His crowning work was stopping the K-Gun in the Super Bowl and holding Elway's Broncos scoreless in the AFC championship game for a half while with the Jets as a DC.

Personally I think his best ever was in SB 53. He outright put clown shoes on the high flying Rams offense and McVay.

Lot of teams with shitty coaches but most have horrible situations; Denver, Colts, Texans.

The best place for Tomlin would be the Chargers.

Staley has vastly underperformed.

This guy is one hell of a coach. It’s crazy that he has this team in a position to be in the playoffs again. No TJ Watt for most of the season, rookie QB, bad OL, lost Juju and sold off Claypool.

The man did this with Trubisky and Pickett at QB all year.

He’s a damn good coach

Not gonna disagree.

He turned this ship around and shocked me.

Agreed

All you can do is beat the teams on your schedule, but look at who the Steelers beat in this stretch:

Colts: 24-17
Falcons: 19-16
Panthers: 24-16
Raiders: 13-10
Ravens (sans Jackson): 16-13

This is what a rah rah coach can get you - your team will go out there and play hard, ugly things up and beat bad football teams.

But he still has significant tactical deficiencies. I think he's a solid coach who needs better coordinators but by no means a great one.

He had a decade with a roster full of HoF talents and a HoF quarterback in his prime and got next to nothing out of them despite the division being soft pretty much the entire time.

He's a high floor coach with an extremely low ceiling. In many ways, he's what Staley is likely to develop into. But if I'm looking for a HC to win me a SB rather than just sneak me into the playoffs, I think Staley's more likely to develop into that sort of guy than Tomlinson over the coming decade.

They had to deal with the Patriots though. They could never get over that Pats/Brady hump and it's tough to hold that against them.

But did the Patriots have more talent than the Steelers most of those years? I would say they didn't.

BB just outcoached him.

Which doesn't make Tomlin a bad coach - Belichick outcoached a lot of guys. But it's part of his resume nonetheless.

I think he's a fine coach, just not a great one.

Honestly the only one I think that he doesn’t consistently out coach is Reid.

If Tomlin went to the Chargers their D would be scary as ****.

Not sure what QB coach or offensive coordinator they would bring in.

With Pittsburgh overperforming this year, his chances of leaving are about 5%.

If they went say 6-11 or 7-10, which I expected it would have been much higher.

Great responses in this thread. :thumb:

Also, if the Cowboys get bounced in their first game, I think Sean Payton, Tomlin or another big name could be hired and they fire McCarthy.

And Reid/BB are the only 2 historically great coaches to come out of the last 25 years of NFL football, IMO.

The rest of these guys are just picking up scraps. BB and Andy are the defensive/offensive masterminds of this era, IMO.

I agree. After that tier though? He’s probably there. I think he’s done such a great job with limited resources and also what he has had to deal with (AB, Bell, Big Ben).

Remember this guy took this team to 8 wins when Big Ben was out all year. He did that with a CFL QB.

Agree, mostly.

The Ravens were pretty good during most of that stretch, but yeah, the Browns and Bengals were gimmes most of the time. But that's not necessarily unlike most of the divisions. Maybe they were a little worse, but most of the divisions aren't gauntlets.

And Brother****ing Cheatriot ****bags winning ****ing everything while Tomlin was in probably tempered his legacy a bit. And I assure you Belicheat was getting the signals for their defense, who especially early, was really ****ing good and Belicheat had no trouble scheming around, magically. If they got caught filming a 2 win Bengals team, he assuredly cheated to get the Steelers calls.

I think Tomlins capacity to coach headcases is a bit understated, probably.

But it is what it is. High floor low ceiling. But in 2023, it's important to not do something completely ass-tarded like the Staley's of the world.

I'd say so.

As of 1/2/2023, you can make a substantial case for Pete Carroll. But yeah, **** that shit, he's blown a MOUNTAIN of talent over the years. But holy ****ing balls EmbaRuss is real bad and making him look real good.

I think Shanarat Jr has a case. I think it will shake out to him offsetting his obvious genius with dumb****ery like hitching his ****ing wagon to Trey Lance after hitching his wagon to Garoppolo. But it's hard for me to discount what he's accomplished with the talent he had to do it with.

And I think history will look fondly on Harbitch. He won a Bowl with Flacco and then completely changed his entire team up for Jackson. They probably won't win anything with Jackson and if they let him walk that won't look good, but he's a good coach who did some really hard things.