Mike Tomlin, three .500 seasons and three nine win seasons.

[Buzz]

Cowher and Tomlin really are essentially the same when it comes to winning/results

[Joel Buchsbaum]

Cowher won with jokers at QB like Tomazck, Stewart, Graham, and the mediocre O'Donnell and Tomzack. Playoff games. With quarterbacks like this and no running game for years the margin for error or stupid coaching mistakes was thin. He didn't exactly have Bell or Brown either. yet he won with what he had. Once Ben came around things took off. How would Tomlin do? He have more losses on his resume, that's for sure.

[Joel Buchsbaum]

I think if you started with these criticisms, you’d get agreement out of most folks.

On the flip side, Tomlin doesn’t have complete control over the roster, injuries, etc. which can make a big difference in final performance.

In fairness, he’s gotten to 500 with a team with Duck as their best QB. He got us to the playoffs with a team who’s run D fell apart last year and an O that could barely move the ball.

We’ve had some bad luck with players like AB and Bell. We’ve had a lot tied up in the O and a unit that’s struggled immensely and we still played well enough to be better than many teams.

Sure Tomlin deserves blame for every season we don’t win a SB cause the buck stops with him. But he’s also a great coach and individual and you can’t not see that in his interaction with current and former players, interviews, and all the comments we hear from others.

Perfect? No. Bad coach? No.

We just need a combo of the right players, coaches, health, and luck and Tomlin can be good enough to get the job done. A little luck and your whole perspective could change in a heartbeat.

None of these coaches are as good as people say. And none are as bad. The real answer is usually somewhere in the middle imho.

Right, Tomlin is somewhere in the middle and has been below par relative to the talent he has for the last six years. Just to be clear, he did a fine job when initially taking over. Tomiln was .500 with Duck on a good team. Cowher won 10, 11, 12, and 13 games with O'donnell, Stewart, Graham, Miller and Maddox for 12 years. Tomlin only had Duck/Rudolph playing for one year and finished 8-8. One year of sub par QB play for Tomlin, that's it! Huge difference even the most harden Tomlin backers would have to admit this. But I suspect most of them will remain silent.

As far as star diva's go, yeah Tomiln doesn't handle them as well. Who were Cowher's divas? My point, if your were out of line Cowher did not used kid gloves and was in your face. Injuries are part of Football. No coach has complete control over everything. Cowher had his share, example Rod Woodson was gone for the year, and left as a free agent.

[feltdizz]

Cowher won with jokers at QB like Tomazck, Stewart, Graham, and the mediocre O'Donnell and Tomzack. Playoff games. With quarterbacks like this and no running game for years the margin for error or stupid coaching mistakes was thin. He didn't exactly have Bell or Brown either. yet he won with what he had. Once Ben came around things took off. How would Tomlin do? He have more losses on his resume, that's for sure.

No running game for years?

Its hard to take all these post serious when you make a glaring mistake like this.

Cowher had Barry Foster, Bam Morris and Bettis. More times than not we were ranked top 5 as a team when it came to running the football.

Did you actually watch these Cowher teams?

and O’Donnell wasn’t mediocre. He was a good QB who threw 2 terrible INT’s in the SB and many blame the inexperienced WR for not running the correct route.

[feltdizz]

Right, Tomlin is somewhere in the middle and has been below par relative to the talent he has for the last six years. Just to be clear, he did a fine job when initially taking over. Tomiln was .500 with Duck on a good team. Cowher won 10, 11, 12, and 13 games with O'donnell, Stewart, Graham, Miller and Maddox for 12 years. Tomlin only had Duck/Rudolph playing for one year and finished 8-8. One year of sub par QB play for Tomlin, that's it! Huge difference even the most harden Tomlin backers would have to admit this. But I suspect most of them will remain silent.

As far as star diva's go, yeah Tomiln doesn't handle them as well. Who were Cowher's divas? My point, if your were out of line Cowher did not used kid gloves and was in your face. Injuries are part of Football. No coach has complete control over everything. Cowher had his share, example Rod Woodson was gone for the year, and left as a free agent.

what you fail to realize we had almost $50 mill in cap space tied up between Ben and AB who didn’t play in 2019.

