What if McCarthy was the only option?

Over a decade of mediocrity with no meaningful change and rubber stamp on a HC who appeared to have a contract for life points to a leadership failure at the top. As long as Rooney makes money, he seems to be ok with mediocre results.

I'm good with the HC change and hope that MM can improve on his legacy after a disappointing Dallas tenure. At least he's won a postseason game in the last 9 years which is more than MT can say

 

I can’t agree with you on Rooney he wants to win and he would actually make more with a better team

Now if you don’t like how he tries to win that is certainly a legitimate conversation

Plus keep in mind AR2 only owns a fraction of the team there are a lot of people sitting on that board with a vote

And yes I suspect some/many of them are living well off the income and they help set the team budget not just AR2

 

I would like to think that although the organization has been in a steady decline, they are still the Steelers. And the right coach could bring them back to their former respectability. Hell, there are actually coaches who think they can be the guy to raise the Browns from the outhouse cellar ...... damn near every year

 

Obviously you are not satisfied with the Steelers and none of us are

But you make statements that are clearly false and apparently you do this just to get a rise

Thr Steelers have steadily had a non loosing season for 19 years and thst is not steady decline

It also is not steady incline

 

It's been 23 years. 2003 was the last losing season. The following offseason, we got Ben Roethlisberger in the draft.

 

Please stop with that bull ****, it makes you look unintelligent and I don't think you're dumb, just mis-guided. Trust me, I am not making any statements to get a rise, it is what I truly believe, and they are NOT false. Maybe you are just seeing things differently but I am not making false statements. Average, non-losing, status quo, whatever you want to call it, it is a decline from what the Steelers were prior to Tomlin.

It's also my belief that a lot of fans who were ready for Tomlin to go are still giving him too much credit by saying he was a good coach, etc. Granted it was Rooney who sat back and watched it, and as you have pointed out ARII does not make Steeler decisions by himself, but it was Tomlin who fostered the reality that we have lived with since he was hired. It was Tomlin who ran the show and the show stunk.

 

I don't think you should bad mouth Noll and Dan like this.

In green, but also true.

This is just how this team operates.

We would have seen the same with Cowher too. But he stepped away earlier than the team wanted because his wife was sick.

Honestly if Rooney and Omar are to be believed, Tomlin could have stayed too.

 

It is surely false that the Steelers were/are on a steady decline. This was the specific example that JEH gave.

In fact, the main complaint about the Steelers under Tomlin since Ben retired is that every year is Groundhog Day. Oh...got another "Tomlin-ship (once we secured a 0.500+record)"

In some ways, a decline would be better. Because then we'd get a high pick and have a chance to break out of the cycle.

But it seems pretty clear that the conditions of employment are "do whatever you can to make the playoffs...or at least not play meaningless regular season games".

Why do you think we brought Rodgers back post-Tomlin? Which is probably at least 1/3 of the reason we hired MM.

So instead of a decline, we just an upgraded version of the Bills between Kelly and Allen. Where we're always competing for a WC spot, usually getting in to the payoffs, but never really a threat to do anything...even if we somehow caught enough lightning to win a WC game.

Saying that Tomlin wasn't a good coach is also just wildly inaccurate.

Just like anyone who says Tomlin was better than Bellicheck or the best Steelers coach of all time would be talking crazy...I don't think I've ever heard anyone say this.

In that Ben vs. Brees thread, I think Ben is clearly better than Brees. But I understand that there is an argument for Brees (even though I don't agree with it). But it would have been crazy for me to make the arugment that Ben > Brees because Brees wasn't even good. Or that Brees should have been drummed out of the league after the Chargers gave up on him. Those arguments would be silly. Ben can be better than Brees AND Brees can still be a very good QB. Cowher can be better than Tomlin while both are still above average HCs. You don't have to tear one down because you like the other one better.

Saying Tomlin wasn't a good coach is just not grounded in reality. The data speaks for itself. Just like Brees was very obviously a very good QB.

Note: Because you know someone is going to say this...I am not equating Tomlin to Brees. Brees was a better QB relative to his peers than Tomlin was a HC relative to his peers. I think Brees should be a 1st ballot HOF QB. I don't think Tomlin should get into the Hall (just like I didn't think Cowher should have gotten in).

 

I think we're talking semantics. The Steelers lack of playoff production is most certainly a decline. People can spout whatever stat they want to say that Tomlin was good, but the fact is the Steelers were a shell of their former self for the last 10 years.

 

We certainly got worse when Ben retired / got hurt.

He retired half a decade ago. And got hurt two years before that.

Steady decline implies getting worse every year.

Again, I think that might actually be better for the medium term prospects of the franchise.

 

Klint Kubiak?!


I was one of his staunch supporters. A shame it didn't come to pass but McCarthy isn't as bad of an option as the National Media makes him out to be.

 

McCarthy was a good fit for the Packers as HC. He was an OK fit for Cowboys. Hope he does well here. I'll gladly eat crow if Steelers win a playoff game this year. This would exceed my expectations.

Kubiak would have been the best pick at HC, IMO.

