Rooney Brown meeting

[Northern_Blitz]

I agree. And what makes it worse is the recent success of the cheaters. When you see a team like that in the AFCC game, year after year after year and 9 super bowl appearances since '01, it skews the measure of success for all the other, otherwise-successful teams.

I ageee that the Pats make it harder for me to have reasonable expectations

[squidkid]

I get it. I'm always disappointed in the moment when we don't win the SB (or when we miss the playoffs).

My point is just that I think our expectations as Steelers fans are too high based on our past success.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with fans having expectations that are too high.

But, I think it's emotion that pushes those expectations into the "too high" range. It's part of what's fun about being a fan.

Ultimately, I'm glad we have an ownership group that doesn't make decisions based on those expectations. I think that's a good way to make your team worse.

so, you agreed with me on every season except one. you thought we over achieved at the #3 seed
im not glad that the ownership doesnt have high expectations. i can see a year or two or underachieving, but to have so many seasons under, maybe 1 over and 1 right at expectations doesnt warrant keeping the 1 constant during the time period

[Northern_Blitz]

so, you agreed with me on every season except one. you thought we over achieved at the #3 seed
im not glad that the ownership doesnt have high expectations. i can see a year or two or underachieving, but to have so many seasons under, maybe 1 over and 1 right at expectations doesnt warrant keeping the 1 constant during the time period

I guess I think thinking the result sucked isn't the same as thinking we under achieved. Or thinking changing the coach would have made a difference.

Tomlin didn't miss any FGs or drop any INTs last year.

He didn't turn the ball over twice early in the Jax game or damage Shaziers spine.

He didn't injure Bell for playoff games, or knock Brown out against the Bengals... Although I do think not splitting carries with Blount when he was here was a big mistake.

Many of the things that cause losses in playoff games come down to randomness IMO.

But in the longer run we've seen over Tomlin's career, the Steelers under Tomlin outperformed their regular season seeding in the playoffs.

[squidkid]

I guess I think thinking the result sucked isn't the same as thinking we under achieved. Or thinking changing the coach would have made a difference.

Tomlin didn't miss any FGs or drop any INTs last year.

He didn't turn the ball over twice early in the Jax game or damage Shaziers spine.

He didn't injure Bell for playoff games, or knock Brown out against the Bengals... Although I do think not splitting carries with Blount when he was here was a big mistake.

Many of the things that cause losses in playoff games come down to randomness IMO.

But in the longer run we've seen over Tomlin's career, the Steelers under Tomlin outperformed their regular season seeding in the playoffs.

and how many of those years did they underachieve their seeding? ....2014, 2015, 2016
he did keep ben on the sideline vs oak
he did on several occasions not have the team fired up and prepared
tomlin had the ability to bring in kicker earlier. he didnt
he was suppose to be a secondary guru. where are the impact dbs? he drafts and coaches those guys

[Northern_Blitz]

and how many of those years did they underachieve their seeding? ....2014, 2015, 2016
he did keep ben on the sideline vs oak
he did on several occasions not have the team fired up and prepared
tomlin had the ability to bring in kicker earlier. he didnt
he was suppose to be a secondary guru. where are the impact dbs? he drafts and coaches those guys

This is a good question.

I'll update the table on pg 22 to add a column to include over / under achieved vs seed in each year.

I'll do it for Tomlin in this post and Cowher in the next post. Have a bit of a busy morning but I'll do it this afternoon

-------------------------------------

Edited to add:

Year	Seed	Over/Under	WC	Div	AFCC	SB	WC	DIV	AFCC	SB
2007	4	Under	0				1	0
2008	2	Over		1	1	1		1	0
2010	2	Over		1	1	0		1	0
2011	5	Push	0				0
2014	3	Under	0				1	0
2015	6	Over	1	0			0
2016	3	Over	1	1	0		1	0
2017	2	Under		0				1	0
	Totals		2	3	2	1	3	3	0	0

The Steelers have been in the playoffs 8 seasons under Tomlin.

They exceeded expectations 4/8 years (2008, 2010, 2015, 2016). The games they won that they weren't expected to included 1 WC, 1 Div, 2 AFCC, 1 SB.

They met expectations 1/8 years (2011), losing a WC game as the 5th seed.

They fell short of expectations 3/8 years (2007, 2014, 2017). The games they were expected to in but didn't included 2 WC, 1 Div.

So what we saw before was that the Steelers under Tomlin exceeded expectations across his whole tenure in the playoffs.

What we see here is that the Steelers under Tomlin (1) exceeded playoff expectations more often than they fell short of expectations, and (2) "pay off" in the exceeding years was more than the the "price" of missed expectations by the count of 2 AFCCs and 1 SB.

