PRESNAP Week 5 cover. Looking straight up a corridor of Minecraft apartment towers against a blue sky, with Mike Tomlin’s face overhead. Cover line reads: A Trip to Tomlinland.
Cover Art by John Lytle

A Trip to Tomlinland

Week 5 By John Lytle

“Breaking the internet” feels like a relic of the 2010s, but last Wednesday, something happened that was just weird enough to force everyone to stop what they were doing and find out what the hell is going on. This story is old news by now, but it’s strange enough to trump a relatively uneventful Week 4 in the NFL, and a dud of an upcoming Week 5 slate.

Mike Tomlin, the hardnosed, defensive stalwart and former Super Bowl Champion Head Coach for one of the NFL’s most storied franchises, confessed to the internet that for the past 12 years, he has been building a massive city on Minecraft in his spare time.

After letting this announcement slip on a podcast, everyone needed to know more. How did he have time to do this? What does Mike Tomlin value in a city besides access to the Steelers training facility? Lucky for us, his sons helped him record a video introducing the project, and what we received exceeded all expectations.

Tomlin spent 19-minutes walking through his indoor-outdoor furniture decisions with a maniacal focus like he was showing you how to prepare for Ed Reed. Every line was quotable and kept leading into the next unbelievable word-choice. By now you’ve seen the best lines already, but still, they bear repeating:

“Again, I used a lot of glowstone early-on.. Not because I like the glowstone – I really didn’t – But lighting.. Lighting was important.”

“In this episode, I want to talk about, you know, residential housing, man.”

“I got into Jack and Jill bedroom concepts … with multiple sinks.”

A mock vintage postcard for the Penthouse Rooftop in Tomlinland, showing a Minecraft bedroom with a red bed and planters, captioned: Complete with Jack and Jill Bedroom Concepts, Including Multiple Sinks. The reverse above it is handwritten: Hello, I got really into Jack and Jill bedroom concepts. Bathrooms with multiple sinks. Mike.

This video was part 1 of hopefully many more videos: a Genesis for the new cult of Tomlinland. Tomlin appeared on late night talk shows, racked up 3M views, and was the darling of the internet. This felt like it was going to be one of those rare moments where everyone unanimously rallied behind something we could feel was organically great, but Steelers fans had a different outcome in mind. Bitter with having to watch Aaron Rogers go 7-9 in their uniform, Steelers fans started doing the math on when Tomlin started his Minecraft project. Their math was most likely incorrect, but the hate in their heart was pointed in the right direction: Mike Tomlin didn’t win a playoff game for his last 9 years as Head Coach, but had enough time to create code accurate employee bathrooms for the speakeasy in the Boutique Hotel in his Minecraft city.

A mock vintage postcard for The Boutique Hotel in Tomlinland, showing a brick Minecraft tower from below, captioned: Built with the appropriate number of public restrooms. The blank reverse of the card sits above it.

Fans model their expectations for their Head Coach off the greatest Head Coach of all time, Bill Belichick, a man who lived at the facility and would go to any length to find ways to help his team win a football game, regardless of their legality. When fans find out their Coach even has a hobby (like Minecraft), they immediately question if this interest could compete (or competed) with their love of the game.

To be a Head Coach, however, you need outlets. Head Coaches are highly disciplined, but also incredibly creative. By having an outlet to express this creativity differently, a Head Coach can uncover advantages that the rest of the league hasn’t found yet.

Andy Reid, one of the most successful coaches in NFL history, is the son of a set designer and paints in his spare time.

Even Bill Belichick, the aforementioned greatest of all time, is a closet drummer.

A mock vintage postcard for the residences across from the Aquarium in Tomlinland, showing a green glass Minecraft facade at night, captioned: Aquarium coming soon. The blank reverse of the card sits above it.

So every coach has a creative outlet, even the great ones. When you hear Mike Tomlin speak about the decisions that went into the details of his Minecraft city, he had a real process: he would start with a basic building, then would double back with detail, thinking of the audience for each home and how to design for their experience. By building a Minecraft city, Tomlin was flexing every necessary muscle for being a great head coach in a new way: creativity, empathy, discipline, follow-through, and I’m sure that without it, Steelers fans wouldn’t have half of the memories they cherished in their last 12 years with Mike Tomlin.