All Boxes have Officially Been Checked

Loss to an easily beatable team (Cleveland) ..... Check

Embarrassing collapse to end a season .... Check

Finger pointing and locker room behavior problems .... Check

Sure looks like a typical Mike Tomlin coached team to me.

Disclaimer ** The following is a Mike Tomlin rant. If you are easily offended by negativity, or negative comments regarding Mike Tomlin, then this thread probably isn't for you. These opinions do not reflect the views of TSF management or affiliates. Neither TSF management nor TDFW may be held liable for bunched panties, increased blood pressure, or general feelings of sour grapes apologists may feel from participating in this thread. In short, this is your opportunity to turn back now. **

I am going to lay it on the line. Mike Tomlin does not suck. Mike Tomlin is AVERAGE. He is incredibly average. He is in no way shape or form a great head coach. Just average. Tomlin coached teams are average. The guy walked into a great situation in 2007, and to his credit, won a Super Bowl and went to another. The guy has been incredibly average ever since. A couple of playoff wins over a ridiculously long span of years does not make you legendary, it makes you, again, average. In fact, the only thing Mike Tomlin is legendary at, is his ability to hold on to an NFL coaching job.

Mike Tomlin talks a great game. He is undoubtedly a great mentor to young players. Players love playing for him, and he most definitely gets more out of his players than many other coaches would. Tomlin combines those attributes with poor game management skills, poor team management skills, and lackluster schemes that are easily picked apart by better coaches. When you combine all these attributes, you again end up with a very average head coach.

It is an absolute shame, that my family, ages 76 the whole way down to 2, got together on Christmas day, to watch the Springdale Dynamos take on the Kansas City Chiefs. I shouldn't even disrespect the Springdale Dynamos in this way, because at least the Dynamos would have covered Travis Kelce. It's not losing to the Chiefs that is upsetting. Everybody loses to the Chiefs. It's the way the Steelers lost. The team was an absolute mess on Christmas day. I would call it embarrassing, but efforts like that are so commonplace now that I'm used to it.

Let me preemptively debunk a few responses right off the jump.

The Steelers can't hire a better head coach. (Not true. If average is the standard, there are plenty of other guys that can get you to average with this roster.)

Mike Tomlin can coach for any team he wants to. (This is correct! And the team that hires him will be average as hell for the next 5 years.)

It's not Tomlin, it's the players. (When your game preparation/management is average, and schemes aren't working, frustration sets in. Lack of discipline is 100% on coaching.)

The very sad truth is that the Pittsburgh Steelers will never win another Super Bowl with Tomlin as coach. This fact, combined with the fact that Mike Tomlin will coach here seemingly forever, leaves me with a morbid thought. There is a good chance many of us will be dead before the Steelers win another Super Bowl. I hate to even type that, but lets face it. None of us are getting any younger, and the Steelers don't even know who their quarterback is going to be in 2025.

So for those of you who want to spew hate, but are intimidated by the positivity patrol, here is a thread just for you. I can't believe no one has ever thought of a Bash Mike Tomlin thread before. I am literally a creative genius, and this has to be the first of it's kind. Let the hate run through your veins about the Steelers collapse, and cleanse your soul here. Now bash away, bash away, bash away all...

 

I’ll save SteelersGlenn again this time. Look at me. I think we are at defcon 5 for Tomlin bashing. Everything has been said already and nothing will change. See ya in 2025, 2026, 2027 and on and on and on. My Bengals friends can’t believe how much we bash the guy. At this point they can have him. I’ll even help him pack but truth of the matter is he ain’t going anywhere. Bring on our next playoff loss.

 

Just great, I'll absolutely be dead before the Pirates ever win a WS and now probably the Steelers. I agree with OP we are a long way off from being relevant I agree about Tomlin but as I said in another thread he is respected by NFL fans who don't pay close attention to our team. I hear it all the time.

AFCN has the 2 longest tenured HC's. Your still #1 Mike.

Hell, even the Pitt Panthers lost their Bowl game. Maybe the BB team will make it into March Madness?

 

Oh and Tomlin won a super bowl with Bill Cowher players.

 

At least Penn St. still has a shot. I'm sure they will blow it once they get into the final four. But they should beat Boise, and watching them win in the first real NCAA playoffs was fun.

