What if McCarthy was the only option?

Talk about moving the goal post! Stay on topic ....how did Tomlin do, by comparison to the post merger coaches, Steeler coaches before him?

 

Again with the confession through projection.

Your argument was that Tomlin did little with the talent he had (which you said was elite).

What I'm trying to do now, is find some kind of objective way to test the hyperbolic statement you made.

So we need to have a sense of what "did little with it" might mean.

I think this is a much easier task than us trying to determine how much elite talent most SB winning teams have (or something).

Notice how again you avoid the simple questions that disprove your hyperbolic statement.

Let's try a different way (where you get to trash Tomlin!): How many more SB wins or appearances do you think we should have had under Tomlin?

Because I think what you really mean was something like: "I think we should have won more of the ~3.25 Ben, Bell, and Brown played together in the playoffs."

 

Gibberish

 

Thats nice

 

No offense dude, it's a special interest forum, but my dad taught me to never fight against an unarmed man and I fear continuing this conversation with you would make him roll over in his grave.

Tomlin had a lot of talent. He did very little with it. If you can't face that, that's your problem

 

Tomlin retired

 

Very original dude.

And another dodge. Because you know that your argument won't stand up if you actually look at what happened.

 

It's certainly possible.

I generally think it's very unlikely that Ben does something gets to something like 6 SBs and wins 4.

• I think Brady's the only guy who's been in more than 6 SBs (Mahomes is still counting though).
• Brady's also the only guy who's won more than 4 (Montana and Bradshaw also have 4 wins...Mahomes with 3 and counting).
• There are only 6 guys in the history of the league with more SB wins than Ben. Only 2 of them (Mahomes and Brady) won all of their championships after UFA and the Cap.
• Only 8 guys with more SB appearances (only 4 guys that played all their UFA/Cap era I think).

I did think Ben had a chance to be the GOAT early in his career. But he ended up being "only" an extremely good QB.

Cowher does have a better playoff record than Tomlin. But I think all of us who are old enough remember the heartbreaking losses at home that Cowher presided over too.

And most of us who are old enough probably remember that there was a super vocal part of the fanbase (especially online...I was on the Trib board with a guy named "Crash") who absolutely hated Cowher. Talked about how he was just Marty 2.0 and that he'd never win anything. All he did was choke. I was less vocal at the time, but if we could dig up the old board, you'd see me posting that Cowher was actually a really good coach if you looked at the numbers. But on that old board, the guy who did it the most was Captain Lemming. He migrated over here too.

Anyway, for anyone who was on message boards back then...there were people who really hated Cowher for his inability to win big games...especially when we were favored.

But the Steelers business model, refusal to reflexively fire him because of some emotional outrage (I'm thinking of Jerry Jones), and desire to be in the playoffs as often as possible eventually paid off.

"Should" Cowher have won more often than he did? I don't know. It's really hard to win a single elimination tournament many times. We were the 1 seed in the AFC 2x under Cowher. We were also the 2 seed 2x under Cowher.

"Should" Tomlin have won more often than he did? I don't know. It's really hard to win a single elimination tournament many times. We were the 1 seed in the AFC 0x under Tomlin. We were also the 2 seed 1x under Tomlin.

Here's the wild thing that I think many fans don't really think about IMO. If Cowher played all of Cowher's career again, we could have won more SBs. So many playoff games come down to a bounce here or there (ask Franco!). If Cowher had a time machine and ran all the games again, does NOD not have a horrible game against Dallas and we somehow win as underdogs? Does Ben not make that tackle? Does some coach on the Seahawks do a better job of scouting how we run trick plays where ARE throws the ball (he was 22/27 for 323 yards and 6 TDs in the NFL...but I don't know how many came after the SB)?

Maybe we win a different SB if BC stays on. Maybe we don't win the other one we did. Who knows...

 

No ****! WHEN?

****, I am going to celebrate!

 

You are probably right that other coaches get fired after a game like the Jags game.

