The lethal combination of Tomlin and Rooney

Sure, why?

 

I wouldn't have been opposed to taking chances, losing and rebuilding.

But it's very clear that wasn't what Tomlin's boss wanted him to do. Rooney paid Tomlin to make the playoffs (or at least not play meaningless regular season games). And I think it's true that we played fewer than 5 regular season games where we knew we were eliminated from the playoffs at the beginning of the week. And the actual number might be zero. That was Tomlin executing the mission of the team.

How do you think we would have done relative to that mission with the following QBs consistently throwing into tight windows surrounded by defenders AND?

Here are your choices:

• Mason
• Duck
• Mason
• Post-Injury Ben
• Mitch
• Kenny
• older-Mason
• Fields
• Old-Wilson
• Old-Rodgers

IIRC, Duck threw over the middle a fair amount. And it worked...until it didn't. Mitch threw over the middle a lot. Often to the other team. Kenny threw more high risk passes early. Also ended up in opposing hands. Some of these were kind of unfortunate bounces...I remember one squirting out of Muth's hands...but I think we found over time that Kenny had poor accuracy and would very often throw high and behind guys. Fields was good at running. And probably was a better passer when constrained in this system instead of when other teams forced him to be Superman and he'd be a turnover machine. I thought Wilson played around average until the fumble against Baltimore.

For me, old-Rodgers is the only person on this list who I trust throwing high danger balls and still winning games. But, maybe you can remind us how many TDs he threw in the playoffs...and which teams he threw them to?

Pretty much everyone else on the list was bad at throwing the football. Especially in tight windows with lots of opposing players. Again...with the exception of Rodgers. Who I think just ended up trying to force something against a very good D...the game was already over before the 2nd DTD.

 

I don't care about QBs that Tomlin had to work with post-2018. Irrelevant.

Chuck Noll won playoff games with Mark Malone and Bubby Brister.

Bill Cowher won playoff games with Neil O'Donnell, Mike Tomczak, Kordell Stewart and Tommy Maddox.

Noll and Cowher had the defense up to standard to make up for the lack of elite talent at QB. Tomlin, a coach with background in defense, clearly did not, post-2018... with lackluster QBs.

 

Good discussion!

This all started when I said remember back to when #86 and #82 would take short crossing routes to the house, and then Tomlin removed that part of the game plan, thus making it easier to defend our offense.

Many times these quick hitting passes are uncontested and many times it's a tight window. It's obviously the first read so if it isn't there, go to option #2.

My premise was that a certain play used to reward us with a lot of TD's or large gains, Tomlin removed that play from our playbook because, in his words, it can lead to turnovers. Any type of pass play can lead to turnovers and when you remove a certain type of play, it simply makes it easier for the defense.

 

Crossing routes require you to cross over the middle, right? Where the defenders are? I don't think you'll find many uncontested passes over the middle in the NFL.

If you're talking about quick hitting passes on in-breaking routes that you throw to the WR right off the line, I don't think those were removed from the offense. I think that was almost our entire passing offense for a while (along with deep back shoulder passes down the line). Aside: If you want to blame Tomlin for poor strategy (which I think you do), I think it's a better argument to point out that we consistently didn't contest these plays on D because we were much more worried about not giving up big plays. I think this is a big reason why we sucked at getting off the field last season. Note that this was really bad in 2025, but not nearly as bad in previous years)

If you're interested in what our passing actually looked like, here's a post from the Depot from 2022 that shows Kenny's pass attempts through the first 9 weeks of the season.
https://steelersdepot.com/2022/11/s...ass-locations-game-situations-through-week-9/

I think this shows that your idea that we weren't throwing quick hitting passes to WRs breaking in is false. Routes aren't shown, but you can guess based on the location of the attempts.

The first image shows that we avoided throwing between the has marks in the first half of games. But not in the second. Pretty clear the strategy here is to not lose with turnovers early. Keep it close. Then try to win at the end. You may remember that people would often point out how Kenny played well at the end of games. You may also remember that Cowher used a similar strategy with Ben. Keep games close by being conservative early...play not to lose early. Let Ben win at the end. Of course Kenny was no where near what Ben was.

The second image shows pass breakdowns early vs. late downs. Seems to me were were more successful on early downs. And used more of the field. Late downs there were a lot of the short in breaking routes you say we didn't do. And a lot of back throws down the sideline (I assume back shoulder because Kenny was good at throwing these)...but they were mostly unsuccessful.

So I think this data pretty much invalidates your premise.

Again...we played not to lose for most of the game with the poor QBs we had. Then we tried to win late. And I think it's pretty hard to argue that it wasn't the best way to win games with the QBs we had. We let other teams with more talent (especially at QB) beat themselves. Which works reasonable well in the regular season. But not against the best teams in the league in the playoffs.