 

You put a lot into this post, so obviously you care a lot. I understand the frustration you have, I think it’s safe to say we all do. If you look back to the start of the season when the schedule came out everyone knew how bad things could get at the end of the season given the TV series generated schedule. Playing the Eagles, Ravens and Chiefs in 11 days in December is one hell of an obstacle, let alone having to deal with the Hard Knocks production team around your facility on a daily basis. There is no coaching to correct Russell Wilson throwing the pick he threw, and no coaching to fix injuries. There is no coaching to stop Wilson from fumbling the ball on the second play of the game. There is no coaching that can generate the bad luck we’ve seen on fumbles bouncing the wrong way. I do think there is plenty of criticism that Tomlin deserves as well as many others.

the important thing is what happens going forward and how they finish the season. He has to course correct. If you remember, the Eagles crashed and burned last year to the point they were about to fire their coach. Now, a year later they may be the best team in the NFL. My point is that you cannot fix the past, you can’t bring old players back and you can’t eliminate injury. You have to move forward and try to finish the season strong. We needed Fields Wednesday and didn’t have him. We have a playoff birth, that should be the focus. I’m not so sure a wild card isn’t better for us. We will likely play the Texans in the first round. If we win the division we could end up with the Ravens first round. Either way, we have to win in the road eventually. Drink a beer and relax, it will be ok.

 

They already had him. His name is Marvin Lewis!

 

It's hard to argue with much of the original post. There's just too much evidence on the table, and too many often repeated patterns.

Fixes? - If he's going nowhere then he needs to get the hell out of the way and hire some proper co-ordinators on both offense and defense (I'm ok with AS for another year, I'm guessing Tomlin is meddling) - he needs to throw away the 2005 basic defense every top QB/HC combo can destroy. I don't blame TA, the defense is Tomlin's. Get some better positional coaches too. He needs to put his ego to one side, stop believing fair the weather ball washers like ESPN and Rich Eisen, and take a long hard look at what's actually happening every year, and why. Then he needs to focus on what his strengths are, which is the day to day behind the scenes and coaching mentoring. It's 18 years now and he still isn't even a competent game manager, no idea how you're going to fix that, because if that repsonsibilty is removed from him, then he's not a HC.

None of that is going to happen of course, so until Rooney wakes up and makes some tough decisions or we somehow stumble on another Franchise QB to carry him, then this is the low ceiling and high floor for this team, and with it the never-ending purgatory of medicocrity.

The fact is he's been here too long, it's all gone stale he's stuck in the past, the blueprint he's working from doesn't work any more, and he can't/won't change, or allow other voices to help.

 

When the head coaching position changed they became his players. His accomplishments are his own. His failings are his own as well.

 

Timmons, Woodley and Mendenhall were Tomlin's players... but yeah, the rest were Cowher's players. Mendenhall was on IR for 2008 season.

 

Pitt started out 7-0 and then lost their last 6 games to finish the season culminating in the embarrassing 6 OT loss to Toledo in the Uptown Funk Bowl or whatever it was called.

 

Poor Glenn he is probably curled up in the fetal position after reading this thread.

 

Must be something in the water.

 

I’d say he’s above average. But after 18 years with the same team, he’s stale. A change in scenery like Reid going from the Eagles to the Chiefs will do him well. We might regress for a couple years but will rebound and get better

 

Yeah they share the same stadium and locker room. Maybe there is a virus hanging around the locker room called unleashhellitus.

 

Lots of satire intended in my post. But to your point, I am frustrated. Injuries are going to happen every year. As a coach you can't just never have an answer. At this point it's a lot like watching the same movie over and over again, and then getting pissed off when you don't like the ending.

I agree with a lot of what you wrote. I also agree that playing an equally banged up Texans team looks like an easier win. So is that what the once proud Steelers franchise is reduced to? Praying we don't win the division, so we can eek out a win over an equally sh!tty playoff team?

 

To my credit I did post a disclaimer. I can't wait for the day Glenn suggests this thread be moved to the NFL forum because Tomlin is coaching the Bears.

 

Only been saying this for about 6/7 years now glad to see most everyone is on board. The Tomlin blow hards will never fault him for anything it’s actually quite mind boggling. He has some voodoo hex on people I swear.

 

but, but, he's never had a losing record.

 

Here comes the Tomlin defense team lead by Summerfan, Steelerrule6, and STD

 

OP nailed it.

Nothing else to say.

It sucks to be a Steelers fan with the mediocre head-coach emeritus apparently making tenure or part of a union and can't be fired for imcompetence or lack of results.
All we can hope for is that GM puts so many good players on the field, even Tomlin can't completely wreck it. We might win it all in spite of a handicapped head coach, but that's like lottery odds at this point.

 

Don’t forget JEH and Glemm. What a gang I call them the squad. Similar to that group of women who talk in the morning lead by Whoopi

 

I can see it now we get the 5 seed and pull out a win over that awful dumpster fire Houston team then get absolutely destroyed in KC and Tomlin will be the toast of the town.

 

A head coach can only do so much. Look at the Cowher years. Cowher put competitive teams out there year after year for the most part. Constantly coming up short until Ben. Look how fast we won one after we got Ben.

Belichick looked smart when he had Brady and not so smart after he left.

Reid looks smart because he has Mahomes.

I seem to remember Noll struggling when Bradshaw was done.

More than ever the NFL is QB central to success.

Wilson is past prime and no longer franchise material, but even that addition helped us for a time.

I think if we had Mahomes and KC had Fields/Wilson, our records would probably be reversed.