I think part of the "anti Tomlin" sentiment is recency bias. I think the question is "did he lose the team or is this just luck / randomness?".

I'll provide Cowher's info in the next post. Maybe that will give us some context.

Note: Squid, in your post you said that the Steelers fell short of expected performance in 2014, 2015, and 2016. But, they actually outperformed their seed in 2 of those three years.

[Northern_Blitz]

Updated Cowher Table

Year	Seed	Over / Under	WC	Div	AFCC	SB	WC	DIV	AFCC	SB
1992	1	Under		0				1	1	0.5
1993	6	Push	0				0
1994	1	Under		1	0			1	1	0.5
1995	2	Over		1	1	0		1	0
1996	3	Push	1	0			1	0
1997	2	Push		1	0			1	0
2001	1	Under		1	0			1	1	0.5
2002	3	Push	1	0			1	0
2004	1	Under		1	0			1	1	0.5
2005	6	Over	1	1	1	1	0
	Totals		3	6	2	1	2	6	4	2

The Steelers made the playoffs 10 seasons under Cowher.

They exceeded expectations 2/10 years (1995, 2005). The games they won that they weren't expected to included 1 Div, 2 AFCC, 1 SB.

They met expectations 4/10 years.

They fell short of expectations 4/10 years (92, 94, 01, 04) these were all years where they were the #1 seed. The games they were expected to in but didn't included 1 Div, 4 AFCC, 2 SB...at least he's not Marv Levy.

What we see here is that the Steelers under Cowher (1) fell short of playoff expectations more often than they exceeded of expectations, and (2) "price" of missing expectations exceeded the "payoff" of exceeded expectations by the count of 2 AFCCs and 1 SB.

So when Maniac says that he compares our current Steelers teams to past Steelers teams, maybe he should acknowledge that Tomlin does better vs. regular season expectations than Cowher does?

[Northern_Blitz]

I think that this is kind of an interesting set of data.

We know that Tomlin has a better regular season record (0.654) than Cowher (.623). But, Cowher has higher seeds. Is this because the Pats have been so good since Tomlin has been here that they suck up the 1st seed? Or is it that Tomlin's down years have still been at or above 500 so his teams have less variance?

Have the Steelers under Tomlin been better in the regular season because of the better record, or under Cowher because of the seeds? I'd tend to think that Cowher's Steelers had more success in the regular season coach because the ultimate goal in the regular season is to get home field advantage and they did a better job doing that. And their records aren't really that much different (0.4 games / year)

But it seems pretty clear that the Steelers under Tomlin have done better in the playoffs vs. expectations than they did under Cowher.

[pittpete]

I just got BINGO!!!!!!!

[squidkid]

This is a good question.

I'll update the table on pg 22 to add a column to include over / under achieved vs seed in each year.

I'll do it for Tomlin in this post and Cowher in the next post. Have a bit of a busy morning but I'll do it this afternoon

-------------------------------------

Edited to add:

Year	Seed	Over/Under	WC	Div	AFCC	SB	WC	DIV	AFCC	SB
2007	4	Under	0				1	0
2008	2	Over		1	1	1		1	0
2010	2	Over		1	1	0		1	0
2011	5	Push	0				0
2014	3	Under	0				1	0
2015	6	Over	1	0			0
2016	3	Over	1	1	0		1	0
2017	2	Under		0				1	0
	Totals		2	3	2	1	3	3	0	0

The Steelers have been in the playoffs 8 seasons under Tomlin.

They exceeded expectations 4/8 years (2008, 2010, 2015, 2016). The games they won that they weren't expected to included 1 WC, 1 Div, 2 AFCC, 1 SB.

They met expectations 1/8 years (2011), losing a WC game as the 5th seed.

They fell short of expectations 3/8 years (2007, 2014, 2017). The games they were expected to in but didn't included 2 WC, 1 Div.

So what we saw before was that the Steelers under Tomlin exceeded expectations across his whole tenure in the playoffs.

What we see here is that the Steelers under Tomlin (1) exceeded playoff expectations more often than they fell short of expectations, and (2) "pay off" in the exceeding years was more than the the "price" of missed expectations by the count of 2 AFCCs and 1 SB.

I think part of the "anti Tomlin" sentiment is recency bias. I think the question is "did he lose the team or is this just luck / randomness?".

I'll provide Cowher's info in the next post. Maybe that will give us some context.

