Tomlin discussion (from another thread)

Gotassman wrote:

Why don't I like about Tomlin. What's there to like.....but Ill reserve my comments when somebody starts a "Get rid of Tomlin" thread.

Good call. Discussing Tomlin in the Harrison thread would be off topic, so I made this its own thread.

What's there to like about Tomlin? I'll start with this ... it took Tomlin only four seasons to equal the success it took Cowher 14 seasons to achieve. I won't even compare Tomlin to Noll. Football (from the rules on the field to free agency) is way too different now than it was back then. It's impossible to compare the two eras in a fair way. I think it's fair to compare the Cowher and Tomlin eras though. The ultimate goal is to get to and win a Super Bowl. Both Cowher and Tomlin got to two Super Bowls, and they both won one. The difference is that it took Cowher 14 seasons. Tomlin did it in four. Even if we accept the argument that Tomlin won with Cowher's players, it still took him only four seasons to equal what took Cowher 14 seasons.

Many will say that Tomlin won the SB with Cowher's team. Similary to how Gruden won in TB with Dungy's team.

But they'll forget the fact that he returned to the SB two years later (only this one a loss). I think many people tend to jump the gun when the Steelers have a bad season and finish out of the playoffs (or take an early exit from the said playoffs).

Many forget that even Cowher had down years. Heck some people weren't even around when Cowher had his first few bad years. Now Tomlin having back to back questionable years people are calling for his head.

Thankfully the Steelers have never been the knee jerk type owners that make terrible coaching decisions even during bad times. In my book, Tomlin has a free pass for at least another 3-5 years.

stlrtruck wrote:

Many will say that Tomlin won the SB with Cowher's team.

That's the argument I hear all the time. Did Tomlin take over a solid team? Yep, obviously. But everyone always makes it sound like Cowher took over a team with no talent and built it himself. But here's who Cowher had to work with his first season:

Offense
Neil O'Donnell
Barry Foster
Ernie Mills
Yancey Thigpen
Eric Green
Dermontti Dawson
Tunch Ilkin

Defense
Hardy Nickerson
Rod Woodson
Carnell Lake
Greg Lloyd
Levon Kirkland

Cowher also benefited from taking over a team with a lot of talent. You can have tons of talent, but it still takes good coaching to win.

If Tomlin would show more emotions on the sidelines, I think he'd be liked by more fans. sad but true.

fer69 wrote:

If Tomlin would show more emotions on the sidelines, I think he'd be liked by more fans. sad but true.

That might not be far from the truth. Cowher was as popular for his spit-flying sideline tirades as he was winning games. To me though, I care more about substance than style. I don't care if a player is a loud mouth like Porter or reserved like Troy ... as long as he gets the job done. Likewise, I don't care if a coach is a yeller or more reserved ... as long as we win.

I don't think we need to be calling for Tomlins head just yet. Yea he has made some very questionable calls but so have all the other coaches. As long as we have the ability to win games then I am not going to say to much.

I'm not going to compare Tomlin to Cowher....that would be nonsensical. The two men are way too different.

BUT

It's a fact that Tomlin took over a super-bowl calibre team. You'd have to be a real moron to screw it up. Even the 2nd superbowl appearance was largely the same players. But they lost. Now somebody is going to say that "Ya but most teams don't even make it to the big show" Really need to ask ....if Tomlin had taken over Buffalo, or Detroit, would he have been in the superbowl.....somehow I doubt it.

And there lies the rub. Is Tomlin the right guy to rebuild the team. The answer is clearly NO.

2010 - 1st in AFC North, 2011 - 2nd in AFC North, 2012 - 3rd in AFC North. The sad truth is that the Ravens and Bengals have surpassed the Steelers. Under Tomlin, Pittsburg has lost the savage edge. It was always in-your-face, smash'em crash'em, take no prisoners football. Teams would cringe when Steelers rolled into a town or if the opposing team had to play in Pittsburg....yikes. No more. Tomlin may talk the talk but he isn't producing. At the rate he's going, it wouldn't surprise me if the Browns pass the Steelers in a season or two.

I'm not fancy with the numbers. This isn't baseball. Too many guys toss around numbers, comparisons from a statistical basis. I know a little about the science of statistical analysis and the truth is that you can make any argument seem plausible with numbers. For example, Game Day there's always a comparison of two teams that goes something like this " In the past 40 years these teams have met 15 times and Steelers have won 10 of the encounters". What a useless statistic yet people live by that stuff. Football is about what happens on the field and more than any other sport, it's about what are you doing now not what you have done 3 years ago.

