The teams in the AFC North are gearing up for the 2026 season, but for the first time in nearly two decades, Mike Tomlin won’t be coaching the Pittsburgh Steelers. That’s probably a welcome change for the Cleveland Browns, considering Pittsburgh’s dominance over Cleveland under Tomlin. And now that he’s gone, former Browns wide receiver Josh Cribbs is excited about the season, as he can now watch Cleveland play without fearing the Steelers.

“I’m so ready for football season. I’m so ready because this division doesn’t scare me,” Cribbs said. “We don’t have Tomlin. It is nothing to take away from the Steelers and McCarthy. He’s [McCarthy] a valuable coach. But Tomlin had a winning season every year. He was in the thick of it every year now. Those are the questions. Only that you can’t answer on paper from the team. ‘Yeah, on paper, we look good,’ but I can’t do that no more because coach Sam Rutigliano embarrassed me. He was like, ‘Oh, yeah, toilet paper.’ I’m gonna always say this. I never say we look good on paper. We gotta go out there and actually do it.”

Mike Tomlin replaced Bill Cowher as the Steelers’ head coach in 2007. To his credit, he found early success, winning the Super Bowl in just his second season. Across 19 years, Tomlin bolstered a 193-114-2 record in the regular season, and never had a losing season. At the same time, however, he struggled to find consistent success in the postseason, going 8-12 and failing to win a playoff game in the last decade, including a Wild-Card round loss to the Browns in 2021.

Still, Tomlin’s dominance over the Browns wasn’t hard to ignore. He was 28-9-1 in the regular season against Cleveland. He is tied for the record with John Harbaugh, who was recently fired by the Baltimore Ravens before joining the New York Giants. Meanwhile, Tomlin was 19-1 against the Browns in Pittsburgh, including the playoffs, while he had a 9-9-1 record against the rivals in Cleveland.

Having moved on from Tomlin, the Steelers now have Mike McCarthy as their HC. Per reports, McCarthy is steering away from Tomlin’s playbook ahead of the 2026 season.

He has brought Rico Dowdle into the running back room, Michael Pittman Jr., to complement DK Metcalf, and has also made major changes on the offensive line. As for the defensive side of the ball, McCarthy is allowing defensive coordinator Patrick Graham to take care of things, per reports.

Still, while Cribbs has acknowledged that he’s not playing down what McCarthy can do, the Browns legend believes that the Steelers are not that strong with Tomlin gone. Just like Tomlin failed to win a playoff game in the last decade, McCarthy has won just one postseason victory since 2017.

The HC is walking into a team that has seen a lot of success in the regular season, which is why expectations will be for him to repeat the same. What is concerning for the Steelers is that McCarthy’s record in his first season as head coach for both the Packers and the Cowboys has not been all that great. He failed to take both teams into the postseason in his first season. A repeat of the same in Pittsburgh could invite big problems for McCarthy, as Tomlin left the benchmark really high when it came to regular-season success.

Another reason why the McCarthy experiment could go wrong is the Steelers’ roster. The team has far too many players who are approaching the end of their careers. This includes Aaron Rodgers, who is set to play his final season. The likes of Cam Heyward and T.J. Watt are still valuable, but Heyward is 37 and entering the 16th season of his career, and Watt has experienced a dip in form recently, which has been highlighted by analysts. With the Steelers relying heavily on their veteran stars to deliver, it will be tough to expect success in the long run.

Despite all the doubts surrounding Pittsburgh, Cribbs does not have a lot of reasons to be optimistic about the Browns heading into the 2026 season.

For a broader context, around a third of last year’s 53-man roster are no longer on Cleveland’s roster at this point. At the same time, the Browns are still in the middle of a quarterback competition, with no stability in the room. They had one of the best defenses in 2025, but the unit will enter the upcoming season without the Defensive Player of the Year, Myles Garrett, as he’s now in L.A.

That said, while Cribbs has mentioned that he wants the Browns to win rather than believing that the roster looks good on paper and he’s not scared of this division, they are still the weakest team in the AFC North. As things stand, the Cincinnati Bengals and the Ravens seem to be the top contenders to win the division, with the Steelers right behind, looking to make another push for the Super Bowl.