The Pittsburgh Steelers’ Mike Tomlin and the Baltimore Ravens’ John Harbaugh are easily the two longest-tenured single-team head coaches in the NFL, and they have seen tremendous success. But after disastrous performances in the 2025 season, Adam Schefter believes either of them will go elsewhere should he lose Game 272.
During an appearance on Pat McAfee’s eponymous show on Monday, the veteran insider said (starts at 1:26:53 in the video below):
“We heard the Steelers fans chanting to fire Mike Tomlin earlier in the year. We’ve heard Ravens fans saying that there should be conversations about John Harbaugh after the season. … One of those fan bases is going to be unhappy. One of those owners is going to want to have some conversations about what went wrong.”
He continued:
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“I also think that both of these coaches… will have a big say. I think these guys [Harbaugh and Tomlin] will go in there and say, … ‘Okay, it’s been a great run. Might be time to go try something else,’ whether that’s TV or another job somewhere else. Like, those things are possible.”
Cam Newton says Mike Tomlin and John Harbaugh have become victims of their own success
Together, Mike Tomlin and John Harbaugh have accounted for two Super Bowl titles across multiple playoff runs. All of them, however, came before 2013, and they have not been able to make it past the AFC Championship Game. In fact, the Steelers have not won a playoff game since 2016.
And for Cam Newton, the two’s combined success has become a crutch for them. The former MVP said on Monday’s episode of First Take:
“The noise is loud because they’ve made the expectations so high that they are their own victim of the situation. What I’m saying is, when you talk about John Harbaugh, he’s created a standard in Baltimore that when it’s not met, he’s to blame. The same with Mike Tomlin.”
He continued:
“If you take the Pittsburgh Steelers’ record and you place it with the Las Vegas Raiders, …Cleveland Browns, … Miami Dolphins, … Atlanta Falcons, that’s a successful season.”
Tomlin and Harbaugh’s division-deciding Game 272 kicks off at 8:20 pm ET on NBC.