The lethal combination of Tomlin and Rooney

I'm certain that this has been discussed ad nauseum by bits and pieces but I haven't seen any comprehensive summary. Below are some of the "other" facts about Tomlin, which Rooney allowed, nearly bringing a once respected franchise to it's knees.

Sorry if it's old news, I just haven't seen a complete representation.

Tomlin facts:

1. Tomlin was a snake charmer. The #1 goal of every NFL player is to make deep playoff runs and win a Super Bowl. Tomlin made pro-bowl, and hall of fame players, want to play for him "only" despite the simple truth that Tomlin couldn't win playoff games.

2. Tomlin fostered annual discipline problems. Martavis Bryant, Leveon Bell, Antonio Brown, Diante Johnson, George Pickens, DK Metcalf. Additionally undisciplined play cost us many games when we had a lead late in games and a personal foul would extend the opponents drive allowing them to score. Players loved playing for him because there was no discipline.

3. People want to put Tomlin in the Hall of Fame because he never had a losing season. With the talent Tomlin had to work with, his total body of work is an abhorrent failure.

4. Tomlin wasted endless amounts of talent and countless careers.

5. Tomlin’s ego was bigger than the team. Every coach with NFL credibility was let go; Mike Munchak, Dick LeBeau, Bruce Arians, Todd Haley, and replaced by totally inept staff because Tomlin didn't think he needed anyone's else. Randy Fichtner, Mike Sullivan, Matt Canada, Arthur Smith, Keith Butler, Teryl Austin

6. Highest paid defense in the league couldn’t stop anybody (overpaid or undercoached?)

7. Poor clock management

8. Historic poor playoff record. Noll's was .667 (after inheriting the worst team in the league). Cowher's was .571. Tomlin's was .400 (after inheriting a super bowl team) .312 after year two.

 

For your point 2,just another example

 

#82 ?????
Must be Martavious Trybans

The REAL STEELER ISSUE is issuing 82 to any fvckwad
believe Yancey Thigpen was the last worthy

 

He’s new

 

Your certainty is correct

 

His take certainly isn't. Even as a member of the FMTI club, I'm saying get outta here with that garbage. Damn.

 

Thankfully, facts are facts, new or old.

 

I may have mentioned these things a time or two or 7890…..

 

While I share your sentiments about MT, much of what you wrote is opinion not fact. Not to mention, it has all been thoroughly discussed, debated, argued, and beaten up around here for a decade. And as someone who celebrated when he "walked away", I'm curious what exactly you're trying to accomplish with this thread?

 

The facts are pretty easily verified and while I'm sure bits and pieces of them have been discussed I did a fair amount of research and I could not find a complete compilation which showed just how damaging Tomlin's time here was.

 

@KnoxVegasSteel has my back

 

Let me help you

One more Super Bowl win more than The Browns have had in 82 years

During his 19 seasons as head coach, Tomlin never finished with a losing record, the longest streak in NFL history.

Hope this helps education wise new guy

And before you start babbling I wanted Tomlin gone before the Jaxonville game

 

I must have missed this

 

Comparing anything to the Browns, in a positive light, is rather foolish, regardless of what the basis is.

Touting one fact while ignoring the Sea of others is not very educational.

But thanks for the help

 

Are you a reincarnation of a previously banished poster or is this a breeding issue

 

1. The premise that the #1 goal of every team is to make a deep run is false IMO. While this is certainly what fans want, the #1 goal of every football team (which is a business) is to maximize profit.

The business model of the Steelers since at least the beginning of Cowher's tenure here has been to do what you can to make the playoffs every year. Rooney (not just this one) seems to believe that having a consistently competitive team is the best way to maximize profits over the medium to long term in a small to medium sized market like Pittsburgh (22nd largest market in the NFL)

By getting into the playoffs as often as possible, they hope to catch lightning in a bottle every once in a while. And since they are tied for the most SBs in the league, I guess we can't fault them.

2. If you want to see discipline issues, look what happened to players after they left here. Did Tomlin cause the discipline issues with these players? Or did he hold guys like AB and DJ together as long as possible...then they completely imploded after they left. There's even examples of guys like Timmons, who appeared to be completely normal here. Then had a mental breaks after they left. What happened to Sutton after he left the Steelers? How about Claypool? Pickens played well in Dallas for sure. And maybe he'll buck the trend for WRs here. But this off-season isn't going great for him. Time will tell.

3. I don't think Tomlin should go into the hall. I don't think Cowher should be there either. I think the bar for non-players should be very, very high. But the people who vote on these things apparently disagree with me. So Tomlin probably gets in eventually. He'll certainly have to wait longer than Ben after he becomes eligible IMO. Ben already put Cowher in the hall. So he may put Tomlin in as well.

4. I'm sure that this has some truth to this. But how does he compare to other coaches who are of a similar tier? And even a guy like Reid...how many careers did he "waste" before winning the lottery with Mahomes?