Note: Squid, in your post you said that the Steelers fell short of expected performance in 2014, 2015, and 2016. But, they actually outperformed their seed in 2 of those three years.

first off, nice job
when i went and looked at individual seasons 2016 for example, i considered that underachieving(lower seeding)because they lost regular season games to the likes of 7-9 eagles, 10-6 dolphins, 8-8 ravens, not terrible teams but team worse than us and winning all or a few of those games would have given us a higher seeding
2015- 5-11 ravens, 5-11 ravens
2011- 10-6 houston,
2010- 11-5 saints, 12-4 ravens, 11-5 jets all good teams but 2 out of the 3 had worse records than us............
so in my opinion those seasons are more underachieving because they didnt win games against lesser opponents. i know that all team lose to lesser teams, but im just looking at underachieving steelers teams , not other nfl teams.

now onto non playoff seasons
2018- cannot be described as anything other than a total failure.
2013 losses to 7-9 titans, 8-8 ravens, 5-11 vikings, 4-12 raiders, 8-8 ravens(some bad losses)
2012 losses to 4-12 raiders, 6-10 titans, 5-11 browns, 7-9 chargers, 8-8 cowboys.(some real bad losses in there)
2009- losses to 7-9 bears, 4-12 chiefs, 9-7 ravens, 5-11 raiders, 5-11 browns (some real basd losses there too)

so as far as i am concerned, when you look at the years we didnt even make the playoffs, we underachieved by losing to a lot of bad teams making our non playoff years really pathetic

[Buzz]

Cowher underachieved. Tomlin underachieved. Guess it's now the acceptable standard for the Steelers, as long as we don't have losing seasons.

Meanwhile, over in New England, they expect to win Super Bowls.

[Northern_Blitz]

first off, nice job
when i went and looked at individual seasons 2016 for example, i considered that underachieving(lower seeding)because they lost regular season games to the likes of 7-9 eagles, 10-6 dolphins, 8-8 ravens, not terrible teams but team worse than us and winning all or a few of those games would have given us a higher seeding
2015- 5-11 ravens, 5-11 ravens
2011- 10-6 houston,
2010- 11-5 saints, 12-4 ravens, 11-5 jets all good teams but 2 out of the 3 had worse records than us............
so in my opinion those seasons are more underachieving because they didnt win games against lesser opponents. i know that all team lose to lesser teams, but im just looking at underachieving steelers teams , not other nfl teams.

now onto non playoff seasons
2018- cannot be described as anything other than a total failure.
2013 losses to 7-9 titans, 8-8 ravens, 5-11 vikings, 4-12 raiders, 8-8 ravens(some bad losses)
2012 losses to 4-12 raiders, 6-10 titans, 5-11 browns, 7-9 chargers, 8-8 cowboys.(some real bad losses in there)
2009- losses to 7-9 bears, 4-12 chiefs, 9-7 ravens, 5-11 raiders, 5-11 browns (some real basd losses there too)

so as far as i am concerned, when you look at the years we didnt even make the playoffs, we underachieved by losing to a lot of bad teams making our non playoff years really pathetic

Again, it's certainly fair to look at it this way. Edited to addAlthough I think it's unreasonable to think that we should never lose to teams with worse records. And if we did that, we'd also have to go through and give credit for beating any teams with better records (would that mean we over achieved this year because we beat the Rats and the Pats?)

Any individual season that doesn't end in a SB win is a disappointment.

But, should you fire your coaching / rebuild your team when you don't win the SB every year? Clearly the answer is no, because even the Pats (and Noll) didn't meet this standard.

Just like clearly the answer would be yes if you miss the playoffs every year (see: Browns, Cleveland).

So, what's the middle ground where expectations are reasonable?

Since Tomlin has been coach:
- We've had the 2nd or 3rd best record in the regular season (Pats were 1st last time I looked, then it was either us or GB...maybe us now because GB hasn't been great in the last few years despite having a better QB than us).
- We've won a SB and been to another. How many teams have been to 2 SBs since Tomlin started here?
- We looked at this before, but I think we had something like the 3rd most playoff wins (behind the Pats and the Seahawks who had a franchise QB on a rookie deal). I think I only looked at teams with elite to very good QBs when I did that and remembered that we compared favorably to several other teams with QBs we'd put in Ben's league (or above).

It sucks that we lost to the Jags at home.
It sucks that we missed the playoffs this year.

But do those two years (where we lost Shazier but he was still counting against he cap) mean we should blow up the coaching staff? And if the answer is yes, do we sell of Ben too to try to rebuild the whole team?

[Northern_Blitz]

Cowher underachieved. Tomlin underachieved. Guess it's now the acceptable standard for the Steelers, as long as we don't have losing seasons.

Meanwhile, over in New England, they expect to win Super Bowls.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic Buzz.

Do you think that anything less than NE level success means we should fire the coaching staff?

[Northern_Blitz]

Another potential question is who do you think has been better than us since Tomlin was hired.

We can do this analysis for other teams too and see how we compare over a medium to large sample.

My guess

BB will be clearly better.
The Seahawks will probably look better under Carroll because of the rookie QB bump
The Saints will be similar.
The Packers will probably be similar.

