Tim Benz: NFL head coach hiring trend should be a reminder to Steelers about Mike Tomlin
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Relax. This won’t be the 5,000th post you have read over the last three years about whether the Steelers should keep Mike Tomlin as the head coach or fire him after a third straight late-season collapse.
That debate has become Republican or Democrat. Heavy metal or country. Beach or mountains. Coffee or tea.
If you feel strongly one way, no matter what anyone says with a different point of view, you aren’t willing to listen to the other side of the story.
Regardless, the Steelers have painted themselves into a corner so much that it isn’t even a practical argument to have. If the team is going to keep Ben Roethlisberger for the final year of his contractual denouement, what sense does it make to fire Tomlin at this point anyway?
If you bring in a head coach Roethlisberger doesn’t like, then 2021 could be a disaster and that coach’s credibility may be undermined during his first year.
Or you let Roethlisberger co-sign on a coach. And what good does that do for just one season? Especially when that new coach is going to have to reinstall and reacclimate his offense for a new quarterback in 2022 unless they promote Mason Rudolph.
The franchise is ostensibly locked into Tomlin through 2021 if Roethlisberger returns. Whether it wants that to be the case or not. And based on how Steelers management operates, that type of continuity and familiarity is exactly what it wants.
But I do want to attack one fan/media trope from those who say, “Tomlin can’t be fired!”
“Why not?” I always ask.
“Because who else are you going to get? Some retread coach from another team? Some college hire? Some unproven coordinator?”
Um … yeah. Exactly.
Let’s focus on hiring assistant coaches away from other teams since that appears to be the preferred mode these days in the NFL. I mean, just look at Matt LaFleur in Green Bay, or Sean McDermott in Buffalo, or Kevin Stefanski in Cleveland. All former coordinators who had quick success as first-time head coaches.
How about most of the hires this offseason? Robert Saleh (New York Jets), Arthur Smith (
Rumored candidates for remaining jobs in Philadelphia and Houston include the likes of Josh McDaniels (New England Patriots offensive coordinator), Byron Leftwich (Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator), Eric Bieniemy (Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator) and Brian Daboll (Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator). Of that group, only McDaniels has been a full-time head coach before.
First-time head coaches (Campbell was an interim head coach in Miami in 2015) from outside the organization who had previously been high-ranking assistants with other franchises. Why does that sound so familiar? I can’t quite put my finger …
Oooh! I know! Mr. Kotter! Oooh!
Chuck Noll? Bill Cowher? And — all together now — Mike Tomlin.
Every year when the topic of Tomlin’s job status invariably comes up, vocal defenders of Tomlin and the Steelers logo always default to that “Well, who else are you gonna get?” mentality.
What are they saying? There’s no one else that can do the job? Not one of those guys listed above has a chance of being that team’s version of Tomlin?
Or maybe the Steelers’ next edition?
It’s nonsense. It’s almost as if those who praise the Rooney family’s track record of hiring good coaches are simultaneously doubting their ability to do it again.
You know, for a fourth time in 52 years.
Do the Steelers hire coaches so infrequently that we forget where they come from? Noll was an assistant with the San Diego Chargers and Baltimore Colts. Cowher was an assistant with the Cleveland Browns, then the Chiefs.
Tomlin had been the defensive coordinator in Minnesota. He was a fringe candidate at best when Cowher left. A month before he was hired you could’ve polled 1,000 people on Grant Street and 999 wouldn’t have known who Tomlin was.
Now what? He has to be “Coach for Life” because the same organization that found him in the first place can’t find a suitable replacement? Please.
Maybe it’s because the word “fire” is a literal and figurative four-letter word in Steelers fan circles. Cowher resigned. Noll retired. But just because the Steelers didn’t outright fire either person, that doesn’t mean the process by which they would go about replacing Tomlin has to be any different.
Or any less successful than it was when they got Tomlin to replace Cowher.
If you want to advance Tomlin’s resume of never having a losing season and always being in the playoff hunt, go right ahead.
If you want to argue that eight years out of the last 10 years of failing to win a playoff game isn’t his fault, I’ll listen. I won’t entirely agree. But I’ll listen.
Even if you want to say he should be given a chance to reconstruct this team in the post-Big Ben era as Noll was afforded the luxury of doing post-Steel Curtain, that’s worthy of conversation.
Just don’t come at me with “they aren’t going to be able to find anyone better.” That’s selling the team short. And, frankly, that’s selling people like Tomlin short. Because if the Rooney family thought that way in 2007, maybe Tomlin never gets a shot with an organization as stable as the Steelers. Maybe they go the safe route and hire Ken Whisenhunt before Arizona did or Russ Grimm.
That would’ve been “living in their fears,” as a certain coach often says.
Do you know who I mean? He was an assistant in Minnesota an Tampa Bay for a little while. I wonder whatever happened to him.