Steeler fans in general think Tomlin needs to be gone & have felt that way for years. The reason they feel that way is because they vastly overrate the quality of the roster. The Steelers have 3 or 4 elite defenders & a talented child at receiver, but not much else. Below par OL, solid, but hardly spectacular RB's, very little talent at receiver outside of Antonio Brown Jr., a middling TE & an average at best secondary. Not to mention the elephant in the room, which is one of the worst QB situations in the league. Tomlin was actually 8-6 with 2 Super Bowl appearances & 3 AFC Championship games under his belt through 2016. Since then, he's gone 0-5, but with the exception of the loss to Jacksonville in 2017, his teams had far exceeded expectations leading up to the playoffs. Say what you want about the 2020 team that lost to Mayfield & the Browns, but I watched that team every week & they weren't anywhere close to as good as their 12-4 record would indicate that season. In today's NFL, you're not winning squat without either a stud QB, or an above average QB with a great team around him. Who's won the Super Bowl over the past 20 years?
Mahomes
Mahomes
Stafford
Brady
Mahomes
Brady
Foles
Brady
P. Manning
Brady
Wilson
Flacco
E. Manning
Rodgers
Brees
Rothelisberger
E. Manning
P.Manning
Rothelisberger
Brady
Brady
Many Steeler fans are spoiled & delusional.
Im a steeler fan and dont care for him. Tired of the never had a losing season bullshit. I dont want to be 9-8 every year and get my ass kicked in the playoffs. He lost to Dallas and Cleve this year when both had 2 wins and nothing to play for. Time to trade TJ while he still has a shit load of value. I could go on and on.
dg84 - I’ve been saying the same thing to all my yinzer friends here in Pgh the last few years. They just dismiss it and say I love Tomlin. We’ll, I don’t love Tomlin by any stretch, but he has maximized the talent on his roster in most seasons. He hasn’t just had one of the worst QB situations this season. It’s been like that the last 5 or 6 seasons going back to an aging Ben. I understand the frustration from the fan base with 0-5 L5 in playoffs, but they would be saying the same thing if he was 2-5 with a couple WC wins. Fans in Pgh are not happy unless they win the SB, and that is not going to happen with the current roster no matter who coaches the team. Roster needs an overhaul, and I don’t think the fans are patient enough for a rebuild under Tomlin. I think overall Tomlin has done a good job, but the timing is right to make the change.
I think the best argument I have heard against Tomlin is the fact that he has no coaching tree. He has never had an assistant (who was not previously a head coach) become a head coach in the league. Not a single branch from the longest tenured coach in the NFL… that’s saying something!
FYI for those that don't know, I lived in Pittsburgh all my life until 8 years ago so plenty of yinzers in my life so I am familiar with all the home town arguments. Tomlin has overachieved with what people perceive to be rosters that are not as good as other teams. I'll argue the other way around, that he has had players overcome his horrible decisions - Ben particularly did that. I wonder why people believe he's a good coach because other than this continued winning streak, he has continued to show he is not a good coach - a jeff fisher reincarnated, mediocre in every way. There has never been a "wow what a great decision" moment with Tomlin that I can recall. There has never been a Mike Vrabel or Bellichek moment with him really knowing the rules. He has never done anything innovative that I can think of either. Maybe recensy bias here but replaced Fields with Wilson to beat the eventual 5-12 Jets was praised as borderline genuis by the media.
His on-field decisions have proved to be wrong continuously and there is an endless supply of poor decision making you can review. While Tomlin is not the worst at it, he holds what I believe could be an NFL record of losing
12 consecutive challenges in a row at what point. Tomlin's clock management/timeout usage is on the level of Andy Reid with the Eagles, seemingly having no understanding of the right time to do anything. Tomlin's decisions on when to go for it and when not to go for it have no consistent pattern or even reason. Probably for the last decade of my life I feel like the Steelers have been remarkably bad at going for it on 3rd and short or 4th and short, running a Cordarelle Patterson into the back of his offensive line to get -1 yards. Meanwhile the rest of the league employees the tush push with glee. There is actually analytical evidence of how poor this decision making has been - According to 33rd Team which provides analytic stats based on coaching decisions...Tomlin's 'win sacrifice' numbers are 33.1% probability - ranking him as 30th in the league as his on the field decisions leading to a win between 2017-2022. I actually have a specific example, of Tomlin punting on 4th and manageable in the Eagles game with 10 minutes or so to go and down 14 and ON THE EAGLES SIDE OF THE FIELD - the Steelers never saw the ball again. Tomlin didn't learn from his mistakes at all, because he did literally the same exact thing against the Chiefs 10 days later, another decision that would backfire. The same study found that Tomlin from 2021-23 seasons had a 51% correct call percentage ranking on 4th down which would rank him 28th in that category. These numbers can be seen as arbitrary, but if you watch every game every week as I do, no Steeler fan can disagree that Tomlin's decision making when it matters most is not very good and can't be counted on it. Every week, we are asking - what the fuck was that?