But again...let's look at Cowher through the exact same lens. When do we think other teams would have fired Cowher?

I don't think Cowher wins with Ben on pretty much any other team in the league. Because I think any non-Rooney owner would have fired him by then.

That's another hypothetical that we can't prove. But I think it's probably true. Even if not for all other owners. Certainly many of them.

 

I feel like I need to go to a mental institution just to improve the value of conversation

Do you sell what you smoke? Although my drug days are well past me I would like to be oblivious once in awhile too.

 

I’m thinking SilverBoob reincarnated

 

All this because you didn't know that the BBBs only played 4 (really 3.25) playoff games together.

Remember when I pointed out your first ad hominem post and you were like:





Maybe check your last few...

 

nah. He was forced out.

 

Tomlin had way too much power for way too many years. The Steelers still couldn’t bring themselves to fire him after very dismal post season success.

I really wish the Steelers would have been more supportive of a drastic change at the HC decision. Instead they played it way too safe. I feel as though this will be mediocre Mike 2.0. I desperately hope I’m completely wrong but time will tell. Plenty of time that is. McCarthy will be here at a minimum of 6 seasons.

I guarantee he wasn’t the only option. He was just the “Don’t rock the boat” option.

 

Again...maybe not every owner, but I'm sure guys like Jones or Snyder fire Cowher long before he wins with Ben.

For better AND worse, the Steelers are very very patient.

That's why I was surprised that we fired Canada (even though I was calling for us to fire him at the bye the year before).

 

Personally starting as soon as he had to and quickly winning a SB made his head even bigger and he was less coachable

 

I legit thought he was going to be that GOAT.

Steelers colored glasses...probably. But he was just so amazing early. AND we had such a good team around him.

I know we didn't play Brady in the playoffs often. But if he wasn't in the league (or if he was in the NFC), I think we get more byes in the playoffs. Which helps more than it hurts. Despite how we shat the bed the one time we had a bye with Tomlin.

I really hope we draft an above average QB. Would be great to have that sweet rookie QB contract.

Imagine what we could have done with Ben if we could have fit in another elite player every year for probably the first 6 or so years of his career?

And while it didn't exist yet, the Pats basically got this advantage with Brady because they fell ass-backward into the best QB of all time in the 6th f'n round!

 

I agree that Tomlin was best early when he was young and had less power.

That's why I didn't like the MM hire at first. It's growing on me though. I'm interested to see what (1) an offense coach is like and (2) the change at DC so we don't keep hearing about how the scheme and calls have been the same for the last decade or whatever.

It's a very small sample size, but I think hiring young pretty much unknown guys in Cowher and Tomlin was a great call. Surround them with good coordinators early. And then decisions are probably more collaborative and you get people pushing each other.

I think we saw the opposite of that toward the end with both Tomlin (where I think Austin just did what Tomlin wanted) and with Ben (where he picked Fitch who I think just did what Ben wanted).

I didn't really want to get rid of Tomlin before Ben's injury. I was worried that it would be hard for a new coach to come in and deal with that relationship.

But after he got hurt (especially after the collapse at 11 wins), I was pretty agnostic.

At that point, I believed that the team would probably take a step back in the short term, but be better in the medium term.

This is still what I think will happen with MM. I think we're likely to be worse this year because I don't think we deserved the 4th seed last year. And we'll get better in the medium term IF we can find a good young QB. MM has at least worked with lots of good QBs. Hopefully that helps him find one (I'm not convinced you really develop QBs at the NFL level).

If we can't, then I think we'll take a small step back this year. Then crater if Rooney lets us try to play young QBs...which is probably the best way to find a good young QB. Even though the odds are still against that too.

 

There was a lot is shady sh*t going on during those seasons with the Brady, Patriots, refs and Goodell. I will never forget Hines Ward saying they knew all our plays right before spygate was exposed. Ben and the Steelers probably would have won another SB but just wasn’t fairly given the chance.