// PC GAMER — GAMING
Dear former NFL head coach Mike Tomlin: Your 12-year Minecraft city is beautiful
It may or may not have contributed to the Steelers' years of postseason woes—but at least it's walkable.
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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.
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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.