*** 2025 Pittsburgh Steelers: blow winnable game in Chicago (23 Viewers)

[rockaction]

I’ll be at the game as well but with a buddy from Buffalo and likely a bunch of Bills fans.

Fully expect the Steelers to get clobbered

My son's Make a Wish was to meet the Steelers players and attend a game. My daughter was encouraging him to get a puppy instead . He chose the Steelers. But we will get to be Tomlin's personal guest at the Friday practice. I kind of wish he chose the dog.

Dude, God bless you and your son. I hope he has the day of his life and it’ll be the one day out of the past year I’ll be pulling for Tomlin to be on. Peace.

 

[fred_1_15301]

I’ll be at the game as well but with a buddy from Buffalo and likely a bunch of Bills fans.

Fully expect the Steelers to get clobbered

My son's Make a Wish was to meet the Steelers players and attend a game. My daughter was encouraging him to get a puppy instead . He chose the Steelers. But we will get to be Tomlin's personal guest at the Friday practice. I kind of wish he chose the dog.

Dude, God bless you and your son. I hope he has the day of his life and it’ll be the one day out of the past year I’ll be pulling for Tomlin to be on. Peace.

Love you brother

 

[rockaction]

I’ll be at the game as well but with a buddy from Buffalo and likely a bunch of Bills fans.

Fully expect the Steelers to get clobbered

My son's Make a Wish was to meet the Steelers players and attend a game. My daughter was encouraging him to get a puppy instead . He chose the Steelers. But we will get to be Tomlin's personal guest at the Friday practice. I kind of wish he chose the dog.

Dude, God bless you and your son. I hope he has the day of his life and it’ll be the one day out of the past year I’ll be pulling for Tomlin to be on. Peace.

Love you brother

You too, man.

 

[3C's]

Former players stating the obvious.

https://x.com/937theFan/status/1993346149583913227

https://x.com/Alex_Kozora/status/1993034374863110264 (don't make deebo angry!)

 

[cdclopper]

I’ll be at the game as well but with a buddy from Buffalo and likely a bunch of Bills fans.

Fully expect the Steelers to get clobbered

My son's Make a Wish was to meet the Steelers players and attend a game. My daughter was encouraging him to get a puppy instead . He chose the Steelers. But we will get to be Tomlin's personal guest at the Friday practice. I kind of wish he chose the dog.

There are 31 other teams to pick

 

[cdclopper]

Former players stating the obvious.

https://x.com/937theFan/status/1993346149583913227

https://x.com/Alex_Kozora/status/1993034374863110264 (don't make deebo angry!)

Well it was a loss so of course it's coaching that is responsible. If it were a win the players would be responsible.

 

[Steelers4Life]

The Steelers biggest shortcoming for the past however long hasn't been talent. It's been coaching. The talent is the reason they can overcome the poor coaching and win enough games to squeak into the playoffs, often as a 7 seed that didn't even used to exist.

Some people scoff at the reality that Tomlin has no coaching tree. And even if you believe that he could be a competent head coach if he had strong assistants, it falls on him that he targets assistants who'll run his own outdated vision of what the Steelers should be.

They need a new OC and DC, and the only way that happens is if Tomlin is shown the door. We're stuck in this world without any realistic end in sight.

 

[Godsbrother]

My biggest issue with Tomlin over the past 5 seasons is the team has been treading water. They aren’t horrible, they aren’t good, and they have no identity.

It won’t happen but a change of the entire coaching staff is needed after the season.

 

[fred_1_15301]

My biggest issue with Tomlin over the past 5 seasons is the team has been treading water. They aren’t horrible, they aren’t good, and they have no identity.

It won’t happen but a change of the entire coaching staff is needed after the season.

I’ll talk to him about it when I see him on Friday.

 

[Leeroy Jenkins]

My biggest issue with Tomlin over the past 5 seasons is the team has been treading water. They aren’t horrible, they aren’t good, and they have no identity.

It won’t happen but a change of the entire coaching staff is needed after the season.

Letting Flores leave the building and keeping Austin was a huge mistake. Being soft and poor communication has been a constant theme under Austin. Correct me if I am wrong, but when Flores was just an assistant, that was the best the D performed in recent history, right?

I'm not sure what to say about the O. We are still scared to throw in the middle, even though some of the biggest plays have been slants, rather than go balls. And we have all of these TEs and we took no advantage of the decimated LB crew? Made so little sense.

 

[3C's]

Former players stating the obvious.

https://x.com/937theFan/status/1993346149583913227

https://x.com/Alex_Kozora/status/1993034374863110264 (don't make deebo angry!)

Well it was a loss so of course it's coaching that is responsible. If it were a win the players would be responsible.

Players have to play, they have to execute, but when the coaching, plays, schemes all suck the coaches are surely to blame. Even when they win it's typically against inferior teams and they struggle to put them away. They can't beat any of the playoff teams from either conference.

