One of the biggest games of the NFL season came down to a 2-point conversion attempt. The Baltimore Ravens needed a deuce to tie the Pittsburgh Steelers with a minute left in their game on Sunday, with the AFC North hanging in the balance. Baltimore had the likely soon-to-be-three-time MVP quarterback, Lamar Jackson, taking a shotgun snap. Before he could, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin called a timeout.

Tomlin said afterward that he wanted to see the structure of the Ravens’ offense. After the timeout, the Ravens settled on something else, a play that had the right-handed Jackson sprinting out to his left and going for the pylon. The timeout appeared to change Baltimore’s course from what looked like a straight-ahead run call. “I think that made them change and go the other direction, and obviously, particularly Mr. Jackson is a little bit less dangerous when he’s going to his left than his right,” Tomlin told reporters after the game. Then, in his classic Tomlin way, he added, “We’re thankful for that.”

Pittsburgh threw Jackson down short of the end zone and preserved an 18–16 win. This, too, was classic Tomlin for how ugly yet effective it was. The Steelers were playing against the best offense in the NFL. They countered by not scoring a single touchdown, settling for six field goals instead, three of them from at least 50 yards. And yet the day ended with the Steelers in firm control of the division, with an 8–2 record that makes them a factor in the race for the AFC’s No. 1 playoff seed and first-round bye.

Tomlin will have a bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame because of days like this one. He is the 12^th-winningest coach ever and will work his way into the top 10 next year. He’s one of just 35 head coaches to have won a Super Bowl, an achievement that contributes to Tomlin being underrated: It denies him the mantle of being talked about as “the best coach who hasn’t won the big one.” Tomlin isn’t Bill Belichick or Andy Reid, but his résumé stacks favorably against anyone else’s from his era. His career has sometimes been maddening, never more than late last year when the Steelers collapsed against the worst teams in the NFL after setting themselves up to cruise into the playoffs. Losing those games was classic Tomlin, too, but then so was Pittsburgh winning their last three with a third-string quarterback and getting a token playoff appearance out of it. (They lost big the next week.)

This year is Tomlin’s masterpiece, the seminal work that explains his career. The Steelers’ offense is cobbled together with duct tape, chicken wire, and a couple of QBs whose careers were circling the drain six months ago. This group wins games it should by all rights lose, and it is somehow the closest AFC peer to the Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills at a time when those rosters are a million times better. The Steelers are a mediocre team that could go deep into the playoffs because of the man in charge.

Most of the Steelers’ wins are disgusting spectacles. Of their eight wins, two have now come in touchdown-less performances that featured Chris Boswell flushing six field goals apiece. Three wins have come on days when the Steelers have scored 18 points or fewer. (The rest of the NFL has 16 such wins.) Pittsburgh is 23^rd in the NFL in yards per play, 16^th in expected points added per play, and 14^th in points per game. The only word for their offense is “mediocre,” but they win with the league’s elite.

That happens because Tomlin is an expert at dragging other teams down into the mud and forcing them to roll around with his team in the vile slop. The Ravens had moved the ball practically at will all season, but Tomlin and his defensive coordinator Teryl Austin put Jackson into a horrifying device and rendered him a more athletic Kenny Pickett. Four of Jackson’s nine worst games ever by passer rating have now come against Tomlin, against whom he is 2–5. Against all other coaches, Jackson is 63–18. Jackson is one of a handful of star QBs to have his worst or near-worst game of the year against the Steelers, only a week after Washington Commanders wunderkind rookie Jayden Daniels did the same. The Atlanta Falcons’ Kirk Cousins had the same problem in Week 1. Later, Aaron Rodgers and Bo Nix met similar misfortune.

Elsewhere in the Baltimore backfield, Derrick Henry had not lost a fumble in 538 touches when he took a handoff on the first drive of Sunday’s game. A backup Steelers linebacker clubbed the ball out of Henry’s arm, and Pittsburgh came away with it to set up the game’s first points. Later, a different backup linebacker yanked an acrobatic interception away from the Ravens’ Justice Hill. Tomlin has long coached the Steelers defense to rip at the ball voraciously, and the Steelers’ thirst for takeaways has often been a saving grace. This year’s 19 are tied for third in the NFL so far, nearly two a game.

Tomlin’s greatest traits in coaching are things we don’t see. He is regarded around football as a master of locker-room management, and much of the lore around him comes from former players who go on podcasts and explain what it was like to play for him. But this season has seen Tomlin’s strength spill into unusually public view. The Steelers signed future Hall of Fame quarterback Russell Wilson to a cheap one-year deal in the offseason, and at almost the same time, they moved a draft pick to the Chicago Bears in exchange for former first-round pick and hopeful franchise QB Justin Fields. Wilson looked washed up, Fields looked like a never-was on his last chance, and Tomlin looked like a coach desperate for any growth at QB.

What’s happened since then is a testament to Tomlin. The 35-year-old Wilson got hurt in training camp, and Fields, 25, started the season 4–2 in his stead. Almost everyone in Pittsburgh and around the sport figured that Tomlin would stick with Fields, who had played pretty well but still showed some of his old limitations as a downfield passer. So, Tomlin went to Wilson in a move that various NFL insiders reported came over the objections of others in the Steelers’ building. (Tomlin told Fox Sports’ Jay Glazer that he went “lone ranger” in moving to Wilson.) Since then, Wilson has looked revitalized after some lost years with the Denver Broncos. Fields has not made any drama, Wilson has repeatedly praised his backup, and Fields even iced the game on Sunday by getting a first down in a running package as Wilson watched from the sideline. The Steelers have unlocked a better offense and seem to have preserved harmony.

Tomlin has his defects. He sticks stubbornly by assistant coaches who aren’t working out, and he may not have the league’s sharpest eye for coaching talent in general. The evidence for this point is that no homegrown Tomlin assistant in what’s about to be a record 18 years of non-losing seasons in Pittsburgh has yet to even become a coordinator with another team, let alone a head coach. He makes a few confounding clock-management and challenge decisions every year. As any sports talk-radio caller in Pittsburgh can tell you, he has not won a playoff game in nearly eight years. Winning playoff games is the whole point of this endeavor, and unless Tomlin starts doing that again, all of this will feel empty.

That doesn’t change what is happening now. The Steelers are so average in so many ways yet so good at winning games that Tomlin seems poised to get one bit of recognition this year that has so far eluded him. Tomlin has never won an NFL Coach of the Year honor, a title that’s been won during his tenure by names like Mike Smith, Marvin Lewis, Jason Garrett, Matt Nagy, and Kevin Stefanski. Fine coaches, all of them, but nowhere near Tomlin’s historical weight class. Tomlin is the betting favorite for the award this year and has a strong case. The point of this enterprise is winning playoff games, but a team can only advance deep into the playoffs if it gets there first—and it probably won’t go far if it doesn’t start out with a home game on Wild Card Weekend. The Steelers have no business reaching that point, but they’re now on the doorstep because Tomlin has put them there. Few would do better, and Reid is unavailable.