Mike Tomlin quotes: Tomlinisms regarding domination, self-evaluation, how to prepare for the game of life, and more.
“It’s not about what you’re capable of, it’s about what you’re willing to do.”
“We don’t live in our fears. We live in our hopes.”
“Hungry is a word that I’ve been analyzing here of late. It’s not hunger that drives me. Hunger and thirst are things that can be quenched. We have to be a driven group, we have to seek greatness.”
“You continue to dream the wild dreams that you dream when you were young.”
“Dream, and dream big. But you have to make a daily commitment to take action to make your dreams a reality.”
“We all fall short of the glory and the grace of God at times, and it’s important how we move on from it.”
“Excuses are tools of the incompetent.”
“The standard… is the standard.”
“More grounded, more humble, more selfless makes us more opportunistic.”
“Shocked is not a word that I would use. I’ve always been extremely competitive. I’m a big dreamer, I guess. I’ve been known to be pushy.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being in a permanent state of arousal and not finding a comfort zone.”
“There’s going to be some joyful lifting for us, if you will, in terms of some of the tasks we have to do.”
“I tend to attack the challenges that are right in front of me, the ones that I have today.”
“I’m not concerned about avoiding anything that happened three years ago or worried about letdowns or things of that nature. When you use the term ‘letdown’ you proceed with the assumption that this is a continuation of something that happened in the past.”
“People aren’t very good listeners, by nature. Part of being a good communicator is recognizing and understanding that and trying to make the complex simple. I try to capture a concept, an idea or a moment in a few words. If they remember it, job done.”
“If our team doesn’t face enough adversity early on in a season, I create it. Nothing builds a team like adversity.”
“When you lose, you’re open to criticism. We lost, so I’m not going to try to justify anything that we did. Anything we did, I take responsibility for.”
“I’ll tolerate you until I can replace you.”
“Two dogs, one bone.”
“Everybody with a helmet on is in the mix.”
“It is a player-friendly scheme, but at the same time the expectation level is very high and the attention to detail is very high.”
“We have to play to win.”
“Oh, we can win it all. We should win it all. In terms of talent, in terms of having enough competition, depth, I think we check all those boxes. But, checking the boxes doesn’t run the race.”
“The good teams, the dominant teams, aren’t necessarily dominant in stadiums, but they are dominant largely in moments, when they do what’s required to get out of stadiums with victories.”
“We had a wild ride. We were able to accomplish a lot of things that we set out to do.”
“Extremely appreciative of these players and coaches and their efforts. It was a wild and challenging and fun ride. It always is.”
“My goal is and will be the same every year and that’s to be world champs. I’m excited about putting together a formula that’s going to be conducive to making that occur. And I feel like my chances are as good as anyone else’s that we compete against. The answer to that question will always be the same as long as I’m coaching and breathing.”
“The guys that play this game is that they’re open to anyone who’s capable of helping them. When players sense that you can make them better, that they can improve, that you can keep them in this league a day longer than maybe they anticipated being in this league, they’re gonna be all ears. That’s the way it’s been for me since day one. As long as you’re doing that, your résumé, your background, where you come from, your demographics, your age, is irrelevant.”
“I’m not interested in evaluating my performance, and particularly I’m not interested in my players’ evaluations of my performance. I’m paid to evaluate them. How’s your editor?”
“I have a youth camp in Pittsburgh. It’s a skills camp. It’s a different camp, though, kids pay for it. This more than anything man is about giving back to the community from which I came. Providing opportunity for kids that might not be given an opportunity under other circumstances and just doing what it is I’m called to do. I’m very blessed and there are responsibilities that come with that.”
“More than anything these young people understand that these people are just that – they’re people, and none of us are perfect. And life isn’t necessarily about the things that happen to you, it’s more about how you respond to it. And we acknowledge that we have a level of control over some of the things that happen to us sometimes and we’re not victims in this all the time. It’s just that people make mistakes. If me being at a camp and being around kids multiple days and them getting to understand me… I don’t want kids to think that I’m some alien, that I dropped off of some spaceship. I’m Mike Tomlin, I’m from Newport News, Virginia, I graduated from Denbigh High School and yes, I’ve been very blessed but a lot of the things of course that have happened to me have come out of just working and being normal.”
“It’s also about how you play the game of life. You play with great integrity and honor and class. You must give back to your community and make this a better place to live for all of us.”
“I want to encourage you to trust your preparation. Trust what it is that you’ve done. I tell you that you are prepared for the game of life.”
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