The deal with Tomlin

Look, I used to be a Tomlin basher a few years ago. Since then, I've come around a little, to the point where I'm fairly neutral about him. He has the support of the players, it seems, and that's a big plus, because not every coach can say that. Our organization is stable because we don't rotate head coaches every week like the Browns. We should be thankful for that.

Whenever someone says Tomlin should be fired, someone else is right there to reiterate all he's done. Two SB trips, one of them a win, no losing seasons, etc etc. And that's fine. I think it's important that we remember that, because he's accomplished things some coaches could only dream of doing.

However, I also think it's important to look to the future. And the bottom line is, typically when we struggle in games, it's because Tomlin is getting out-coached (other times it's because we have injuries). Bellicheck is able to win so much because he's put a decent team together, nothing special, and he out-coaches everyone. It's as simple as that.

So, the way I see it, we will not win another SB until one of three things happen:
1) Tomlin starts laying out more sophisticated game plans
2) Tomlin gets coordinators who can do that for him, or
3) We get a head coach who can actually out-coach, and out-think, his competitors.

We can talk about Tomlin's past accomplishments all day long. The league changes over time, just as players do, just as gameplans do. And as I look to the future, all I see is more of the same that we got last night.

What do y'all think?

 

We play the way we do because it is what Ben excels at. Ben can't play Peyton Manning or Drew Breeze ball.

 

NFL.COM wrote an article absolutely eviscerating Tomlin today and talking about how Bill just basically made him look like a bumbling idiot. Not sure if it was a pats homer that wrote it or not but DANG!

 

I think the problem is not so much sophisticated gameplanning. Haley has a tendency to out-think himself, after all. And there wasn't really too much that was sophisticated about BB's plan.

More to the point - and at the risk of being 'that guy' you mentioned... we won 9 straight games, and destroyed the Dolphins and the Chiefs. The thing that was utterly, utterly frustrating about the loss to NE was precisely that the team that showed up was not the team we've become accustomed to of late.

When we struggle in games, it can be coaching decisions; it can also be injuries, execution, or even - even - the other team being better, or just a bit more energised because of the ease of their schedule and their homefield advantage at this stage in the season (recent play-off history says the Pats lose when they play away).

However: last night we had a dumb strategy for defense, no doubt.

 

It was an extremely embarrassing loss and made this franchise look horribly inferior...

 

You're not at all 'that guy', I actually think it's very relevant to talk about what happened this season. I personally haven't been a fan of Haley since he came in, so maybe I'm a little biased on that front talking about coordinators. But when you look across the board, I don't think the Pats are three touchdowns better than us in talent, even with our injuries. Even at home. I don't really know what to look at other then coaches and motivation at this point, and I think those go hand-in-hand.

You're very right, it was frustrating because it wasn't the team we were accustomed to seeing late in the season, and I don't think that team showed up in KC either. Consistency is definitely a big issue, and it's both the players' and the coaches' responsibility to solve it.

Thing is, consistency has been an issue for a very long time. I don't know how to fix it, and I don't see it getting better any time soon without some changes.

 

Don't want him to. My gripe is mainly with the defensive strategy. Offense is stagnant because we don't have a #2 WR.

 

My beef about the coaching is simply this one area: adjustments. As in, lack of. This team *never* adjusts during games. Ever. (ok, sometimes... but not often) When we start on a roll, we stick to it - the other team adjusts, sometimes to the good, others not so much, and we win. When we start out sluggish or something isn't working - we stick to it. See a pattern there?

We can blame execution all we want, but when the coach/coordinators aren't adjusting game plans due to inefficient plays, injuries, etc, then that's solely on them.

 

I'm starting to wonder how much of a liability Ben is. Are we in shotgun all the time because of some limitation Ben has? We need Ben under center and if for some reason he can't be, then he's hurting us as much as he's helping us.

 

I think Tomlin accidentally pushed the "unleash hell" button instead of the "get these assholes" button.

 

Might have been Stephen A Smith. He was HOT today! LOL!

 

I noticed that too, Ben might have an undisclosed injury?

 

Yes we do...but he was suspended for a year for a selfish a**hole!

 

Actually that injury has been disclosed for weeks. It's a bad knee. PWP diagnosed it. Try and keep up.

 

Off topic, but I wanted to ask you how you are feeling today health-wise. I know you said yesterday you were sicky. I hope you are feeling a little better.

 

I really appreciate you asking. I'm feeling better. I'm supposing that I had a really bad sinus infection but all I know is that I felt super awful. My wife was gone this weekend on a retreat with her mom's church and I had the kids. I started feeling pretty bad on Saturday but couldn't really rest because of daddy duty and finally went and got some benadryl on Saturday evening and took it after putting the kids to bed. I woke up feeling worse yesterday morning and pretty much slept all day once my wife got home. Then after the game last night I took two more benadryls and some melatonin and laid down and woke up feeling quite a bit better. I was sweating in my sleep like crazy and maybe I sweated some of it out. I just lounged around today and will be back in the saddle for tomorrow. We've had a ton of people around here apparently getting the flu and I'm super glad I didn't get that!

 

Happy to hear you are feeling better. It can really wear you down. Take it as easy as possible, get plenty of rest, and keep taking good care of yourself. You will be back to being your bad self before you know it.

 

Honestly man, who did we play at the end of the season. We had a very easy schedule to end the season and was able to beat a hobbled ravens team. Bengals were in shambles.

I'm not going to bang my chest about beating a dolphins team led by Matt Moore because with the talent difference if we lost to them Tomlin should have been fired that day.

The Chiefs are a tough match up but in all honestly did Tomlin win that game or did the Chiefs and Reid just shoot them selves in the foot? From my vantage point the Chiefs win that game all day long if they did one play different, despite all their mistakes we barely beat them. If Kelce caught that 40 yard pass they score. Smith just overthrew a streaking Maclin for a bomb on a badly beat Burns. Holding on Harrison erased a tying 2 pointer which goes to overtime where chiefs have all momentum at home. Roethlisberger wasn't driving us to a victory at the end of that game, he barely got us a 1st down to run out the clock. Plus I'm from the Philly area, Reid is not a great coach when it matters, that's why eagles fans hated him in the end, they had great records and no hardware.

 

If you going to play "coulda woulda shoulda" then essentially there's little point in discussing. If we win it's because the other team lost it, and if we lose it's because we were outcoached.

From that logic, it would seem that either we're an awful team that somehow managed to get to the AFCCG through flukes which happen to no other team whatsoever...
Or we're an amazing team that should be beating everyone by 60 points and Tomlin alone is somehow holding everyone back.

But we can't be both at the same time, surely?

 

HA! Yeah no doubt.

 

Here's a tell-it-like-it-is article from the Boston Globe.
Is it the truth or B.S.??? What do you think?
https://pittsburgh.forums.rivals.co...-tomlin-and-keith-butlers-defense-was.106843/

 

Truth. I can't much if anything in there I would disagree with. We were pathetically out coached by someone who understands what it means to REALLY game plan for a team. Not just "we do what we do"