PITTSBURGH — On one hand, Mike Tomlin would probably hate the idea of ranking all 19 seasons he spent as head coach of the Steelers. Then again, he always talked about how each year is its own entity, its own team and its own journey.

He never caught a pass, scored a touchdown or made a tackle in nearly two decades at the helm, but he had to manage the roster through the chaos of life in the NFL year in and year out. In that spirit, why not relive the Tomlin era by trying to rate each individual coaching job he did? After all, you lived and cheered through them, from ultimate celebration to final let-down and everything in between.

This one needs no endorsement. The Steelers hoisted the “Sticky Lombardi,” as Tomlin likes to call the Super Bowl trophy. It's the most recent of the six in franchise history. There's no debating this, is there? You can get into the nuances of other seasons, and we will, but the bottom-line mission each year is to win a ring. And this team did it in Tomlin's second season. He had the right message to connect with this crew and have them playing their best football.

If not for a few execution errors by players, we'd be talking about Tomlin as a two-time Super Bowl-winning coach, and the Stairway to Seven wouldn't be perennially under construction. But if your aunt had ... never mind. This group overcame Ben Roethlisberger's four-game suspension to begin the season and ended it so close to glory.

Like so many Steelers seasons during and prior to Tomlin's tenure, the New England Patriots got in the way of another trip to the big game. The Steelers went through Miami at home and Kansas City at Arrowhead Stadium to get there, though. Not that those were particularly tough opponents in those years, but this is the last season the Steelers won a playoff game. You certainly can argue this team underachieved in the grand scheme. There's just something to be said for going to the AFC title game and being one step away from the Super Bowl.

Maybe there was no shame in losing to the Denver team that went on to win the whole thing. That Broncos defense was ferocious, Antonio Brown was out and Peyton Manning had one last win against the Steelers in him before riding off into the sunset. The wild-card win against Cincinnati the round before was epic, and this team finished strong in the regular season despite losing Le'Veon Bell to injured reserve in early November.

This is where the chorus of, “He won with Cowher's players!” hits a crescendo, and it's the first season on the list that the Steelers didn't even reach the second round of the playoffs. But this was Tomlin's first year — not just with the Steelers, but as a head coach for any team in his life — so in many ways, it was likely the most challenging. A historic franchise two years removed from winning the Super Bowl was trusting him to take over. He didn't kill them. Speaking of which ...

The Devlin “Duck” Hodges season is all you really need to say. And as Tomlin said of Duck multiple times that year upon turning to an undrafted rookie who made the team through a minicamp tryout, “He didn't kill us.” Perhaps you'll scoff at an 8-8 mark being this high, but Roethlisberger was lost to a season-ending elbow injury before halftime of Week 2. Tomlin had to turn to a vastly inexperienced Mason Rudolph and, eventually, the duck-caller out of Samford. Even these circumstances didn't end the organization's streak of not having a losing season, which dates to 2004.

This was the slightly less challenging but slightly more successful cousin of that 2019 campaign. First-round pick Kenny Pickett was stalling out in his second season, then went down with an ankle injury. It may have been one of the toughest calls of Tomlin's coaching career to stick with Rudolph even once Pickett was healthy. That led to a three-game winning streak to not just finish above .500, but sneak into the postseason. It also blew up any potential future with Pickett.

Yes, there's a theme here. The years without Roethlisberger, particularly the first two of navigating the NFL post-Ben, were a different lens through which to view Tomlin. In a vacuum, it was impressive to be so competitive with a quartet of quarterbacks who had never been starters in the NFL, never would be again, or both. And this team in Pickett's rookie year was 2-6 going into the bye week, with T.J. Watt missing seven games. They stuck together to finish 9-8 and deliver a rousing win to commemorate the Immaculate Reception 50-year anniversary for Franco Harris two days after his death.

This team was really good. The Steelers went 6-0 in the division, won several games via blowouts and would've been 14-2 if the officials had ruled that Jesse James caught that ball at home against the Patriots. But it also had the Killer B's at the height of their powers, so there was a little bit of a rolling-the-ball-out facet to Tomlin's gig at that time. And of course it was all for naught with that 45-42 loss to Jacksonville in the divisional round. An early interception by Roethlisberger set the tone for the worse, but this was a matchup Tomlin seemed to let his guys overlook with the Patriots likely looming.

There has to be some level of appreciation for the state of the franchise going into this year. Back-to-back 8-8 seasons brought a sense of trepidation for everyone. But they got back on track with a high-powered offense to win the division, only to falter at home in the first round of the playoffs against Baltimore. We're now firmly in the mushy middle of Tomlin-led teams.

This one is best remembered for an 11-0 start followed by a 1-5 collapse, including a most miserable loss to Cleveland, of all opponents, at home in the first round. That was bad. Really bad. But it also was a pandemic-impacted season in which the Steelers, specifically, were dealt an unexpected Week 4 bye, only after preparing to play Tennessee before a COVID-19 outbreak for the Titans. And thus, the impetus for one of the most meme-able Tomlin quotes of all: “We do not care.”

Tomlin did not save the best for last, clearly. The Aaron Rodgers experiment turned out not so different from Russell Wilson. There were fun moments along the way, but in the end, the same old song and dance. At least in this most recent and final iteration of Tomlin's Steelers, they did right by him with resiliency. They never lost three games in a row and swept the Ravens to win the division in thrilling fashion.

The Tebow Game sums it up. In fairness to Tomlin, that was only one play — in overtime — but this team didn't respond particularly well to the Super Bowl loss the previous February. Sure, a dominant defense led the NFL in points and yards allowed, but where was that when it mattered most against Tebow, who put up 300 yards and two touchdowns through the air?

One saving grace for this season is the Steelers dug out of an 0-4 hole to battle back to respectability and even having a chance to reach the postseason in the final week. He didn't lose the team. But Terrelle Pryor is still running.

Roethlisberger's final season wasn't pretty. It began with Tomlin's decision to promote Matt Canada to offensive coordinator, so that made his job harder the rest of the way. And in Tomlin's defense, the Steelers did get two huge victories against the Ravens, albeit one with Lamar Jackson sidelined, to make the postseason.

The dreaded Super Bowl hangover hit the Steelers hard. They did not unleash hell in December, losing to Bruce Gradkowski's three-win Oakland Raiders and Brady Quinn's one-win Browns in consecutive weeks after Tomlin's brash promise.

Yes, Roethlisberger missed a few games at a pivotal point, but this was a monumental collapse. A 6-3 start gave way to a 1-5 funk, which persisted even once the starting quarterback returned. It all added up to the franchise's first non-winning season in six years and a regular-season finale that was the only game played under Tomlin in which the Steelers were eliminated from playoff contention.

This might be too harsh or a result of recency bias, considering the lackluster quarterback element added a degree of difficulty, but the five-game skid to end the season was a total debacle and a precursor to the eventual end. Turning from Justin Fields to Russell Wilson looked brilliant initially, with Tomlin even touting the move as the reason he's well-compensated. That aged horribly. On top of that, George Pickens unraveled on Tomlin's watch slowly over the course of the season, which ended with the Steelers' arch nemesis bullying them not once, but twice in the span of a month.

So why this at the very bottom, particularly when the offense had to adjust to Bell's absence over the franchise tag? Well, this was the antithesis of what Tomlin stood for and the culture he was supposed to instill in any given collective. A team in turmoil had one player refer to them on the record as the Kardashians of the NFL, Roethlisberger criticizing teammates in interviews, and a star receiver who lost complete control. All good things must come to an end, including Tomlin's 19-year stint, but this version of the Steelers went down in flames.