I think this is a good read looking at the effect of turnovers (not turnover differential) on win%.
https://www.ganggreennation.com/201...-tremendous-value-of-ball-security-in-the-nfl



The effect of having even one turnover is pretty huge.

And my guess is that if you subdivide the win% by teams who can't score more than 23 points, the drop in win% from a single turnover is even worse. Just a guess though.

ETA: Here's another good chart from that post. This is good information to know when people talk about expecting the D to stop the other team after turnovers. It's much harder to do when you give the other team a short field. Almost 2x as like to score (TD or FG) after getting the ball off a turnover. Also almost 2x more likely to score a TD. Probably because you're usually starting around mid-field instead of your own 25 or so.

 

Short quick slant routes aka Jerry Rice

 

Those charts in the first half of the 2022 season for Kenny,prove that the steelers avoid the middle of the field(from 10 yards or more) in the first half like you said but remember the first 4 starts of Kenny in 2022,they were down by 10 points or more(or 31-3 in Buffalo at halftime!)in 3 of those games and they attack the field more often when they had no choice since they were down

This is a horrible strategy,it handcuffs way too much the offense and it's tough to watch....At least under Cowher they were a great first half team when he had Roethlisberger,one of the best offense in PPG in 2004 and 2005....Ben could attack downfield,even if the pass attempts was low and this is why they had the lead often after the first half

 

So many years wasted.

 

Kind of like the Dark Ages in history

 

TLDR I mean those 6-8 yard bang bang plays. They just need to hit a hole in the D. I think HW and AB were WR's correct?

 

I'm glad TJ, and others, are beginning to see the light and call it out for what it is. It wasn't long ago TJ said he didn't want to play for any other coach.

 

This is acceptable for some Tomlin fan on this board....

 

It certainly makes for the most boring games possible.

But I just think there's no way we win as many games as we did with Duck / Mason / Mitch / Kenny / Fields / Wilson if we were chucking the ball all over the field.

They were just bad QBs.

Re: Ben in his rookie year 2004.

I imagine that the users here skew older and that most of us remember this season.

But here the Steelers passing stats from 2004. https://www.nfl.com/stats/team-stats/offense/passing/2004/reg/all

• Attempts 358 (32nd)
• Completions 228 (31st)
• Comp% 63.7% (9th) <-- these first 3 stats tell us we were very conservative, but completed passes when we attempted them.
• Passing yards 2970 (26th)
• Yards / Attempt 8.3 (4th) <-- again, we didn't pass much, but Ben bombed it often...he was the king of the broken play
• TDs 20 (19th) <-- Ben was kind of the anti-Kenny. 5.8% TD%. Not a lot of passes, but made them count.
• INTs 13 (t-8th) <-- Despite the fewest attempts in the league, 8th most picks. If you want to know why we threw fewer times than anyone else in the league, this is why. Tomin isn't the only Steelers coach who hated INTs. 3.7% INT%. For context Mitch averaged out to a little lower INT% in his 2 years with us (10 INT / 287 attempts = 3.6%). The difference is that Ben was really good at scoring too.
• Sacks 36 (15th) <-- Fewest attempts, average number of sacks. Honestly, I think this was partly coaching too. I think Cowher probably told him to eat it if he didn't have a play to make.

The idea that we were an aggressive passing team with Cowher+Ben in 2004 doesn't hold water.

I agree that Ben threw deep a lot. But a lot of that was on broken plays too. And I'd imagine Ben would tell us that most of those plays weren't called in over the headset. He just drew them up in the dirt.

Re: Passing stats by quarter

Do you have data that shows that we passed early in 2004? My recollection is the opposite of that. That the strategy was run early. Pass late to let Ben win.

IIRC that's a big part of why we were successful against the Broncos in the 2005 playoffs. We surprised them by attacking early. Ben's 29 pass attempts in that game were the most he'd ever thrown in the playoffs. Even in the playoff loss to the Pats the year before (41-27), Ben only had 24 pass attempts.

 

It's not only acceptable for Tomlin fans here, it's acceptable for Tomlin fans everywhere, because their agenda isn't about football or the Steelers.

 

BS

There is not one member of this board that thinks that is acceptable



Some just don’t whine ***** and moan non stop about Tomlin like you do

 

You can instantly tell who has actually played sports on a message board, and who hasn't just by things they say.

 

You were in the band right?

 

No , I actually played ball with a WR who has won not one ,but two SBs.
I did play in a band with a guy who actually played DE, and played in the band at halftime

 

Thank You for proving my point

 

Bill Belichick... you know, the coach who won 6 Super Bowls over 20 years.... never played football.

 

I was on the Swim team

I was slow

Very slow

I still swim

Slowly

 

I played little league football and baseball. And ran cross country. Played non-American football (soccer).