 

Getting back to Mike McCarthy?! So far so good. Will be looking forward to some of the prelude of those early returns. Preseason is very vanilla but aspects that McCarthy insists on such as fundamentals, basics and principles?! Vanilla schemes or not, those three foundational pieces matter.

 

Have to remember that the Dallas Cowboys HC Position is essentially a title and nothing more. Jerry Jones and, by extension, Stephen Jones are the puppet masters. They are the ones who pull the strings.


Green Bay and Pittsburgh do not have that problem. Head Coaches can be who they are meant to be; not a tool for someone else's benefit. I do concur that winning a playoff game will go a long way for Mike in Year One in his hometown.

 

Yeah, there have been many reasons for it but here is the point I am trying to make. Since the merger, prior to Tomlin, the Steelers averaged .737 playoff wins per year. Since Tomlin took over, that has steadily declined and the last ten years was .00000000000 and let's face it, playoff wins is how teams are judged.

And despite all the excuses that some people make for him, injuries, retirements, etc, it all happened on his watch.

 

Ben did a lot of heavy lifting for this team and kept it in contention or at least in the playoff mix. Steelers just failed to prepare for life after his retirement or decline.

Mitch, MR, Pickett paired with Matt Canada and Arthur Smith, in addition to Tomlin’s conservative rigid ways? Its just been a disaster so far. I think the only thing keeping us a bit above 500 was the talent on defense and key injuries to our division rivals.

 

I here a lot of MT excusers talk about how Ben messed up. I wonder if any of them ever wonder how good Ben could have been if he'd had a real coach who gave him good O-line and OC coaching?

 

This biggest mistake during the later Ben years ('16-'21) was Steelers not drafting a QB in the first round. Instead of drafting Burns, Edmunds or Bush... we could have drafted a QB with one of those picks. Packers picked Love with Rodgers in place. Now, for better or for worse... Packers have their franchise QB in Jordan Love. Steelers didn't do that because they had to placate Roethlisberger, while waiting until the 3rd round to draft Dobbs and Rudolph.

 

None of this is about a steady decline.

It seems like there's a pattern here (which I think JEH was pointing out)
1. You use hyperbolic language.
2. People say, that's not what those words mean. Or your argument doesn't make sense.
3. You disregard whatever your previous point was (or go after the poster). Often throwing out a bunch of stuff that's unrelated to the previous discussion (like in this post).

For example, you still haven't tried to defend the idea that we had elite talent recently.

But you've changed the argument a lot since then.

 

Misery loves company...but misery loves Beer too, I've noticed.

 

Maybe...you still have to get lucky with that pick.

And spending a 1st round pick on a guy to sit on the bench isn't the best way to make use of the HoF QB on your roster.

If it works, it's great. But basically every strategy to find QBs has a low expected value. Because most QBs fail.

If we used that pick to take the equivalent of Kenny Pickett when Ben's still on the team, it's a waste. Just like we could have used the relatively high picks we spend on Mason and Dobbs to get guys who would actually play in a situation where you're season isn't already over.

Personally, I think Shazier getting hurt really screwed up the team. If he stayed healthy, the D would have been much better when we still had BBBs. Because Shazier would have been here at a high level when Watt was ascending toward his peak.

Instead, we spent a seasons trying to figure out what to do at ILB to rebuild the D on the fly.

Missing on Bush was really bad for this team IMO...really the 1st round picks at the end of Colbert's term in general.

 

And Burns, Edmunds and Bush were not wastes for 1st round picks?

Gotta roll the dice on QB eventually. 2022 was obviously a bad year to pick a QB. Jury is still out on Willis/Dolphins.

 

The last line in my post is about how the miss on Bush really screwed us. I do edit my posts though, so maybe that was changed after you quoted and before I saw this?

Edmunds was OK, but not great. Not what you hope for. But probably close to the expected value for that pick.

I don't remember exactly how bad Burns was, but I don't think he was good either. But I don't think drafting a replacement for Ben in 2016 was on the table (he played for 5 more years...so the entire rookie contract).

Obviously switching any of these picks out with a QB pick that worked would be better for the team.

Heck, switching out TJ Watt for a QB that worked would have been better for the team.

But my guess is that the failure rate of late round QB picks is higher than the failure rate of safety & CB at the points we picked them.

 

Maybe you just can't follow. I never said elite talent recently, I said he failed with elite talent. People like yourself started twisting my words. Tomlin most definitely had elite talent during his time and did little with it. It's just that simple. Don't read what you want, and don't read what others have twisted, read what "I" wrote if you're going to shoot me down.

ETA: If I wrote something I shouldn't have either while in a drunken stupor or passed my bed time I will be the first to apologize.

 

The bold part is another hyperbolic statement with no objective measurement to support it.

How many HCs have been to more than 2 SBs?

How many HCs have more than one SB win?

When you answer these objective questions, I think you'll find that we had more than "little" success under Tomlin.

We just didn't have the modern dynasties that NE and KC had. Which I think have kind of twisted what people's expectations are.

For teams.

For QBs.

And for HCs.