Back to Tomlin. His back is against the wall. He knows he has to make changes. Players, coaches, maybe even the waterboy. I just don't think he knows what to do. He can spout the "Standard is the Standard" speech....but just what is the "Standard". Does he really expect a 2nd string player (that's what they were called in the old days) to play as good as a starting player. If yes, then why even bother with high-priced starters. What exactly is the "Standard"....Tomlin doesn't know.

Tomlin should never had let the team crap out and become a mid-rank team. From the day he took over, on day 1, he should have been working on building and building some more. Every morning he should be getting up and asking himself...."What do I do today to improve the team"......that's what I would expect my coach to do for $5.75million per year.

Gotassman wrote:

It's a fact that Tomlin took over a super-bowl calibre team.

Yes, that's a fact. But how many Super Bowls did Cowher win with that same team? It takes a lot more than just having good players to get to the Super Bowl. Among other things, it also takes good coaching. It's not like the Steelers were so dominant that they would have won a Super Bowl regardless of who was coaching them.

After Cowher led them to a Super Bowl victory, they finished the next season 8-8. The same record we had this year. No matter how good a coach is, they're going to have down seasons.

Gotassman wrote:

Tomlin should never had let the team crap out and become a mid-rank team.

It's unrealistic to expect any coach to have a winning team year after year, and never have down years.

After getting to a Super Bowl in the 1995 season (with a strong group of core players he inherited), Cowher followed it up with these seasons from 1998-2000.

1998: 7-9 (3rd in the division)
1999: 6-10 (4th in the division)
2000: 9-7 (3rd in the division)

And then again in 2003, they finished 6-10 (3rd in the division). That's four horrible seasons in a short span under Cowher. Three of those seasons were consecutive, and two of those three were losing seasons. Tomlin's worst season was 8-8. And realistically, we were one Antonio Brown fumble or one Big Ben interception away from being in the playoffs. It was a down year for sure, and the team has lots of problems. But it's nothing that Cowher didn't experience. And Cowher turned the team around and went on to win a Super Bowl. I'm really not sure what you're seeing that makes you think there's no possible way that Tomlin can get the team back on track.

If we start firing coaches after one or two bad seasons, we'll end up just like the Browns ... a new coach and starting over every 3 or 4 years.

As a fan, I understand being frustrated with losing. And I understand taking a look at the team and pointing out the flaws and what needs fixed (at least in our opinions). But suggesting that they fire the head coach is the nuclear option. That's the absolute last resort when there's no other options.

I'm far from a Tomlin apologist. I've hurled plenty of criticism his way (just as I did with Cowher when I felt it was warranted). But I think overall he's a great coach. Is he expected to win the division every season? Is he a failure if we're not in the playoffs every season? Do we fire him, and then fire the next coach the first time he fails to make the playoffs?

Forget Cowher for the time being. I'm not exactly sure why people tend to compare Tomlin to Cowher. The only thing that Tomlin has in common with Cowher, a lot of the players still coached by Tomlin are Cowher finds. Nothing wrong with that but it isn't something that Tomlin deserves praise or criticism with respect to these players. It just is.

The true tests are coming NOW as the Cowher players are aging and getting shoved out of the system. Again, that's the natural progression of football.

What do I see wrong with Tomlin. Absolutely nothing. I don't see anything with Tomlin. Good or bad. I can't say that he's a "great" coach. I can't say that he's a bad coach. All I can say is that I don't have confidence in Tomlin to get the job done. Nobody really wants a new coach every 2-3 years, BUT, nobody really wants to hold on to a coach for the sake of avoiding a revolving door. Me thinks the fans place a lot of trust in the Rooneys and GM to find that "masterful coach", yet experience shows us that is far from a sure thing. Much like finding that franchise QB....it isn't that easy and ya need to go thru a few "duds".

I'm retired now, and a lot of my money is invested in the stock market. The worst thing ya can do in the stock market is to hold on to a stock because you did the research before you bought it and every indication told you that it was a good decision. But now the stock has not panned out but the tendency is to hold on to it, because to dump the stock means that you admit to yourself that the decision was wrong. And by holding on, things just get worse. Sound familiar, because that's how I feel about Tomlin.

A lot of my feelings are "gut feel" Not numbers or comparisons. Just plain old-fashioned observation. And I find that I'm rarely ever wrong when I listen to my "gut". Probably because I've followed football for over 50 years and played a bit too.

