As the 2021 regular season for the Pittsburgh Steelers comes to a finish in the next couple of weeks, there will most likely be several coaching and personnel changes after the season, regardless if the team slips into the playoffs or not. There are many to blame for the Steelers inconsistencies this season, but the most consistent part of the team since 2013 has been head coach Mike Tomlin and quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger. Both will be enshrined in the Hall of Fame one day, but the duo only has three playoffs wins to show for since 2013. It is hard enough to land a head coaching job in the NFL, let alone retain one for over a decade as Tomlin has. With that said, many fans and media are questioning his ability to coach a Super Bowl caliber team. The majority of players from Bill Cowher's Steelers had left the organization after the 2010-'11 Super Bowl loss to the Green Bay Packers and Tomlin's first decade without the inheritance of Cowher's team has been quite underwhelming.
This got me wondering about the five coaches to be tenured since at least 2013 with Tomlin. The purpose of this is not to speak negatively about any of the following, but simply assess the performance of Tomlin-led teams against the game's best.
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Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots, Andy Reid of the Kansas City Chiefs, Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks, Sean Payton of the New Orleans Saints and division foe John Harbaugh of the Baltimore Ravens have all been around and at the helm since 2013. All Hall of Fame coaches in their own right, but is Tomlin arguably the "least" successful out of this stellar group of NFL coaches since 2013? Each coach, other than Reid (2013), has been with his respective team since at least 2010 and all have won a Super Bowl within the last decade.
Belichick can be excluded from this discussion due to his regular season record of 102-41 and outstanding 14-4 record in the postseason leading to three Super Bowl Titles. He is in a tier of his own. Reid has matched Belichick in the regular season going 102-41 after defeating the Steelers Sunday evening and has a Super Bowl with a 6-5 playoff record. Carroll has a Super Bowl (would have been two if he ran the ball to Marshawn Lynch on the one-yard line) in this timeframe and a surprising 92-50-1 regular season record which is third best on the list. Payton and Tomlin have the same amount of wins combined in the regular and postseason and both coaches have four division titles since. I give the edge to Payton because of the excellence of the unit he runs which is the offense. I'd take his offensive approach the last eight years over Tomlin's defensive one.
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This would then bring up Harbaugh versus Tomlin and while I think both are great coaches, Harbaugh is ranked last out of this group since 2013 when Reid took the reins in Kansas City. Harbaugh has the least amount of regular and postseason wins and just two division titles. Tomlin is 9-8 against Harbaugh, however the Ravens did beat the Steelers in the 2014-'15 playoffs. But, if we left Reid out and compared coaches since 2010, Harbaugh's Super Bowl victory concluding the 2012 NFL season would boost him ahead of Tomlin.
This is with no disrespect to Tomlin because I am sure he feels blessed to still have a job like the other five; however, if you're not winning Super Bowls, or barely even playoff games, you should be held accountable against the best in the game which is what we looked at here. This is not a call to fire Tomlin either, as he still is an elite NFL head coach, but it does beg the question of how a team could perform so "well" over an eight year period and fail to make more than one AFC Championship Game.
How do you think Tomlin stacks up against the game's most productive coaches since 2013? Let us know in the comments below!
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