For those who don't know Mike Tomlin is the former head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the second longest tenured coach in the league, and never had a losing season before resigning his job last year.
The idea of any NFL head coach having time to do this, especially a winning one, is absurd.
Actually, one of the biggest criticisms of him is that he overperformed with bad teams.
The NFL has a draft system where the worst team in the league gets the best pick in the next year's draft.
Tomlin dragging teams that should have won 2 or 3 games into the playoffs each year just to lose immediately meant that the Steelers never got any good draft picks and thus never improved the team year of year.
I don’t think this criticism matches reality though. The Packers did not bottom out to get Aaron Rodgers; the Patriots did not bottom out to get Tom Brady. The Browns did bottom out to get Baker Mayfield; how’d that go?
In fact there are way more examples of bad teams crashing into high picks, and then continuing to crash, than dramatic turn-arounds into Super Bowl victories shortly thereafter.
Good teams and coaches go for the Super Bowl every year because it is impossible to predict when you’ll get there and win. That includes when you have (or don’t have) a great quarterback. You just have to try your hardest every year and hope.
And excellence is a habit, not a dial you can quickly turn from one side to the other over the summer. Most players have short careers and so a team needs them to get better every year in order to hope to peak as a team.
It seems to me like a lot of sports criticism is based in regretful retrospection. “Oh, if only they’d done this or that, they would have won.” But it’s impossible to know what would have happened. Injuries alone are unpredictable and hugely impactful from year to year.
It’s a natural thought, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good way to actually manage a team.
QBs are important in the NFL, but so are the other 21 starters, not to mention the reserve players. Consistently going 8-8 or better every year means that a team doesn't have access to high quality talent at a price discount. This is a problem for ultimately winning a championship in any sport with a salary cap.
CSMastermind · · focus · HN ↗
The idea of any NFL head coach having time to do this, especially a winning one, is absurd.
neogodless · · focus · HN ↗
Overall > 0.5 win rate each year: <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/coaches/TomlMi0.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.pro-football-reference.com/coaches/TomlMi0.htm
But after 2016, playoffs? Not so much.
CSMastermind · · focus · HN ↗
The NFL has a draft system where the worst team in the league gets the best pick in the next year's draft.
Tomlin dragging teams that should have won 2 or 3 games into the playoffs each year just to lose immediately meant that the Steelers never got any good draft picks and thus never improved the team year of year.
They were stuck in a purgatory of sorts.
snowwrestler · · focus · HN ↗
In fact there are way more examples of bad teams crashing into high picks, and then continuing to crash, than dramatic turn-arounds into Super Bowl victories shortly thereafter.
Good teams and coaches go for the Super Bowl every year because it is impossible to predict when you’ll get there and win. That includes when you have (or don’t have) a great quarterback. You just have to try your hardest every year and hope.
And excellence is a habit, not a dial you can quickly turn from one side to the other over the summer. Most players have short careers and so a team needs them to get better every year in order to hope to peak as a team.
It seems to me like a lot of sports criticism is based in regretful retrospection. “Oh, if only they’d done this or that, they would have won.” But it’s impossible to know what would have happened. Injuries alone are unpredictable and hugely impactful from year to year.
It’s a natural thought, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good way to actually manage a team.
LogicalRisk · · focus · HN ↗