Here's what I see. I see a coach who says the right things using catch phrases and gobble-d-goop providing the proverbial "spin" on events. Then at the end of the season. what did we get ....stuff like running game was no good, no consistency, no this, no that. All these problems surface at the end of the season. Yet the problems were there thruout the entire season. And what was Tomlin doing to try and fix things. All I want him to do is to TRY stuff to fix things. maybe a fullback to lead the running game, maybe not. Maybe tweaking the offensive line. maybe changing the receivers around more. Anything, Something. What do these guys do in practice. seems like they just walk thru the same old, same old. Where's the 1/2 time adjustments.....practically non-existent. Just so something and not just stand there with your thumb up your ass relying on the DC and OC to win the game. Tomlin needs to be more hands-on. I don't think Tomlin can do that or does he even know how.. He may be great at being a macro-manager, but I don't think he's great at being a football "coach". Far from it.

Personally (and a lot of people will disagree), I think they made a mistake by hiring a former DC to be the head coach. Me thinks a former OC would have been a better choice. Steelers have always been known for aggressive attack and that's not a task to be handed over to a defensive guy. But it is what it is. It's up to Tomlin to prove me wrong and I really hope I am wrong. But my gut tells me that I'm not!

I really don't care what Cowher did, or didn't do. He was fun to watch no matter what he did and some of his choices were just plain wacked-out. But at least with Cowher, I always had the feeling that the guy was trying. He was always tweaking, adjusting, and surprising us. Boring he was not. To compare Cowhers record with Tomlin just doesn't make sense. Different players, different times, different opponents, even some different rules. It's apples and oranges! You need not to look at Cowhers record....it's meaningless. Rathur, look at Cowher the coach, or Fisher, or Gruden, or Billichuck, or Parcells and then compare these guys to Tomlin. Hell, even compare the Superbowl brothers to Tomlin. Not the so=called statistical numbers. That's for sports-writers. But look at these guys as coaches. I think if anyone really thinks about it, Tomlin would be low on that list.

actully Cowher didn't turn it around until Rooney Kevin Colbet. fact

before Colbert Cowher was trying to run the whole show and he sucked at it had the team in salary cap hell and the talent level was going down. he ran off OC Ron Erhardt which was stupid then he ran off Dick LeBeau.

Rooney had enough and hired Colbert for players and personel and Cowher was just headcoach then.

if anybody got these players it was Colbert and the scouting department.

effyou515 wrote:

before Colbert Cowher was trying to run the whole show and he sucked at it had the team in salary cap hell and the talent level was going down.

Cowher didn't have GM duties. Before Colbert, we had Tom Donahoe. I'm not sure who handled business and administration duties back then (job now held by Omar Khan), but it wasn't Cowher. Cowher's role as coach was the same as Tomlin's is now.

Gotassman wrote:

Forget Cowher for the time being. I'm not exactly sure why people tend to compare Tomlin to Cowher.

They coached in similar eras, so it's fair to compare them. I think it's unfair to compare either of them with Noll though. It was a completely different era. If you look at the 70s teams, the Steelers were able to keep all the great players they drafted for their entire careers. That's a luxury today's coaches don't have. There are other factors that make it difficult to compare the different eras, but free agency is a big one. It's the same as trying to compare players of today with players of the 60s or 70s ... you can't really do it because the game has changed so much. While it's unfair to try to compare Antonio Brown with John Stallworth, it's fair to compare him with Hines Ward.

Most Steelers fans love Cowher. And when we compare his first six seasons with Tomlin's first six seasons, they're almost identical.

Gotassman wrote:

The only thing that Tomlin has in common with Cowher, a lot of the players still coached by Tomlin are Cowher finds. Nothing wrong with that but it isn't something that Tomlin deserves praise or criticism with respect to these players. It just is.

They have a lot more in common than that. Like I said above, their first six seasons are almost identical.
After six seasons, Cowher was 64-32. Tomlin is 63-33. A one-game difference.
Cowher's playoff record was 5-6. Tomlin's is 5-3.
Cowher got to one Super Bowl and lost. Tomlin got to two Super Bowls and won one.

If we want to accept the argument that Tomlin just won with Cowher's players, then we have to accept the fact that Tomlin was more successful with Cowher's players than Cowher was with Cowher's players.

Neither Tomlin nor Cowher took over teams with little talent. As I posted earlier, just as Tomlin took over a team with a lot of talent, so did Cowher.

A lot of fans make it sound easy for any coach to take over a good team and win. There are countless examples of coaches taking over good teams and not winning. Look at Norv Turner in San Diego. He took over a Chargers team that was one of the best in the AFC for years, and he ran it into the ground. It takes more than good players to win. It also takes good coaching.

