Mike Florio

And there will even be teams who are otherwise happy with their coaches that will ponder the possibility of upgrading to Mike Tomlin if he becomes available.

For a lot of the same reasons why it was time for a change in Baltimore, there was talk about maybe it's time for a change in Pittsburgh.

There's a lot of reasons to look at Harbaugh the same way we look at Tomlin.

I just don't think we ever expected going into a season that Harbaugh was going to be available as he now is.

And yeah, at least one team, maybe more than one team that currently has a head coach, has made the call and could be plotting an effort to move on from the current coach and then land John Harbaugh.

I don't think the outcome on Monday night by way of whether or not it's lopsided means anything, although that game last month against the Bills was as bad as it could possibly be.

I think the reality in Pittsburgh is they're not going to fire him, but... And this first hit me last week, and after you do this long enough...

You start to read between the lines when somebody who is a reporter starts saying things that kind of feel like they're saying something, but they can't quite say it.

It became clear to me last week, and I firmly believe based upon things I've heard since then, Tomlin's got a TV offer in his back pocket if he wants it.

I don't know that he's going to want it.

But based on how this season ends, when this season ends, and how he feels after it ends, he could pull the pin on that and head to one of the networks as an analyst in the studio, as a game analyst.

I think he'd be great on games.

I think that that...

style of crafting talking points and catch phrases on the fly would be very conducive to the 20 seconds that you have between plays to make comments.

But I think that's really the issue there.

It's not him being fired.

It's Mike Tomlin deciding after 19 years to move on, which if that happens, that makes Zach Taylor, the guy who would have been the first one fired, but for the buyout, because we know the Bengals will never pay a coach to not coach the team.

He's going to become the dean of the AFC North coaches if that happens.

Well, that's right.

And look, that's part of the shift that we've seen from coaches who will act a certain way in a press conference.