Well, I think most people would rather be playing in AFC Championships than serving as the warmup jobber for some team in a wildcard game. Neither are the ultimate goal, but one is closer to it than the other is.
Steelers / Browns
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Well, I think most people would rather be playing in AFC Championships than serving as the warmup jobber for some team in a wildcard game. Neither are the ultimate goal, but one is closer to it than the other is.
A 280-reply Steelers game thread on a Pitt message board.
What is: why the NFL will always own this town for $1,000, Alex.
What is: why the NFL will always own this town for $1,000, Alex.
Just because they lost these games, many in close fashion, doesn't mean these were not really good teams. Of course, people want that ring, but it doesn't always happen. The eagles under Reid, the Bill's under Levy, the Oilers under Bum Phillips, the Steelers under Cowher, were all really good football teams. Each could have won several rings. Superbowl or bust is a popular phrase for many coaches, but, it is only realistic for a few teams to say it each year. Championship relevant is plenty good enough for me. However, the Steelers are becoming less and less relevant each year that passes under Tomlin. Soon it will be an entire decade of futility!
I think you could make an argument that Tomlin has had some really good teams. Even really good teams can lose their opening playoff game. Like when the Colts lost to Cowher's Steelers.
I admit I was a kid during the early part of Cowher's career and losses stung more at that stage of life, so perhaps that's why I'm not giving the same credit that you do the success of early Cowher. But to me, "championship relevant" and "never had a losing season" are simply two different flavors of "good but not good enough."
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They were good enough, though. If you get a 1-seed/2-seed and host an AFC Championship game you're good enough. Doesn't mean you'll win it, obviously, but it was a much different feeling than we've had in the last 4 or 5 playoff appearances, when everyone knew it came with an expiration date and half the fan base didn't even want to make the playoffs because they'd have rather had a higher draft pick than back into a tournament they had absolutely no shot to win.
The difference is having the best QB ever standing in the way with Brady and greatest defensive coach in belicheck.
It’s essentially the same thing hurting Allen and Lamar currently with Mahomes
Tomlin hasn't even been close to Brady being the only thing he has to worry about most years, so I don't even want to hear that. How many times did Brady eliminate the Tomlin-led Steelers in the playoffs - once? Maybe he should have mastered Tebow and Blake Bortles before worrying about Brady.
Yep. Blake bortles coming in here and ripping Tomlin's defense a new ass at home was simply pathetic. Tebow at least was in Denver I believe, but these losses are still quite an indictment of Tomlin's coaching. I had forgotten about these two particular embarrassments.
That 2017-18 team was honestly the only one Tomlin has had since the Super Bowl loss that I thought was a legit contender for a championship.
To say that Brady is what stood between Tomlin and more championships is like me saying Brad Pitt is the lone reason I don't date more supermodels. Tom Brady is a good excuse for Peyton Manning, but he's not such a good excuse for Mike Tomlin.
For most of Cowher's career, making the playoffs was much harder to do. The Steelers played in a "huge" division with five or six teams for several of those years and only 6 teams made the postseason from each conference. Cowher also won playoff games pretty regularly and really never embarrassed himself in playoff losses.
If anything, the Tomlin enabled Brady by never putting up much of a fight against the Patriots in the playoffs or choking out early to guys like Blake Bortles.
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It was a problem in the few years after the Super Bowl loss, but they threw a ton of resources at it after that (which is why the offense subsequently got too old) and got young fast.
That 2017 team had:
Heyward-Hargrave-Tuitt
Dupree-Shazier-Williams-Watt
Haden-Davis-Mitchell-Burns
So that's:
1st-3rd-2nd
1st-1st-7th I think-1st
FA-2nd-FA-1st
That's a ton of high draft capital to get torched against Blake Bortles.
That’s some revisionist history !
The 94 chargers loss was really bad
The other home afc championships hurt too
Cowher was 12-9 in the post season for his career .
Tomlin is 8-10. So he definitely needs to put together more consecutive playoffs wins
The 94 loss was bad because Pittsburgh fans thought the Steelers were entitled to the SB and handed San Diego a win in the last week of the season. Didn't matter because neither team was going to win that SB. If that was his worst loss, I would hardly call it embarrassing.
