Hey Tomlin/Colber take note...playoff week 1 it's still defense that wins

[Steel Maniac]

But why don't you say the exact same things about Ben (who's execution is the most important thing for our team's success)?

I think it's still the norm for SB winning teams to go to the playoffs the next year. But, Ben's teams missed twice under 2 different HCs. An analysis like the one you do on Tomlin might also point out that Ben's failure to get to the playoffs after SBs could be related to teams that Ben QB'ed have consistently played down to teams that are viewed as inferior.

Ben's playoff record in the last 8 years is the same as Tomlin's.

Players like Ward told us Ben wasn't a good leader over a decade ago. Brown seems like he'd agree this year. Haley would have said the same thing, I think. Why do you believe one disgruntled ex-employee (Harrison) but not another (Haley), or a potentially soon to be ex-employee (Brown)? Personally, I don't believe any of them (or the talking heads).

I don't think these are legit arguments, but they seem to be similar to the ones you use against Tomlin just directed at Ben (who I think you agree is significantly more important than the HC).

Anyway, I think it's interesting that you call out other posters for not answering the specific questions you ask them...but you just hand wave at everything I've asked you here.

Northern, are seriously blaming Ben for the last 8 years? I mean I could post a pleathera of examples of how that’s false but at this point I think your just grasping at any and everything to deflect from Tomlin. Lol. This is pretty sad.

[Northern_Blitz]

Northern, are seriously blaming Ben for the last 8 years? I mean I could post a pleathera of examples of how that’s false but at this point I think your just grasping at any and everything to deflect from Tomlin. Lol. This is pretty sad.

I specifically said that I don't blame Ben and that I do not believe the arguments in my post above.

But someone who decided beforehand that they were going to blame Ben could use all the arguments you use against Tomlin to attack Ben. Specifically, the recent playoff record you say is bad for both Ben and Tomlin. Especially if you agree with me that the QB is more important than the HC.

Do you agree with me that the QB is more important than the HC for team success?

And the odds of Ben winning another SB have to be lower than Tomlin winning another one because (1) the most likely outcome is that Tomlin is Ben's coach until he retires and (2) Tomlin can be a HC in the NFL (here or elsewhere) for a lot longer than Ben can be a QB.

[Steel Maniac]

I specifically said that I don't blame Ben.

But all the arguments you use against Tomlin could also be leveled against Ben.

I don't understand how you can be consistent and not blame Ben.

no I can’t use the same arguments; ones a player and the other is the coach. Please stop. This isn’t even entertaining. Your making up insane scenarios to try and explain away Tomlin’s shortcomings. This isn’t even debatable.

[NorthCoast]

The Tomlin/Roethlisberger argument is as old as the Belichick/Brady argument. Only difference is Belichick>Tomlin, and Brady>Roethlisberger....

who is successful because of whom.........????

[Mr.wizard]

So, here are a few questions I have about your 3 wins in 8 years.

1) Why 8 years? Throwing out data is a good way to get worse answers in stats, so you generally need a good reason to do it (my preference would almost always be to take all the data available)
a) Since this isn't all of Tomlin's tenure, I think there should be a reason for throwing out some of the data. It looks like the reason is that it doesn't support the conclusion you wanted to make before you started.
b) If you're going to throw out data, why not throw out more data. Why is it 3 wins in 8 years (a little more than the 2.75 expected wins) instead of 3 wins in 4 years (about 2x the 1.38 expected wins)? Again, it looks like you have chosen your time frame to best fit the conclusion you had before you started looking at the data.

2) Why wouldn't byes count as evaluating a coach's playoff performance? The goal of getting to the playoffs is to win the Superbowl. Teams with byes win SBs more than teams without byes. Clearly coaching a team to a first round bye is better than not coaching a team to a bye (or missing the playoffs). How is this benefit captured in your 3 wins in 8 years? It looks like you're intentionally ignoring it because it doesn't fit the conclusion you want to make. I think you're probably right that counting them as wins isn't the right way to go (at least without adding all byes as wins). Below, I've included 1st round byes as an additional criteria to evaluate Tomlin's playoff performance.

3) What is your benchmark? Your stat alone doesn't really mean anything because you don't provide any way to compare it to what you'd expect. Someone could say Marie Curie "only" won 2 Nobel Prizes. But, saying that would be stupid because there are only 4 people that have won 2 Nobel prizes and no one has ever won 3.

In that case, here is Tomlin's playoff performance vs. the benchmark of expected or "average" performance:
- 1 SB win in 11 years. Expected number of SBs = 0.34. Tomlin has approximately 3x more SBs than expected.
- 3 1st round byes in 11 years. Expected number of 1st round byes = 1.38. Tomlin has more than 2x more 1st round byes than expected.
- 8 Playoff wins in 11 years. Expected number of playoff wins = 3.78. Tomlin has more than 2x more than the expected playoff wins.

It seems like you interpret anyone who isn't solidly "fire Tomlin" as a "Tomlin ball washer". These stats don't mean that he's perfect. But, it does mean that he's done far better than the expected playoff performance. Surely this is in part due to having a very good QB. But, I've put numbers up about his playoff performance vs. other teams with franchise QBs. I believe the only ones that did better were the Pats (best dynasty ever) and Seahawks (all data from QB on a rookie contract). I'd say that's pretty good.

If you want to propose a different benchmark (or different benchmarks), I'd love to see them. But, I think that your 3 playoff wins in 8 years is intellectually dishonest and intentionally misleading. Doing that is great if your goal is to preach to the choir. But if you want to find the truth or convince people that don't agree with you, I think steel manning the opposite side of the argument will probably get you further.

