Mike Tomlin may be the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, but he doesn’t want to answer any questions about his quarterback’s performance — or lack thereof.
Unlike his New York Jets counterpart, it’s not a game of chicken with the collective media. Aaron Glenn refuses to answer questions about who his starting quarterback is on a week-to-week basis because he sees this as a competitive advantage. There’s no competitive advantage in not wanting to throw your franchise quarterback under the bus, especially when that quarterback — Aaron Rodgers — would throw Tomlin under it without hesitation or a second thought.
In Pittsburgh’s 25-10 loss to the Chargers, Rodgers looked his age.
No longer defying Father Time, the 41-year-old was by all accounts awful in his latest appearance on Sunday Night Football. He completed just 51.6 percent of his passes for 161 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions, which also included multiple visible blowups at wide receivers. The camera panned to Rodgers when DK Metcalf didn’t come down with a pass that could’ve been a touchdown, and then again when a pass off Calvin Austin III’s fingertips ended up being an interception.
Calvin Austin causes an interception for Aaron Rodgers and he is NOT happy. The #Steelers did not make any WR moves at the trade deadline. #NFL pic.twitter.com/vnGorxbaH6
— Tanner Phifer (@TannerPhifer) November 10, 2025
But for all the talking Rodgers was presumably doing to himself, all the expletives he was cursing under his breath, his head coach had nothing to say. Tomlin, who has already been annoyed by the local media in Pittsburgh at various points this season, scowled at and stared down a reporter who asked him to assess Rodgers’ performance.
Instead of offering some cliché about needing to look at the film, acknowledging that his veteran quarterback didn’t play well and he’d be the first one to tell you, or just reading off the stat sheet, he frowned at the question from the unidentified reporter, stared into his soul and bluntly said, “How would you?” before moving onto the next question.
Mike Tomlin’s stare down after being asked how he’d assess Aaron Rodgers’ performance tonight ⬇️ https://t.co/dFXJARLbON pic.twitter.com/mhhF44NcjV
— Brooke Pryor (@bepryor) November 10, 2025
Well, one of those guys is the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The other is a reporter doing his job.
Yes, it was an obvious question. That’s the point. Sometimes you ask obvious questions because they need to be asked, because they demand an answer, because ignoring the obvious doesn’t make it go away. Rodgers was terrible on Sunday night. The Steelers managed just 221 total yards and converted 2-of-11 third downs in a game that was effectively over by halftime.
So when a reporter asks the head coach to assess his quarterback’s performance after that disaster, it’s not some inflammatory attempt at creating controversy. It’s giving Tomlin an opportunity to address reality, to acknowledge what went wrong, to say something — anything — substantive about why his offense looked completely lost against a good but hardly unbeatable Chargers defense.
Instead, Tomlin got snippy and defensive, treating a legitimate question like it was beneath him.
The Steelers are 5-4, their offense is sputtering, and their 41-year-old quarterback just had one of the worst games of his career on national TV. Tomlin’s glare doesn’t fix any of that. It just makes it clear he’d rather shut down questions than confront what’s actually broken in Pittsburgh.