[squidkid]

Again, it's certainly fair to look at it this way. Edited to addAlthough I think it's unreasonable to think that we should never lose to teams with worse records. And if we did that, we'd also have to go through and give credit for beating any teams with better records (would that mean we over achieved this year because we beat the Rats and the Pats?)

Any individual season that doesn't end in a SB win is a disappointment.

But, should you fire your coaching / rebuild your team when you don't win the SB every year? Clearly the answer is no, because even the Pats (and Noll) didn't meet this standard.

Just like clearly the answer would be yes if you miss the playoffs every year (see: Browns, Cleveland).

So, what's the middle ground where expectations are reasonable?

Since Tomlin has been coach:
- We've had the 2nd or 3rd best record in the regular season (Pats were 1st last time I looked, then it was either us or GB...maybe us now because GB hasn't been great in the last few years despite having a better QB than us).
- We've won a SB and been to another. How many teams have been to 2 SBs since Tomlin started here?
- We looked at this before, but I think we had something like the 3rd most playoff wins (behind the Pats and the Seahawks who had a franchise QB on a rookie deal). I think I only looked at teams with elite to very good QBs when I did that and remembered that we compared favorably to several other teams with QBs we'd put in Ben's league (or above).

It sucks that we lost to the Jags at home.
It sucks that we missed the playoffs this year.

But do those two years (where we lost Shazier but he was still counting against he cap) mean we should blow up the coaching staff? And if the answer is yes, do we sell of Ben too to try to rebuild the whole team?

the thing is, i dont care about other teams. i dont care that the we've won more games than the lions or have more playoffs wins than the giants. the reason we have more is because were are a better organization. we have better players. we've been pretty fortunate to play in weak division(mostly)
am i happy with being second or third in team wins the last decade? yup
am i happy that we go to the playoffs more than most teams? yup
but thats not what im talking about here. i am talking what they are capable of doing and what they actually do
its like i dont care what other kids got on their test, i only carer about what my kid got on their test
if my kid is mostly A's and B's and then gets C's and D's, i get pissed. i expect more becuase i know they are capable.
3 playoff wins in 8 years isnt knee jerk, blow it up
missing the playoffs those years when plenty of losses came from absolute bottom dwellers, isnt knee jerk
i admit, our regular season record is a blessing and a curse to me.
it sure is nice to walk around on thanksgiving and christmas and give my wifes family(all lions fans) a ton of crap because their team always blows but it doesnt help with the major letdowns that happen to us in the playoffs

[Northern_Blitz]

the thing is, i dont care about other teams. i dont care that the we've won more games than the lions or have more playoffs wins than the giants. the reason we have more is because were are a better organization. we have better players. we've been pretty fortunate to play in weak division(mostly)
am i happy with being second or third in team wins the last decade? yup
am i happy that we go to the playoffs more than most teams? yup
but thats not what im talking about here. i am talking what they are capable of doing and what they actually do
its like i dont care what other kids got on their test, i only carer about what my kid got on their test
if my kid is mostly A's and B's and then gets C's and D's, i get pissed. i expect more becuase i know they are capable.
3 playoff wins in 8 years isnt knee jerk, blow it up
missing the playoffs those years when plenty of losses came from absolute bottom dwellers, isnt knee jerk
i admit, our regular season record is a blessing and a curse to me.
it sure is nice to walk around on thanksgiving and christmas and give my wifes family(all lions fans) a ton of crap because their team always blows but it doesnt help with the major letdowns that happen to us in the playoffs

Like I said, I think it's fine if you don't care about how other teams do.

But you can't not care about how other teams / coaches have done AND say you have a rational benchmark for what success looks like.

And that's been my whole point. Saying we're the Steelers and we should be better than every other team because our guys walk past 6 Lombardi trophies every day is setting your expectations based on emotion and not reality.

It's fine if you want to be unreasonable about sports. But I think it's important to recognize it for what it is.

And it is knee jerk blow it up when you recogize that 8 year time frame is cherry picked to neglect the prior success but include the rebuild of the D.

I know you don't care about other teams, but: The Saints won a division game in 2013. Then, they didn't go to the playoffs again until 2017. And they should have been in the SB this year if the officiating was anything but horrible. Missing the playoffs for 4 years straight didn't suddenly make Peyton a bad coach. Just like making them again didn't suddenly make him good again.

The question isn't "is Tomlin amazing". He isn't. But, he's pretty good. And results of other coaches in other places (and here in Pittsburgh) suggest that replacing him will give us WORSE results. That's why it's an emotional knee jerk reaction. Because it's about getting rid of something people think is the problem without any evidence that it will make things better. That's super dangerous IMO, especially when what we have right now is extremely good.