We'll move to the style of play - and there isn't a lot to say here so I'll keep this very brief - he has not adjusted to the changing tides of the NFL. Where the last decade of Super Bowl winners has all been offensive teams, Tomlin continues to resist it with outdated offenses and outdated gameplans. I think you can MAYBE argue that his roster had led for him to do that, because the Steelers did have the best offense in the league during the triple B era.
How prepared the team is has also plagued the Steelers for all 19 seasons of the Tomlin era. There are very few easy wins in that time. No matter who the competition is the Steelers are very often playing down to their competition - every Steeler fans knows a seemingly easy Raider's game, or Jacksonville game, or CLEVELAND this season has potential for a loss. That preparedness and the lack of it really shines in the playoffs. The last 5 playoffs games the Steelers have faced the following deficits before they scored an offensive TD (that includes a team in their prime in 2017)..in order...21-0, 21-0, 35-7, 28-0 and 21-0. Someone commented we are the Jags without Tomlin - the Jags are ahead of us, with three playoff wins in the span of time since Tomlin has won one. Most Steeler fans would probably take some playoff wins rather then a winning record that no one cares about. The only teams that have worst playoff streaks then the Steelers are the Dolphins, Raiders, Jets, Bears, Cardinals, Panthers and Broncos - with the majority of those teams being synonymous with being poorly run. Honestly, reason enough to fire Tomlin.
The coaching tree as CMAN mentioned - remarkable. Theres not much to say but for the longest tenured head coach in the NFL to not have ever had a coordinator hired as a HC in 19 years is unbelievable. Bruce Arians does not count as he was made a HC after his time with the Colts. But even if we wanted to count him, there has been not anyone else even close to getting a HC job.
The coaching decisions - keeping guys that are clearly out of their depth. Matt Canada getting another chance is reason enough to question the man's sanity. There is a lot of reason to believe that Canada continued to get favorable treatment because Canada recruited his son to Maryland. Some of this could be chalked up to Art Rooney II not wanting to pay contracts for guys sitting on the couch. That foots with the Steelers seemingly and likely keeping Austin at DC for another year to finish out his contract. I still partially blame Tomlin and poor decision for all of his hires. Mike Munchak and retained Lebeau are possibly his only good decisions in 19 years.
The roster - I am hard pressed to believe that anyone here believes that Tomlin does not have a big voice in the room when it comes to who this team signs or draft. With Colbert, maybe he took more of a backseat. With Khan, I have to believe his voice matters most here, if not totally overriding Khan in the hierarchy. Gunner Olszweski keeping a roster spot after making an unbelievable toe tapping KICKOFF catch at the 9 yard line and stepping out of bounds will be ingrained in mind forever - sources said they kept him on the team because of his high football IQ.
Finally, we can take a step back and look at the years of the triple B's. That team not winning the Superbowl, not making it to a Super Bowl, and only getting 3 playoff wins is inexplicable. You can take about roster all day long, and how he rose above it the last 4 years, but when he had the talent he got outcoached plain and simple. Tim Tebow in 2015, Bill Bellichek visibly drooling talking about the AFC Championship and how easy it was to gameplan against the Steelers in 2016, and Blake mother fucking Bortles in 2017.
And lastly - the continuous enablement of shitty people. With 53-man rosters this has to happen on every team to a degree, but I can't wait until George Pickens is shown the door. I will drive him to the airport if he needs a ride.
You can say Steeler fans are spoiled and delusional - and maybe you're right in some ways. For me though, the evidence is clear and that Mike Tomlin is not moving this franchise forward. I don't know care if they trade for Mahomes in the offseason - the results will 100% stay the same as long as Mike Tomlin is coaching the Steelers and thats early disappointment.