The lethal combination of Tomlin and Rooney

But 1-4 at home in the AFCCG happened.

 

Here comes the fan boy talk

 

6 afc title game in 15 years and 4 in 12 years without a franchise QB is very impressive!...Imagine if he had prime Ben for 12 years

 

Some fans just love to tear down one coach then praise the other coach, that's why I push back on them mostly having fun with it.

 

It's hard to know.

Bell was flat out dominant in that 2016 playoff run. If that Bell showed up and payed all the way through in NE on against the Rats in 2014, it makes the job of both the offense and defense much easier.

We can say that it didn't matter. Or that it did. And it's impossible to know the truth.

But the argument I was responding to was that we should have won more playoff games when we had the elite talent of the Killer B's in the playoffs.

My point is that happened a lot less than even educated fans would think if they don't actually check.

For the record, I think at least part of this is coaching. Because we used Bell too much in the regular season because until Warren, Tomlin never really had a tandem at RB.

Part of this is likely due to the salary cap constraints that got tighter and tighter as Ben got deeper and deeper into his career. Because he (reasonably IMO) kept taking up more and more of the cap%. Which made depth everywhere else worse. And we (reasonably IMO) didn't go the Bengal's route of just not caring about defense.

 

When people say the bold part, I think they usually imagine just plopping Ben onto all those earlier rosters that Cowher had.

But that's not how it works in a salary cap league.

When you had a guy who's taking up among the highest cap% in the league, it means that the rest of the roster gets worse. So those teams would need to drop Woodson (and more)...or Lloyd (and more)...or Dawson (and more).

I think this is a big part of why Cowher wanted an OT instead of a QB (per Dan Rooney).

 

Or Dan Marino from '92-'00.

 

Me too.

And there are legit complaints I have about Tomlin.

Which is part of the reason I push back on complaints I think are not legit. Because I think it diminishes the real things I don't think he did well (e.g., no RB load sharing until Warren, screwed up relationship management with Blount which maybe cost us a SB appearance, very gut focused seemed to be very anti-analytics).

But it's a whole package. I can't just change the things I don't like about him.

But the best example of that is Ben, not Tomlin. The thing that made Ben great was his willingness to take insane risks and deliver. And this risk/reward calculation worked well early in his career. I think this is also why he's got basically the worst increase in INT% in the playoffs when compared to his peers (QBs from that generation who will go to the HoF easily). Does taking away that comfort with risk get rid of the pick-6 in the GB SB? Does it mean he throws it away or goes to ground instead of the fumble-6 against Jax? Does it mean he throws fewer than 4 picks in the playoff game against CLE? Maybe.

But does it also mean he doesn't do all of the absolutely magnificent "pull the rabbit out of the hat" plays we got to watch almost every week until at at least the GB SB? Or that he doesn't throw that ball to Holmes?

Ben and Troy were the most entertaining players I've ever watched. And we got to watch them on the same team. And it was glorious. And I wouldn't want Ben to be less comfortable with risk even if it meant we won a couple more WC games or whatever.

The chances that he took us to more than 3 SBs and got us more than 2 championships are very very small. But Brady and Mahomes have destroyed the idea of reasonable expectations for QBs IMO.

Even if we "only" look at what he did with Tomlin, there are many very good QBs who never went to 2 SBs.

It would have been great to do even better than he did. But in the history of the NFL, it's almost unheard of.

 

It certainly is.

Cowher was also a good coach.

It's also true that NOD was better with us than most people remember IMO. Especially in the SB year.

It would be interesting to see what would have happened if we kept him. I think he wouldn't have fallen apart like he did with the Jets. I don't think he would have been Ben. But I do think he would have been at least more consistent than Stewart. Maybe the highs wouldn't have been as high though.

Kordell really did some amazing things on the field (when he wasn't skipping balls at WRs feet). He came into the league too early. And probably not on the best team re: offensive flexibility. While I really don't like Harbaugh because of all the complaining...but I respect how he was willing to totally revamp their offense (with his job on the line) to tailor it to Lamar.

