He blew them away in the interview robble, robble, robble.
Likely talking nonsense like he does after games and the gullible people fall for it every time.
He’s basically the Jackie Chiles of NFL coaches.
I worked near latrobe when he was hired. There was a pretty salacious story about that interview process. It was well circulated by some press guys from the trib and it’s mostly thirdhand stories, but the facts line up and I am guessing it’s probably true...
It went like this...
4 guys were seriously interviewing. It was initially going to be 3. Tomlin was a late add because he was an up and comer and came highly recommended... I always assumed by Dungy, but realistically he was only probably being brought in to get experience in the HC interview process.
Tomlin had a better interview than Rivera.
Coach Whiz got offered the Arizona job, and he was afraid that him and Ben not seeing eye to eye meant he would get passed over here so he took that HC job instead. He really would have been the frontrunner here though....
With Whiz out it really was Grimm or Tomlin. The Steelers actually decided on Grimm. Russ was a drinker though and when told he went out and celebrated hard. He also told a trib reporter drinking buddy, who proceeded to publish the information.
The Steelers were not expecting the info to leak and when they Called Grimm in to explain, he was still drunk from the night before. They proceeded to remove Grimm from consideration and that really left them with Tomlin...
Ive heard this scenerio a lot and Grimm basically never moved past OL coach despite being very highly regarded up to that time.
Tomlin needed to learn more before he got a shot... he has learned some things, but others he has not developed yet
He is still an fairly young head coach. If he does get fired in the next few seasons he will have ample opportunities to redeem himself elsewhere