Dear former NFL head coach Mike Tomlin: Your 12-year Minecraft city is beautiful

By the time he stepped down as head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2025, Mike Tomlin—then the NFL’s longest-tenured coach—had led the team through a 19-year run without a losing season, securing 13 playoff appearances, eight division titles, and a victory at Super Bowl XLIII.

Since 2014, however, Tomlin has been answering a higher calling: He’s been building. In a YouTube video on Wednesday, he unveiled his true masterwork: A sprawling Minecraft metropolis that he’s been meticulously hand-sculpting for the last 12 years. And it’s magnificent.

As the video starts, Tomlin—PlayStation controller in hand—explains that he was introduced to Minecraft by his children, who were obsessed with the game during their middle school years. While he didn’t have much history with videogames, he was “mesmerized by what could occupy their attention,” and as he’s “always had an interest in architecture,” he naturally gravitated to Minecraft’s creative mode.

Eventually, his kids moved on to other interests—but Tomlin remained transfixed by the “therapeutic” act of crafting buildings, communities, and neighborhoods.

“It allowed me to detach from the realities and pressures of life,” Tomlin says. “Let’s take you through it.”

The video then transitions to Tomlin’s first-person view as he surveyed his works from on high, revealing the purest product of a grown man’s hyperfixation I’ve ever seen: a waterfront district, with a bay surrounded by skyrises, hotels, and apartment blocks—each with its own color schemes, exterior detailing, balconies, courtyards, balustrades, awnings, and plazas.

“I started small,” he says.

The former NFL coach then takes us on a tour of his city’s first completed building, a “boutique hotel” built from cut red sandstone with marble and birchwood walkways, featuring—as Tomlin casually explains—a multi-floor executive spa with therapy rooms, a glass-ceilinged multi-purpose conference room, an indoor-outdoor restaurant with balcony seating, and “appropriate amenities” like public restrooms with sinks and stalls recreated from cleverly repurposed Minecraft fixtures.

It also has a basement speakeasy with a glowstone-illuminated window looking out into the hotel pool. With an adjacent employee area. And kitchen.

The tour continues through themed residential high rises-slash-aquariums with detailed bedroom interiors, past recreated CVS pharmacies, baseball fields, and soccer stadiums, and over rooftop penthouses. Throughout, Tomlin reiterates how he tried to consider both function and aesthetics by keeping conscious of interior lighting and what types of views building occupants would enjoy.

It’s delightful—but it may not have been entirely delightful for the Steelers. Since he presented his city on Wednesday, many have noted that the years in which he would’ve been building his Minecraft magnum opus overlapped with the team’s declining playoff performance.

From his first season as head coach in 2007 to 2013, the Steelers had a postseason win rate of 62.5%. Between Tomlin breaking ground on his Minecraft city in 2014 and stepping down as head coach in 2025, however, the team’s postseason win rate was a mere 25%. During those years, the Steelers won only three playoff games, and suffered nine consecutive years without a playoff win.

It was also apparently a trying time for Tomlin’s son Mayce, who had to endure his dad bogarting the PlayStation.

Now, we can only speculate whether Minecraft actually played a role in the Steelers’ playoff record—but even if it did, I think we can all agree the price was worth paying. Have you seen how many aquariums this town has? Coach, if you’re reading: I’m ready to move in.

The initial showing of Tomlin’s Minecraft city was only the first episode: He and his son Dino—who’s been handling the video production of his dad’s build showcase—evidently have more tour videos planned. It’s unclear when we can expect the next, but you’ll be able to find it on Tomlin’s YouTube channel.