 

The rookie contract of that time for high draft pick was not a cheap at that time and the killer B's era were a very talented team.The steelers rarely lose talent in free agency at that time (in the 2000s and most of the 2010s)...Yes they could have spend more money in free agency but the steelers were almost always quiet in free agency....The only time the steelers were in cap hell during the prime of Roethlisberger was from 2011 to 2013 and it was because the salary cap were lower because of the new cba in 2011...The only time the contract of Ben was bad,it was in his last 3 years in his career when he was not the same QB

 

Did you watch a lot of football in the early 1990's?

In Cowher's first year as coach, the SB MVP (Aikman) threw for 3100 yards and 15 TDs. The overall MVP (Young) threw for 3465 and 25 TDs.

In 2025 Rodgers threw for 3322 and 24 TDs in what most people regard as a middling campaign. The 2025 overall MVP (Stafford) threw for 4707 and 46 TDs.

For most of Cowher's tenure, the NFL wasn't playing the same sport as they are now. Your fundamental points of comparison just don't work. Give Cowher a QB for much of the 1990's and it wouldn't have made all that much difference. All he needed was a QB that didn't turn the ball over at the the absolute worst times. That was about it.

 

It's true that we didn't get the massive advantage of the rookie contract.

But you can have a look at Ben's cap% over time at OTC. I have.

His cap% still increased substantially over time. Before we added the dummy years in his last year (to push cap hits for the team past Ben's retirement), he had the highest cap hit in the league.

I agree that we were (and are) very even keel with the cap. Never selling out the future to win now (like the Rams) or only spending to the minimum to weasel as much profit as possible (like the pre-Burrow Bengals). This put constraints on both Cowher and Tomlin that other teams who spend more liberally on the cap might not have.

 

Also this thread is absolutely hilarious.

Don't check in for like a month....and it just comes back to the same thing.

Guys need to drink more, or less, or something. Pet more dogs?

 

Your excuses for Tomlin are genuinely pathetic. And I'm guessing your reason for all the excuses is equally disgusting.

 

Wow...it's impressive how quickly you went to personal attacks because the facts hurt.

Is it so hard to admit that we haven't had any elite talent in our last few playoff appearances?

 

I'm curious what excuses you will make for these facts:

1. In the 38 years under Noll and Cowher combined, the Steelers played in 45 playoff games for an average of 1.184 playoff games per year, and won 28 for an average of .737 playoff wins per year.

2. In the 19 years under Tomlin the Steelers played in 20 playoff games for an average of 1.05 playoff games per year, and won 8 for an average of .400 playoff wins per year; with zero playoff wins for his last 9 years.

3. And Noll inherited the worst team in the league winning a grand total of 13 games in his first three years.

4. And we all know what Tomlin inherited.

 

A few things..

I don’t think Ben liked or respected Cowher. He often talks about how he was handcuffed and if he threw an INT they would take the ball out of his hands. He also ignored the request to not ride a motorcycle. Lastly, Cowher had no intentions of playing Ben his rookie year. We got lucky with injuries to Maddox and Batch.

One other point, the NFL pretty much took the biggest weapon away from us due to our defense knocking guys out of games. We were a physical defense that punished opponents into submission and the NFL said it was bad for business once JH admitted he loved seeing guys leave games and not return.

One thing I think both coaches suffered from was bad defensive break downs in big games. Just always seemed like Cowhers teams played tight in AFCCG’s and usually had a break down that led to an easy TD.

Same with Tomlin later in his career. We couldn’t stop anyone the last decade once the playoffs started and we usually had a stupid turnover or unforced error that forced us to throw out the game plan.

 

Tomlin inherited an 8-8 team and a talented QB who was hard headed af and even admitted he was a poor leader early in his career.

but he also inherited Troy who was the best Steeler in my lifetime.