Gotassman wrote:

The true tests are coming NOW as the Cowher players are aging and getting shoved out of the system. Again, that's the natural progression of football.

We have to be careful how much credit (or blame) we give to the coaches for player selection. Neither Cowher nor Tomlin served as GMs as well as coaches. While they have a say, reloading the team falls primarily on Kevin Colbert.

Right now, Tomlin is at about the same point Cowher was in the late 90s. A lot of the core players Cowher had inherited had left or were old. The team had two losing seasons in three years. Fans were calling for Cowher's head. And then they reloaded and returned to form. Now Tomlin is in the same position, and we'll get to see if he can do what Cowher did. If the team hasn't returned to form after three or four seasons, then it'll be time to start talking about replacing him. There's no way of knowing whether Tomlin will be successful. We'll just have to wait and see.

Gotassman wrote:

Nobody really wants a new coach every 2-3 years, BUT, nobody really wants to hold on to a coach for the sake of avoiding a revolving door. Me thinks the fans place a lot of trust in the Rooneys and GM to find that "masterful coach", yet experience shows us that is far from a sure thing. Much like finding that franchise QB....it isn't that easy and ya need to go thru a few "duds".

I agree that finding a great coach is like trying to find a franchise QB. The Steelers hit a home run two times in a row. And in my opinion, three times in a row. Wouldn't it be better to see if Tomlin can rebuild and turn it around rather than getting rid of him and risk replacing him with a "dud"?

Gotassman wrote:

A lot of my feelings are "gut feel" Not numbers or comparisons. Just plain old-fashioned observation. And I find that I'm rarely ever wrong when I listen to my "gut". Probably because I've followed football for over 50 years and played a bit too.

I'm with you on that. Except my gut likes to lie to me once in a while.

Gotassman wrote:

Here's what I see. I see a coach who says the right things using catch phrases and gobble-d-goop providing the proverbial "spin" on events. Then at the end of the season. what did we get ....stuff like running game was no good, no consistency, no this, no that. All these problems surface at the end of the season. Yet the problems were there thruout the entire season. And what was Tomlin doing to try and fix things. All I want him to do is to TRY stuff to fix things. maybe a fullback to lead the running game, maybe not. Maybe tweaking the offensive line. maybe changing the receivers around more. Anything, Something. What do these guys do in practice. seems like they just walk thru the same old, same old. Where's the 1/2 time adjustments.....practically non-existent. Just so something and not just stand there with your thumb up your ass relying on the DC and OC to win the game. Tomlin needs to be more hands-on. I don't think Tomlin can do that or does he even know how.. He may be great at being a macro-manager, but I don't think he's great at being a football "coach". Far from it.

I don't completely disagree with you here. Like I said earlier, I have my own complaints about Tomlin. And I agree that he's more of a hands-off coach. That's his style. I'm a results kind of guy. I don't care what style you use, as long as it works. With two Super Bowl appearances in six seasons, it's working in my opinion. That's not to say I agree with everything he does and there aren't changes I'd like to see. Hell, I'll find something to complain about no matter who the coach is. But at the end of the day, I think Tomlin has done a good job as coach. The next few seasons will determine whether he's great or just good. Hopefully, I'm right and your gut is wrong.

Gotassman wrote:

To compare Cowhers record with Tomlin just doesn't make sense. Different players, different times, different opponents, even some different rules. It's apples and oranges!

Wait, you just got done telling me that the only reason Tomlin won is because he had Cowher's players.

Gotassman wrote:

You need not to look at Cowhers record....it's meaningless. Rathur, look at Cowher the coach, or Fisher, or Gruden, or Billichuck, or Parcells and then compare these guys to Tomlin. Hell, even compare the Superbowl brothers to Tomlin. Not the so=called statistical numbers. That's for sports-writers. But look at these guys as coaches. I think if anyone really thinks about it, Tomlin would be low on that list.

I could be wrong, but I think you prefer in-your-face coaches. It's a style thing, and there's nothing wrong with that. For me though, I care about winning. I don't care what style you use ... just win. Most Steelers fans love Ben because his image fits the city and team. But if we had a pretty-boy quarterback, it wouldn't bother me at all as long as we're winning Super Bowls. If Tom Brady was the Steelers quarterback, I'd be the biggest Brady fan out there. For me, it's not about style ... it's about results.

Good discussion G. I enjoy it. I'm glad to see you getting more active here.