Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin made history on Sunday evening after locking in his 140th regular season win.

After his Steelers squad pulled out a nail-bitting 28-24 victory against the Baltimore Ravens, Tomlin became the winningest Black head coach in NFL history, according to local news outlet KDKA.

With the win, Tomlin passed legendary NFL coach Tony Dungy, who tweeted out about the milestone.

Tomlin has become one of the league's strongest coaches since being hired in 2007 to replace longtime Steelers head coach Bill Cowher.

This is not Tomlin's first time making NFL history either. He is the youngest coach in league history to win a Super Bowl after pushing his team to victory in 2009 at the tender age of 36.

He and Dungy are the only Black coaches in league history to win a Super Bowl and Tomlin is the only coach in league history to go to the Super Bowl twice before the age of 40. 

In his 14th season, Tomlin is also the first coach in the team's 87-year history to never have a losing season in his tenure. At 48, he already has a record of 140-74-1, putting him at 22 on the list of winningest NFL coaches all time. 

He is well known across the league for his steady leadership. He's continuing his streak of excellence this season, with the Steelers going undefeated through the first eight weeks of the season.

Tomlin has been one of the league's few Black coaches to keep their job for a lengthy period of time. As Blavity previously reported, the league has faced criticism over the past few years for the small number of Black NFL coaches.

Tomlin, Anthony Lynn of the Chargers and the Miami Dolphins' Brian Flores are the only Black head coaches in the league after four of them were fired in 2019. 

“We’re celebrating the 100th anniversary of the NFL, yet we have only three head coaches of color,” Rod Graves told The New York Times.

Graves spent decades as an NFL general manager and league executive and now runs the NFL’s coaching diversity initiative, the Fritz Pollard Alliance. 

“For all the hoopla that football has become in this country, that kind of progress, or lack of, is shameful,” he said.

The lack of Black head coaches is confounding for many experts considering the NFL's player pool is 70% Black, according to Think Progress.

The league was forced to institute the Rooney Rule in 2003, named after late Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney, which requires teams to interview at least one minority candidate when looking for a new head coach or general manager

But as recently as last year, there were complaints that teams were largely flouting the rule and simply lying about interviewing Black candidates.

The most recent example is that of the Oakland Raiders, who faced criticism in 2018 after blatantly violating the rule. After announcing a lucrative deal with former head coach Jon Grudden, the team went back and said they complied with the Rooney Rule by interviewed the team’s own tight ends coach. 

Black-Head-CoachesMike-TomlinPittsburgh SteelersTony Dungy