A Steelers trade to think about.

This notion, among a few, of a poor OL is why there are still some holdouts claiming Tomlin had to "will them to victory" as if we had a bottom 10 talented team. Nearly every position group is subpar, so a 9-8 or 10-7 record were more Tomlin magic, blah, blah, blah.

God, how did Tomlin fleece so many for THIS long? We have underperformed for 10+ years (plus some) and somehow, Tomlin is still the only thing that held it together? There is some SEVERE horse blinders on some posters here.

The OL was VERY talented last year and above average. With the right coach it could have been top 3 or 4 unit. If we can figure out LT or if Jones can blossom under new leadership, we WILL be top 3 OL unit this year. Add in a COMPETENT offensive gameplan, and we should exceed our best scoring average of the past 6 or 7 years by a wide margin, even with a so-so WR unit. That's how BAD Tomlin was at game-planning, coordinator hiring and worst of all, complete lack of aggression. His rope-a-dope doesn't work against well-coached teams, thus the constant playoff embarrassments for over a DECADE. SAD he's still well thought of by a select few.

 

I see now that Tomlin is retired he has a lot more time to ride around rent free in some of your heads

 

We had a young team relatively speaking. Our main weakness being a lack of talent in the WR room and poor defensive performance, despite having a decent amount of talent on that side of the ball. Personally our coordinators were a massive issue too. Smith was the best we've had in years, and even he wasn't high end. We've suffered through the Fichtner's, Canada's, Butler's, and Austin's of the world... We've had talented teams that have been poorly coordinated and haven't gotten above line QB play. The fact that we've succeeded anyways is a testament to the roster, and the player's ability to win games on the field based off of simply being better than their competition. It was a calling card of Tomlin to "do what we do" and just line up and try to impose our will on the opposition. The fact that we were successful while doing that shows that our roster was well positioned. If you have a poor roster, that is a recipe to lose a ton of games. In a world where the offensive minds have developed at a high level, the old school mentality forced us to have a good roster or simply just lose. We had a good roster.

I think the notion of "Tomlin Magic" had a lot to do with NFL people having zero confidence in our QB play, and because of that figured that we were a 6-7 win team. When we didn't get bottom tier performance out of Fields/Wilson and Rodgers, the team was good enough to win games with this mediocre QB play. That isn't to say that I think Tomlin gets no credit, but simply put, this roster couldn't win without being talented. Tomlin brought nothing to the table in terms of x's and o's compared to the high tier football minds today. What he brought was valuable and important, but it wasn't schematic.

 

Well, when a coach is around for nearly 20 years and then we replace him... there's going to be a lot of comparison for a few years. Its only natural. Plus, we haven't seen this team play a game coached by someone else yet...

It will go away soon enough, but the comparisons are human nature. The Tomlin lovers are going to eat up a poor season, while the haters are going to have a lot to say if we win (or win a post-season game). Tomlin talk is going to be rampant this season, no matter which direction the season goes.

 

He played on a team with more talent than 90% of college teams. Period. They haven't been below top 10 in recruiting in over 10 years. Hell they haven't been below top 5 for most of those years.

 

Don’t confuse him with facts