 

[Steelers4Life]

My biggest issue with Tomlin over the past 5 seasons is the team has been treading water. They aren’t horrible, they aren’t good, and they have no identity.

It won’t happen but a change of the entire coaching staff is needed after the season.

It's been moee than 5 years, my friend.

Since Bell and Brown moved on, it's been 7 of the last 8 seasons now of between 8 and 10 wins, and their last 3 playoff seedings have been 7, 7, and 6.

The only team that won more games was Ben's last good year, the 12 win team in 2020 that started out a flukey 11-0 and ended up 12-4 with another embarrassing home loss in the playoffs to the Browns.

The only constants over the 8 years have been vanilla, outdated schemes run by Tomlin's hand picked coordinators. Been beating this drum for years now and there's never really been any sign of changing the status quo. Tomlin has a lifetime pass until he decides he's done.

 

[Max55]

As far as the O goes there’s been some changes at the skill positions since Ben left. There’s been changes at O coordinator. But it still looks like the same O that can’t consistently score, can’t come from behind. Tomlin is the common denominator.

And now the highest paid Def looks like, and is, a bottom 10 option as far as scoring and yards.

Trade Tomlin, clean house with the assistants. Hire an offensive minded HC.

 

[5-ish Finkle]

After almost a full decade (but especially since Ben called it quits) of "do the same things, expect different results", for anyone to diminish or outright deny that a large part of the Steelers' current issues are predicated on schematics/coaching feels almost willfully obtuse.

Many of their problems are almost certainly systemic and have been festering for a much, much longer time than the past handful of years. Ben disguised a lot of warts on the offensive side of the ball, particularly from the Fichtner years onward. Like, a LOT lot. He'd just say "eff it" and call old Bruce Arians plays and dare Tomlin to do anything about it (knowing that he wouldn't/couldn't). The outright fear of throwing over the middle, in this era of the NFL is nonsensical.

Whatever they have decided to do on defense this year (e.g. playing far more man than zone, blitzing out of single high, etc etc) is inexplicable once you get a gander at the all 22 from most of these games. It's is ragingly clear they don't have the right players to man up on even "pretty okay" WRs. The most perplexing thing, to me at least, is that they clearly have seen that it isn't working and have went away from it for 2-3 games...which happen to be the 2-3 best games they've played defensively....and then promptly went to what wasn't working prior. Which resulted in an almost INSTANT reversion to the opponent getting a dozen completions over the middle in the games they went back to the single high, man heavy gameplans.

Tomlin gets to be final arbiter on scheme/gameplans. Therefore he gets, deservedly, the lion's share of the blame for the tepid results. Regardless of his claims to the contrary, he coaches in his fears. "We'll not turn the ball over and pray we can take it away and eventually our Edges guys will get home and our kicker can win us games." That hasn't worked when it mattered very often since 2017, tho.

 

[3C's]

It would be fitting that this happens when there's almost 0 hot head coach candidates out there.

Stage is Set for Mike Tomlin to Leave Steelers

Though speculation about Mike Tomlin's future with the Pittsburgh Steelers has run rampant over the past handful of years, it feels as though it has legs for pe

www.si.com

 

[cdclopper]

Steelers fans were calling for Cowher's head in 2002. I for one am glad the Rooney's didn't agree.

 

[Steelers4Life]

Steelers fans were calling for Cowher's head in 2002. I for one am glad the Rooney's didn't agree.

Its laughable to compare Tomlin to Cowher.

Cowher took over a struggling franchise and built them into an annual contender. Tomlin took over a ready-made Super Bowl contender coming off an 8-8 year only because of Ben's motorcycle accident, won with them for a few years, and turned them into the definition of mediocrity for the past 15 years.

Cowher made the playoffs in 10 out of 15 years and won a playoff game in 8 of his 15 seasons. He had only 2 one and dones... his first two years when he was building his team. His longest playoff WIN drought was 3 years.

And he did all that with Kordell, Tomczak, and O'Donnell until they finally drafted Ben in his 2nd to last year... and he immediately reached a conference championship game and won a Super Bowl with a future HOF QB as a rookie and second year pro.

If someone wants to blame Cowher for neglecting the QB position for so long, that's fair. His success despite that was awesome.

Tomlin has been to the playoffs 12 times in 18 years with several of them as a 7th seed or the number would be about 50%. And in those 12 playoff seasons, he's been one and done EIGHT times. They've won a single playoff game in only 4 of his 18 seasons... only 2 of the past 14. That's just awful.

And he did that with a first ballot HOF QB for 15 of those seasons (13 if you remove 2019 and 2021 when Ben lost his fastball).

If Tomlin hadn't won early with the team he inherited, he'd have been fired years ago and been an afterthought. Because nothing he's done since 2011 has been worthy of his reputation.

