Joe Haden Shares Eye-Catching Mike Tomlin, Steelers Story

PITTSBURGH -- The Pittsburgh Steelers have a new head coach for the first time in 19 years as Mike McCarthy leads the black and gold into the 2026 season. The hope in hiring McCarthy is that the hometown coach can bring a Super Bowl back to Pittsburgh - but they'd probably take a playoff win to get started.

It's been nine years without a playoff victory for the Steelers, all under Mike Tomlin. By his final season, fans were chanting for him to be fired, and at the end of the year, he decided he was walking away after 19 seasons.

What went wrong, though? Well, for Pro Bowl cornerback Joe Haden may have some telling insight.

On the latest episode of the Deebo and Joe Podcast, Haden told his co-host James Harrison that the accountability in Pittsburgh wasn't the strongest during Tomlin's run.

"When I got to Pittsburgh, it was years and years into Coach Tomlin being there, and the one thing I could where you needed a new voice [was] the accountability," Haden said. "Everything needs to be tight. There was a looseness that was going around. That looseness is a reaon where errors come in... If star players were doing certain things, you just gotta nip it in the bud.

"Things like meetings, late stuff... When the vet leeway is getting to a point where it turns almost blatant disrespect to where your team is seeing studd like, 'We can't be moving like this as a team, vet aside.' When you get a new coach in there, he's not rocking. You set a standard from the T.J. Watts to the Ben Roethlisbergers to anybody on the team where there's no leeway for nobody."

Haden's Thoughts Seem Accurtate

Haden isn't the only person to talk about accountability or communication issues due to one reason or another. It seemed like by the end of Tomlin's tenure, both sides of the ball were having trouble clicking, and the team's character was being a problem as well.

Over the last two offseasons, Pittsburgh did everything possible to flip the level of professionalism in the locker room, moving on from names like George Pickens and Diontae Johnson, and bringing in DK Metcalf, Jalen Ramsey and others.

So, maybe Haden is right, and the Steelers needed a new voice to add some sterness to the roster. So far, McCarthy has shown that with his level of preparation in practice and how players like Watt have acknowledged the level of work growing in OTAs and minicamp.

Will it translate to the season? The Steelers hope so, because if it does, they may be able to take the talent they have to another level.

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