\/p>\n

So Tomlin resigned. The 53-year-old is expected to take at least one year off and work in TV.<\/p>\n

As for Harbaugh, Ravens owner Steve Biscotti explained<\/a> the firing at a Tuesday press conference: \u201cI just hope you respect me enough to know that 100%, my instincts told me that this was the time. I may be right, I may be wrong, but I did it because I\u2019m in charge of doing it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe love John like a brother, and it was really the most difficult decision that we made. But we made it. It\u2019s the big picture. We want the Ravens to succeed. I felt it was the right time to make the change. If not now, when?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ClevelandKevin Stefanski has interviewed with six different teams so far. John Kuntz, cleveland.comThey\u2019re still pretty good <\/p>\n

Most fans in Baltimore were tired of Harbaugh and they wanted a new coach. Then Harbaugh immediately became the most prized coach for nearly all the nine teams that now have openings. <\/p>\n

Tomlin would be in that same class if he wanted to coach in 2026.<\/p>\n

Former Browns coach Kevin Stefanski has two NFL Coach of the Year awards (2020, 2023). He also has an 8-26 record in the last two years. He also is interviewing with these teams: <\/a>Miami, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Tennessee, Atlanta and the Giants. Don\u2019t be surprised if Pittsburgh calls him.<\/p>\n

In all three cases, the coaches needed a break from their former teams. All three of these coaches were \u201cpretty good\u201d or even better than that. <\/p>\n

Most coaches will tell you that it\u2019s much easier (and more fun) to go from bad to pretty good \u2026 than pretty good to great<\/p>\n

And the truth is, sometimes a coach can use a new team as much as a team needs a new coach. <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND, Ohio \u2014 What do Mike Tomlin and John Harbaugh have in common? A lot. Both have coached…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2054],"tags":[86,90036,85,54,58555,2337,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-676496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-browns","8":"tag-browns","9":"tag-chicago-bears-2025","10":"tag-cleveland","11":"tag-cleveland-browns","12":"tag-cleveland-browns-2025","13":"tag-clevelandbrowns","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115893358480353875","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}