Mike Tomlin spent Wednesday night doing something NFL fans did not see coming: unveiling a Minecraft city he has been building for 12 years.
The former Steelers coach, now an NBC analyst, streamed the project on YouTube and showed off a sprawling creation packed with detail. The reaction online came fast, and for Steelers fans, it quickly turned into something even stranger - a hunt for splits tied to Tomlin’s Minecraft obsession.
Tomlin said he started playing the game around 12 years ago as a way to spend time with his kids.
"Over the course of time, they got just disinterested in the game. They go on to high school and so forth and off to college.
Their participation became less and less over the years. My participation probably at times increased," Tomlin said.
"At different times over the course of a 12-month calendar, I would have different levels of fixation on this."
That timeline points back to around 2014, which makes the numbers look even more absurd. In Tomlin’s first seven seasons as Steelers head coach, before he started playing Minecraft, Pittsburgh won a Super Bowl, reached two Super Bowls and collected five playoff wins in eight games.
After that, over the next 12 seasons, the Steelers did not reach another Super Bowl and won just three playoff games in 12 tries.
Mike Tomlin Minecraft splits
Tomlin before Minecraft (7 seasons)
1 Super Bowl win
2 Super Bowl trips
5 playoff wins (5-3, 0.625) overall
Tomlin with Minecraft (12 seasons)
0 Super Bowl wins
0 Super Bowl trips
3 playoff wins (3-9, 0.250) overall pic.twitter.com/zSfkCBridW
The internet did what it always does with a setup like that: it ran with it. NFL fans turned Tomlin’s city-building reveal into a meme factory, and plenty of the jokes centered on just how committed he was to spending 12 years on the project. Le’Veon Bell called attention to the reveal, and other reactions piled up around the same theme - admiration mixed with disbelief.
Among the jokes making the rounds were posts imagining a Minecraft speakeasy, poking fun at Tomlin’s city-planning eye, and riffing on the Steelers’ playoff drought during the Minecraft era. The whole thing turned a Wednesday night stream into one of the stranger football moments of the week.
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