5. I think this probably became more true over the course of his career. This is why I like how the Steelers hired Cowher and Tomlin young (both probably a little under-qualified with good upside). They put good coordinators around them and molded them into the kind of coaches they wanted (see point 1 for what they wanted).

6. Their D was expensive because it has been old and we've been spending so many premium draft picks on offense. If / when we start spending premium picks on D again then the cost of the D will go down. The cap is basically fixed each year. And we didn't have offensive players to spend it on when we had all the premium positions on offense on rookie contracts (e.g., QB, OTs, WRs, etc). In the Canada / Kenny years, a big part of this was also that the offense was brutal at staying on the field. So the D had a very high number of plays. I do think that this flipped last year. Where the D had lots of plays because they sucked at getting off the field. Similar issues on the defensive trenches that we saw with the OL at the end of Ben's career IMO. Didn't prioritize the big guys. Sucked at stopping the run. Imagine if Cam had a normal aging curve...

7. Certainly issues here. But my guess is that he was better than average here. Would need to somehow analyze this. People complain about challenge flags too. But with the league auto-reviewing everything important, challenge flags are mostly just timeouts after bad plays, with some chance that maybe it gets overturned. I do think we should have paid to have a "quality control" guy to be laser focused on clock and challenge issues. But some combination of Tomlin + Rooney seemed to feel like having a dedicated guy for this was a waste.

8. This certainly looks bad on it's face. Although I also think that he's getting "penalized" by this metric because he would get teams to the playoffs that didn't deserve to be there. I also think that as the league became more and more QB focused, not having an above average QB really hurt us (post Ben's injury). As always, it's worth noting that Ben and Tomlin have the exact same playoff record when Ben was playing under Tomlin. In those games, I think Ben deserves more credit for the wins and more blame for the losses than Tomlin does. Because QB >>> HC. Ben was a high variance player. And we lived and died by whether good or bad Ben showed up in the playoffs.

Edited to add: I'm really surprised that coaching tree and Rooney rule comments were left out of the OP. You left some of the squares on the BINGO card open here.

 

A breading issue?

As in breading on a chicken wing?

 

Here is a fact for you.
Tomlin went to two SBs, and won one.
Tomlin had a 10.5 wins a year average over his career.
Tomlin was the HC of one of the only 5 teams who made the playoff 5 out of last 6 years, and unlike the other HCs with franchise Qbs, he did it with Mason, Old Wilson, Fields, Pickett, Trubisky, and old Rodgers. All of who can't keep starting jobs elsewhere, or had losing seasons right before they came, and then lost their jobs after they left.
Now I hope McCarthy will be the greatest HC we ever had, but Im not an idiot, and know how hard it is to actually win in any sports so I don't feel the need to downgrade what a past HC did knowing how hard what he did is.
I wonder what Your old name on here was?

 

I think you missed my point. The majority of what you wrote is your opinion with a few facts sprinkled in. And if your point was to merely compile a list of MT's shortcomings, like I said, we have covered this ground ad nauseum for many years, as you alluded to. And quite frankly, the list is even longer than what you posted. Here's a fact for you: Tomlin is gone and no longer the HC of the steelers. I, for one, am happy about that and looking forward to the future with the current staff and players. That last part was my opinion, just to help you understand the difference.

 

Aside from the DAB I’m still waiting for

Perhaps new posters could have a training wheels icon for a while

 

You are giving me PTSD with the never had a losing season stuff. I can’t wait to not have MT dominate the board this year like Knox said fresh start!

 

When Ramon Foster used to have a podcast on DK's network, he said that Tomlin used to say that he'd say that he'd "tolerate you until he didn't have to anymore". He's also been widely quoted as saying that "fair isn't the same thing as equal". I think everyone knows that elite players will always get special treatment while they are still elite.

It's not the 70s anymore. And coaches can't treat players who can easily change teams the same way Noll treated guys back then.

So AB certainly got a different rule set than replacement level players. Just like Ben did. Just like every other valuable player does.

But I do also think that the way Tomlin interfaces with players tended to keep them on the rails (as best as possible).

It's true that AB wasn't a model citizen for his entire time with the Steelers.

But his descent into madness also certainly accelerated dramatically after he left.

I think it's true that we don't know how much Tomlin "slowed" his going crazy down when he was with the team. But there are several instances of guys going crazier much faster after they left (e.g., DJ, Claypool, Sutton, probably several others).

Similarly, I don't think it's true that we know that Tomlin "accelerated" guys like AB going crazy. We saw AB get much worse when he left. And I don't know that I can think of anyone that we took on who went crazy when they got here, especially not a dramatic acceleration into crazyness. The best example of this is probably Blount? And I think that is the best example of Tomlin mismanaging a player across his entire tenure with the Steelers.


Foster also said that the most effective way to discipline players is by applying fines...which I thought was odd of him to say since IIRC he was the long time union rep for the team. This hits them in the wallet and doesn't sacrifice the chances of winning a game by benching one of your best players. And that these fines are almost always applied behind closed doors. So while Foster said it was the most effective way to discipline a player, fans probably hate it because many fans want to see public floggings.