 

[cdclopper]

Steelers fans were calling for Cowher's head in 2002. I for one am glad the Rooney's didn't agree.

Its laughable to compare Tomlin to Cowher.

All that stuff that you say about Cowher.... but Steelers fans still wanted him fired in 2002.

 

[Max55]

Steelers fans were calling for Cowher's head in 2002. I for one am glad the Rooney's didn't agree.

Its laughable to compare Tomlin to Cowher.

All that stuff that you say about Cowher.... but Steelers fans still wanted him fired in 2002.

And we want Tomlin gone now. Trade him.

All the Tomlin apologists need to accept that Tomlin can still be a good coach, but both he and the Steelers can be better off with a change of scenery. The Tomlin message is stale.

Here’s an apples to oranges for you.

The Pittsburgh penguins let Stanley Cup coach Mike Sullivan go, hired a no-name, and look better than they have in years. New system, new message, new results.

 

[Steelers4Life]

Steelers fans were calling for Cowher's head in 2002. I for one am glad the Rooney's didn't agree.

Its laughable to compare Tomlin to Cowher.

All that stuff that you say about Cowher.... but Steelers fans still wanted him fired in 2002.

The frustration with Cowher was because of the losses in the AFC Championship game, which were directly because of his loyalty to bad QBs.

It was never about questioning his ability as a coach, questioning his ability to hire assistants, or saying his message was stale.

Comparing anything about his success to Tomlin is an insult to Cowher.

 

[sm8680]

Steelers fans were calling for Cowher's head in 2002. I for one am glad the Rooney's didn't agree.

Cowher went 11 years before finally breaking through. Tomlin’s had 17 years and hasn’t sniffed another Lombardi. At some point, stability without championships isn’t enough. The standard is the standard and right now, Tomlin isn’t meeting it.

 

[3C's]

Steelers fans were calling for Cowher's head in 2002. I for one am glad the Rooney's didn't agree.

Its laughable to compare Tomlin to Cowher.

All that stuff that you say about Cowher.... but Steelers fans still wanted him fired in 2002.

So what? BFD. Tomlin needs to go. The (coaching) lifespan of an NFL coach is about 7 years with 1 team. He's more than overstayed his welcome.

 

[3C's]

Steelers fans were calling for Cowher's head in 2002. I for one am glad the Rooney's didn't agree.

Its laughable to compare Tomlin to Cowher.

All that stuff that you say about Cowher.... but Steelers fans still wanted him fired in 2002.

The frustration with Cowher was because of the losses in the AFC Championship game, which were directly because of his loyalty to bad QBs.

It was never about questioning his ability as a coach, questioning his ability to hire assistants, or saying his message was stale.

Comparing anything about his success to Tomlin is an insult to Cowher.

Don't remind me. I was at that Chargers game.

 

[crushedspirit]

Steelers fans were calling for Cowher's head in 2002. I for one am glad the Rooney's didn't agree.

Its laughable to compare Tomlin to Cowher.

All that stuff that you say about Cowher.... but Steelers fans still wanted him fired in 2002.

The frustration with Cowher was because of the losses in the AFC Championship game, which were directly because of his loyalty to bad QBs.

It was never about questioning his ability as a coach, questioning his ability to hire assistants, or saying his message was stale.

Comparing anything about his success to Tomlin is an insult to Cowher.

Cowher went to playoff games with scrub QBs and the team always put up a fight to the bitter end. Going this long without a playoff win was also unheard of under his leadership. He built the Steelers from the ground up while coach T was given the keys to that built up Ferrari and after enjoying the ride for a few years, he ended up tuning it downwards into a Civic.

Everytime I hear any comparisons between these two my body wants to convulse.

 

[sm8680]

The Franchise QB Effect: Elevating WRs
Ben Roethlisberger's Receivers
Ben was an "Elevator" of talent, maximizing his receivers' potential through his pocket presence and advanced ball placement.

• The Fade: The careers of Santonio Holmes, Mike Wallace, Martavis Bryant, JuJu Smith-Schuster and Chase Claypool declined significantly after leaving Pittsburgh. This is the proof: their success was heavily reliant on Big Ben covering their flaws and setting them up for high-leverage catches. Emanuel Sanders is the outlier.

George Pickens Case Study
Pickens's success illustrates the reverse: A poor QB and scheme held him back.

• With Steelers (Non-Franchise QB): Pickens relied on contested catches and highlights, often because the throw was not perfectly delivered. His volume and scheme use were capped.
• With Cowboys (Dak Prescott - Franchise QB): Prescott's elite accuracy and high-volume offense are amplifying Pickens's strengths, providing catchable balls in rhythm and utilizing him across the full route tree, leading to his current breakout.

The take-away: A franchise QB sets a receiver's high ceiling and stable floor by masking weaknesses and amplifying strengths.