This is an excellent post and I agree that a first round bye should get some credit, why does a coach get credit for a wild card win and a coach get no credit for a first round bye.

[Northern_Blitz]

The Tomlin/Roethlisberger argument is as old as the Belichick/Brady argument. Only difference is Belichick>Tomlin, and Brady>Roethlisberger....

who is successful because of whom.........????

This is exactly what I'm trying to say. I don't see how anyone can know the effect of one on the other.

But, I do believe that the impact of a QB is more important than the HC in the vast majority of cases (with BB being the potential exception).

[steeler_fan_in_t.o.]

I think our biggest issues is lack of talent on the D side of the ball and back luck in terms of turnovers and a kicker losing it.

There were coaching issues this year (particularly continuing to put a LB on a WR3), but I think their importance was dwarfed by the issues above.

I think you need to update your quote to "3 playoff wins and 3 1st round byes in 8 years".

If you count the byes as wins (because they advance through the wild card round), that's more than twice the number of wins as an average NFL team (11 playoff wins / year * 8 years / 32 teams = 2.75 expected wins in 8 years).

But, "Fire Mike Tomlin because he had 218% of the expected playoff wins over 8 years!" doesn't work as well as your (intentionally?) misleading quote. [edit : the math is a bit of here. Didn't realize the date range was cherry picked. I updated it on the next page.]

If you are going to count byes as wins then you have to change the total # of playoff wins per year to 15 from 11 as 4 teams earn byes/wins.

Not adding to the Fire Tomlin / Retain Tomlin debate, just a bit of a math pragmatist.

[NorthCoast]

It’s worth noting that a 9-6-1 team would have made the playoffs in 5 of the last 10 seasons, so there too the Steelers were a tad unlucky.

.............

[Northern_Blitz]

If you are going to count byes as wins then you have to change the total # of playoff wins per year to 15 from 11 as 4 teams earn byes/wins.

Not adding to the Fire Tomlin / Retain Tomlin debate, just a bit of a math pragmatist.

Agreed that that would have been a better approach. But, I think that separating byes out (as in the later post) is probably less confusing.

[Ernie]

.............

50=50... a coin flip.

[RuthlessBurgher]

It’s worth noting that a 9-6-1 team would have made the playoffs in 5 of the last 10 seasons, so there too the Steelers were a tad unlucky.

It's worth noting that:

The Ravens needed to win 6 of their last 7 games to sneak a half game ahead of us for the AFC North title.

AND

The Colts needed to win 9 of their last 10 games to sneak a half game ahead of us for the final wild card spot.

[Ernie]

It's worth noting that:

The Ravens needed to win 6 of their last 7 games to sneak a half game ahead of us for the AFC North title.

AND

The Colts needed to win 9 of their last 10 games to sneak a half game ahead of us for the final wild card spot.

and we needed to lose 4 out of our last 6 to complete one of the worst meltdowns in team history

[Steel Maniac]

With the season on the line, we lost to the Raiders. And lost control of our destiny. Nuff said.

[RuthlessBurgher]

and we needed to lose 4 out of our last 6 to complete one of the worst meltdowns in team history

All weird losses too. We outplayed both the Chargers and the Saints, but multiple obvious ridiculous calls by the refs in both games each resulted in long TD's for the opposition or critical 4th down conversions that extended the game. The Denver loss happened because we threw 2 picks, plus lost 2 fumbles, and our defense responded with 0 takeaways (you can't expect to beat any team in this league with a -4 turnover differential). The Oakland game was the first game that I did not see in over a decade (I was able to watch at least some of the first half live but none of the second half, and couldn't bring myself to go back and watch it after the fact), but it featured the bizarre decision to hold Ben out until the last drive of the game, plus it featured a couple of Boswell misses from 39 and 40 yards in a game that ended up being decided by 3 points.

Earlier in the year, we managed to tie Cleveland in spite of throwing 3 INT and losing 3 fumbles as well, and getting only 1 takeaway back (a -5 turnover differential in one game is mind-bogglingly bad), plus Boswell missed a potential game winning FG kick in OT. And against the Chiefs and Ravens, we fell behind in the those games 21-0 and 14-0 in the first quarters of those respective games, and although we were able to come back to tie each game by halftime, it seems that our play calling was off after having to play come-from-behind for so long in those games.

Odd, odd season.

[Northern_Blitz]

All weird losses too. We outplayed both the Chargers and the Saints, but multiple obvious ridiculous calls by the refs in both games each resulted in long TD's for the opposition or critical 4th down conversions that extended the game. The Denver loss happened because we threw 2 picks, plus lost 2 fumbles, and our defense responded with 0 takeaways (you can't expect to beat any team in this league with a -4 turnover differential). The Oakland game was the first game that I did not see in over a decade (I was able to watch at least some of the first half live but none of the second half, and couldn't bring myself to go back and watch it after the fact), but it featured the bizarre decision to hold Ben out until the last drive of the game, plus it featured a couple of Boswell misses from 39 and 40 yards in a game that ended up being decided by 3 points.

Earlier in the year, we managed to tie Cleveland in spite of throwing 3 INT and losing 3 fumbles as well, and getting only 1 takeaway back (a -5 turnover differential in one game is mind-bogglingly bad), plus Boswell missed a potential game winning FG kick in OT. And against the Chiefs and Ravens, we fell behind in the those games 21-0 and 14-0 in the first quarters of those respective games, and although we were able to come back to tie each game by halftime, it seems that our play calling was off after having to play come-from-behind for so long in those games.

Odd, odd season.

Yep. Maybe it's the price we pay for doing so well in close games for the 4 seasons before this one.

Hoping that the oddities get back to "normal" levels next season.