Steelers hire two assistants for the defensive staff
Tomlin on Wednesday and was back at the team offices Thursday to meet with other staff members and agree to a two-year deal. He is a stickler for tackling and fundamentals, something the Steelers are desperately seeking to improve in 2018.
Tomlin had also interviewed University of South Florida defensive backs coach Blue Adams for the position. Tomlin coached Adams when he was an assistant at the University of Cincinnati in 1999-2000.
Bradley was not retained at UCLA when head coach Jim Mora Jr. was fired at the end of the 2017 regular season. He is best known in Western Pennsylvania as an assistant for four decades at Penn State and served as interim head coach when Joe Paterno was dismissed nine games into the 2012 season because of the Jerry Sandusky child-sexual abuse scandal.
Since leaving Penn State, Bradley also served as defensive line coach/senior assistant head coach at West Virginia in 2014. His older brother, Jim, is the Steelers orthopedic surgeon.
Mitchell, 66, the longest tenured Steelers assistant who was hired by Bill Cowher as defensive line coach in 1994, was given the additional title of assistant head coach by Tomlin in 2007.
Mitchell is no stranger to Dunbar. He was linebackers coach and later defensive coordinator at LSU when Dunbar was a defensive lineman there. The Steelers drafted Dunbar in the eighth round in 1990, but he never played for them.
Dunbar, 50, was defensive line coach at Alabama the past two seasons. Before joining Nick Saban’s staff, he was a defensive line coach in the NFL with the Buffalo Bills, New York Jets, Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears, in addition to several colleges.