What are Reasonable Expectations for Mike McCarthy in year one with the Steelers?

In 2003 the Steelers were 24th in first quarter points.
In 2004 they were first in first quarter points.
In 2016 4th in 1st quarter points.
In 2021 they were last.

Yay!!! Cherry picking meaningless stats.

 

Maddox was QB in 2003.

 

The steelers were also first in 2005.If 2016 is the only year that they were in the top 5 in the Tomlin era,it speak volume.It mean Cowher had more top 5 in this stats when he had Ben that Tomlin!

 

2016, Steelers had both Bell and Brown healthy. And I would credit Todd Haley more for that year's success than Popcorn.

 

Ben was a slow starter and an strong finisher.

This is just who he was. It doesn't make him bad (he's obviously going to the HoF...should be 1st ballot).

I think the slow starts were big contributing factors to many of these heartbreaking losses.

And the strong finishes gave us many of the most glorious moments for the team since the 70s teams.

And the thing about having Ben was that you always had hope. Even after what must be the worst first quarter / half in playoff history (Browns game), we at least made it watchable in the 2nd half.

 

So what?

Does the stat mean anything? Do teams that finish with X first quarter points win more games?

I have not looked into, but I strongly suspect it is not a meaningful stat.

 

Starting games well is very important, especially when your offense isn't built to come from behind. Like the 2004 and 2005 offenses, which were above average, they were much better when they had the lead or at least weren't down early.It's the same for Kyle Shanahan's offense with the 49ers,they are not built to comeback from big deficit

So it's important to have that urgency at the start, which was often a problem under Tomlin, even in the killer b's era, especially on the road. At home, it happened more often, that's for sure but they were in their best in a 2 minutes offense when Ben had more power in the playcalling

 

Ok. Sure. I will buy all that.

But if you score 3 points in the first quarter and 27 in the second....doesn't that get you to the same place?

You have identified a stat but does it mean anything?

 

Sure but the odds to score 30 points in a half is much better when you score 10-14 points in the first quarter instead of 3 points!

 

Scoring early (and generating a lead) can dramatically change how the other team plays.

We can see that pretty clearly from the 2025 & 2024 Steelers.

We were built as a running team in both years.

We had the 7th highest pass% in the league in 2025 (7th lowest run%). And the 5th highest pass% in 2024.
https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/passing-play-pct

In 2025, we were 25th in 1st Q points (3.9). In 2024, we were 27th in 1st Q points (2.7).
https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/1st-quarter-points-per-game

IMO, this is not because we wanted to pass a lot. We can see this by the conscious decision to go into both of these years with only 1 NFL WR on the team. Seems very likely that we passed a lot because we felt like we had to pass a lot because we were trailing early a lot.

 

Won't debate any of that.

But here is the data: https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/1st-quarter-points-per-game?date=2026-02-09

Site lets you scroll through the last 20 years or so. Some years it is a list of playoff teams. Some years it is a list of non-playoff teams. Some years it is a list of overall high quality offenses that score a lot of points. Some years it is not.

Not sure if the stat actually correlates with any meaningful outcome over time.

 

I want to go purchase some 2026-2027 memorabilia with AFC champions and SB champions. Anything less sux.

 

we hope the o line will be better but Jones is still projected to be LT, coming off surgery, we havent found a replacement for Seumalo and Fantenu is still developing at RT. And AR is a year older in his 40’s.

 

Well other than that

 

Ahh. People People People. You can think Ben is a HOF player, and still recognize when he cost the team. I can't think of a HOF Qb that didn't cost his team at different times. Not one. If You know Your D is the weakness of the team as during that time of the Jags it was. Especially after losing certain players. You can not then put Your team in a hole like Roethlisberger did in both Jags game that season. Yes He came back in the one, but he wouldn't have to if he didn't put them in a hole. This doesn't take away from him being HOF.
Again I can't name a HOF Qb that hasn't cost their team before. Some way more than others.

 

Brett Favre was worse than Ben. Much worse. Pretty sure Favre threw more INT's than TDs. But Favre is HOF... and rightfully so.

 

TD 508 INT 336

But he did have some bad years with more INT than TD

 

Brett Favre was amazing in the playoffs(and regular season) in the 1990s.But in the 2000s,too many awful game or late game decision in the playoffs

 

The problem is that Steelersfan43 is just responding to people here saying that Ben is a slow starter. He didn't bring it up. He is responding to other people's claims that Ben is.

Someone here is trying to say that the Steelers scoring 42 points in that Jags playoff game is meaningless because if the Steelers were within 7 points the entire game, he contends that they would have barely scored on the Jags because Ben didn't play well.

Ben must have scored all 45 of those points for the Jaguars I guess. This way Ben could continue to score all those meaningless points trying to chase down the Jaguars against prevent defense. The Steelers defense apparently didn't have much to do with any of it.

I'm not sure how anybody comes up with that reasoning, but that is an absolutely real take by someone in this thread.

 

Some of these guys will go to any length to put 0 blame on a HC that hasn’t won a playoff game in a decade before retiring. Thankfully he did retire because AR2 certainly wouldn’t have fired him. Ever.

 

It appears that Ben Roethlisberger has become the whipping boy for any failures during his time with the Steelers. Some seem intent on blindly protecting the legacy of Mike Tomlin, and they absolve him of any blame for anything. Others hate Big Ben for a multitude of reasons, and no matter how many Super Bowls he led the team to or won, in the minds of those people he was the reason they didn't win more.

The thing that is dumbfounding is that some fans will under no circumstances blame the defense in any way, shape, manner, or form, for any losses the Steelers may have had. It's the damnedest thing to listen to people that supposedly watch and understand football try to explain away the Steelers playing the worst stretch of playoff defense in the history of the NFL.

We have the same fans talking about the horrible slow starts and getting blown out in playoff games but never mention game planning. Game planning is the responsibility of the coaching staff. The coaching staff operates at the direction of the head coach. Then throw in the fact that the defense and the game planning is the baby of the head coach.

It is in the playoffs that game planning is the most important and the most prevalent. During the regular season, teams generally don't game plan for an opponent the way they do in the playoffs. They just don't. This is understood within football. So when a team consistently come out of the gate slow, and the opposing team seems to take advantage on both sides of the ball......it SCREAMS bad game planning and coaching.

I am not someone that constantly hammers Tomlin. I really like him, but there are some things that happened with the defense, particularly over the last 9-10 years, that simply can't be ignored and explained away. The deficiencies were real. Routinely getting outcoached and blown out in the playoffs became the norm.

They can't keep rubbing the point that Mike Tomlin kept regular season games close and won the majority of those games in everyone's faces and call it Tomlin's superpower, and then pretend it doesn't matter when the team is getting boat raced right out of the gate over and over again when game planning is most important, and the defense is supposed to be the constant, and what the team is built on and leans on in the playoffs.

It doesn't pass the smell test.

 

I will speak only for myself naturally

Everything you point to with Tomlin is justified

My gripe with Ben is he had more physical talent than Brady or Peyton but most certainly did not put in the same effort

Maybe he doesn’t have the same smarts as those two but at least put in full effort

He did not

IMHO

 

You can't be a very good QB for 15 years in the NFL and being lazy or you would be out of the league after 8-9 years max because you are washed

Brady and Peyton are 2 all-time great,nothing wrong to not be great like them

 

Nope you are not correct

When you could be great and you don't put in the effort and settle for very good yet take the paycheck yes that is wrong

But I understand you and I have very different ethical standards

Clearly

 

Again,you can't be a strong QB for 15 years in this league if you don't put enough effort