Guarantee if Cowher had the equivalent of $50 mill in cap space unavailable his team would struggle to perform.

and I know we love Ben but he had sub par play and probably should’ve been moved but we know why he was able to stay.

and yes, Cowher had his divas and trouble makers. Porter spitting on a player and getting ejected for fighting before a game.

Plenty of players said Cowhers spitting only worked the first time and then players became numb to it. Like a parent who always yells. Eventually you realize its just an act. Cowher also told Ben to stop riding the bike without a helmet and Ben shrugged him off.

Grown men can’t police grown men, especially one’s who make more than the head coach.

[Northern_Blitz]

They both won Super Bowls in their second seasons with Ben Roethlisberger. Shame Cowher didn't have more to work with at the QB position for his first 12 years.

I agree. Just like it's a shame that Ben / Tomlin had to compete against prime Brady / BB basically the whole time.

But even if Cowher kept coaching, he still would have had to deal with rebuilding the D. And I don't think it's possible to replace Troy.

So I agree with you if you're saying that Ben (and Troy and the rest of the players) were more important to the team's success than Cowher and Tomlin were.

The Steelers under Cowher were better relative to the rest of the AFC than Tomlin's teams have been.

I think that's because the game changed to favor the QB more and more. RBs used to be much more important to team success than they seem to be now. It's much harder to win playing Marty / Cowher ball these days. But it was a very good strategy in the 90s IMO.

[Oviedo]

No running game for years?

Its hard to take all these post serious when you make a glaring mistake like this.

Cowher had Barry Foster, Bam Morris and Bettis. More times than not we were ranked top 5 as a team when it came to running the football.

Did you actually watch these Cowher teams?

and O’Donnell wasn’t mediocre. He was a good QB who threw 2 terrible INT’s in the SB and many blame the inexperienced WR for not running the correct route.

Bettis carried Cowher. Cowher had no clue how to put together an offense. How many OCs did he go through?

He was just lucky that the rule changes favoring the passing game didn't start to really impact the game til the end of his coaching career

[Northern_Blitz]

Well Tomiln inherited Ben not to mention a good team around him and a future HOF GM and he still has a losing record in the playoffs. There's you difference between him and Reid. Reid doesn't rely on a coordinator. He runs the offense all by himself and developed Mahomes. And of course he 3 games above .500 in the playoffs.

He is now.

But you wouldn't have hired Reid in KC if a winning playoff record was the metric you evaluated coaches on.

Just like you would have fired Cowher long before he ever had a winning playoff record.

[Northern_Blitz]

I think if you started with these criticisms, you’d get agreement out of most folks.

On the flip side, Tomlin doesn’t have complete control over the roster, injuries, etc. which can make a big difference in final performance.

In fairness, he’s gotten to 500 with a team with Duck as their best QB. He got us to the playoffs with a team who’s run D fell apart last year and an O that could barely move the ball.

We’ve had some bad luck with players like AB and Bell. We’ve had a lot tied up in the O and a unit that’s struggled immensely and we still played well enough to be better than many teams.

Sure Tomlin deserves blame for every season we don’t win a SB cause the buck stops with him. But he’s also a great coach and individual and you can’t not see that in his interaction with current and former players, interviews, and all the comments we hear from others.

Perfect? No. Bad coach? No.

We just need a combo of the right players, coaches, health, and luck and Tomlin can be good enough to get the job done. A little luck and your whole perspective could change in a heartbeat.

None of these coaches are as good as people say. And none are as bad. The real answer is usually somewhere in the middle imho.

It will be interesting to see how we do over the next few seasons.

It's essentially a full rebuild now.

We'd expect reversion to the mean here because no team can be consistently competitive forever.

But we'll see how it goes.

[Northern_Blitz]

Cowher had bad losses, too, and I'm not talking about playoff games. 1995 expansion Jacksonville, 1999 expansion Cleveland, 2002 expansion Houston.

And people who make the "he losses to bad teams more than he should" argument don't seem to understand that they are also arguing that "he wins against good teams more than he should" because one can't be true without the other when you consider his overall record.

But the logic of it doesn't matter because they have a conclusion and are looking only to confirm it (while ignoring any evidence to the contrary). At least that seems to be the case from the constant discussions we have on here.