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Bottom line is that Shades has something like the third-best winning percentage among active coaches but a career losing record against teams with losing records. I don't care who you want to blame but that is not acceptable.
I have to ask a question. Would you rather him have a winning record against sub .500 teams ? And have him have a losing record overall? What is more important?
A losing record to sub .500 teams shows me poor focus and poor preparation. Those should have been wins. If you ever wonder why we missed the playoffs the past several years, here is your answer. So Rooney rewards him with one of the top paying HC spots. Unbelievable!
It's been discussed and talk about how the preparation for the Ravens game was no different than it was for any other game all year.
They practiced for 2 hours Christmas day. They prepared as if they were playing Cardinals or Broncos. This is all according to Steelers radio and the people who are around the facilities daily.
I guess maybe they should have prepared even harder for a 4-10 team than a 10-3 team.
you can prepare with the same routine, blah, blah, but if the focus isn't there, then not much is going to be accomplished.
JamfoFL
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Actually, if you are a head coach with a pulse on your team, and you know that they have a tendency to play down to poor opponents, and have a multi-year track record of losing to "4-10 teams," then yes, he SHOULD be preparing them harder.
Yes, as others have said, a huge heaping of blame for this goes on the players. But a good coach would realize this disturbing tendency (again, this now covers MULTIPLE seasons) and would work the bejeezers out of the team, making sure they are focused, crisp, and aren't taking the opponent too lightly. And you know what? After a couple of games against sub-par opponents, where they're tired of the extra work in practice, maybe the players will pick up the fact that they need to take EVERY game seriously.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We now have enough body of evidence that "preparation... no different than it was for any other game all year" is not good enough for this team. If Tomlin is aware of this fact, he SHOULD be changing things up. And if he's not aware... then he doesn't deserve to be the head coach of this team.
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Tomlin sucks.
All because we as fans have to place blame and have repercussions for that blame. Even though we all know our owners are different then damn near every organization. We treat our coaches like it's a marriage. Find one we consider good and ride him thru the highs and lows.
Too bad there is a thing called a union
If he's preparing the team the same as he would for a big time opponent such as the Broncos, the outcome was a win so yeah, he would be expecting the same result. When players are interviewed, they always have the same answer.. "we're focused on our opponent," that's because the HC preaches to the players to take it week by week and keep their entire focus on that week.
Tomlin cannot go around to each individual player and say, " Hey! are you ready to play today/this week?"
If these professional football players still don't realize that every game matters especially when you're talking about just win the game and you're in the playoffs.. then that's on them. A majority of these players went to major colleges and played in meaningful games, they know what their focus should be.
Tape I would write a long rebuttal for this but why waste everyone's time. It will be looked at as excuses being made for Tomlin. While your list is somehow made to be credits for Cowher. And all in hindsight. Cause if you weren't feeling this way about Cowher when these events happened what's the point? See I can say that because I did. I never wanted Cowher to leave. So you running down a list means nothing to me. I understood then. Not in hindsight.
JamfoFL
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I'm not insinuating that they violate the Collective Bargaining Agreement, etc. But the speed and intensity of practices can certainly be changed based on the feeling a coach is getting from his players. And if the coach gets the sense that players are taking a team lightly or are walking through a practice without intensity, pick up the pace. There are all kinds of things that can be done, under full compliance of the CBA, to differentiate preparation against one team versus preparation from another team. It still comes down to the players playing, but a good coach has a sense of what is happening during practice and mixes things up to get the most out of those players.
Cowher knew this. Noll knew this. Hell, Noll benched Terry Bradshaw in 1974 (after Bradshaw had a 19-4 combined record in 1972 and 1973) for Joe Gilliam because he thought Gilliam was a better man for the job:
""What Joe did during preseason he deserves to start," Noll said at the beginning of the season, via Bleacher Report."
If Ben is as much of the problem for losing games to bad opponents as you want to claim he is, do you think Tomlin would ever have the stones to tell Ben he's sitting the game? Or hell, would Tomlin even have the guts to pull Ben from a game at halftime when he's throwing picks all over the place and screwing up? If you aren't willing to back up and enforce your tough talk, it never really is going to sink in, is it?
Cowher knew this. Noll knew this. Hell, Noll benched Terry Bradshaw in 1974 (after Bradshaw had a 19-4 combined record in 1972 and 1973) for Joe Gilliam because he thought Gilliam was a better man for the job:
""What Joe did during preseason he deserves to start," Noll said at the beginning of the season, via Bleacher Report."
If Ben is as much of the problem for losing games to bad opponents as you want to claim he is, do you think Tomlin would ever have the stones to tell Ben he's sitting the game? Or hell, would Tomlin even have the guts to pull Ben from a game at halftime when he's throwing picks all over the place and screwing up? If you aren't willing to back up and enforce your tough talk, it never really is going to sink in, is it?
and that is ultimately what separates him
Cowher benched Ike
Tomlin gave him another opportunity, I was fine with that.
But you can't always be buddy buddy.
Listing players as starters who really aren't starting.
Not benching players when needed.
Hell if Ben needs talked to,, do it...
Harder practices....****.
As coach mentioned you get rid of a player in Jones who was practicing hard, hard enough Foster complained.
That is the type of player I want on the team.
I would have made room for him.
As I said before, people who watch Steeler's practices daily said they saw no signs of this and the focus and intensity was there in practices as it was for practices they saw previously.
As for benching Ben, it's already been said before.. they are going to live with Ben's style of play and die by it too. I'll take my chances of Ben turning it around in a game where he sucked for 3 quarters than bringing in Landry Jones. There is a reason Ben has the contract he has.
Exactly everything you wrote is only speculation. Where there is visual evidence in the game that the players didn't make plays
JamfoFL
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So... in other words, no one on the coaching staff was able to look back at history and think, "hmmm... we seem to downplay to poor teams. Maybe I should shake something up." So let's just do the same thing we always do cause, hey, they're the coaches and they aren't responsible for motivating the players on game day.
And... since we can't bench Ben, even if he's chucking it around like a 1st year player and throwing picks that make you shake your head, well, we can't make any changes there, either.
So you realize that you are saying that the coaches can't mix things up, because the players are grown men who motivate themselves. But when the players don't motivate themselves and play a crappy game, well, we can't bench them or make a change there, either. Looks like we're stuck in a rut and are going to be facing year after year after year of similar results.
So please educate us. If it's not Tomlin's fault that we throw out clunkers against poor opponents, because the players are responsible for motivating themselves, and Tomlin can't bench the most critical piece on the field for playing like crap (and let's remember, this isn't baseball... Tomlin can always tell Ben to take a seat in the third quarter of one of Ben's stinkers, then go up to him in the 4th and ask if he's got his head in the game and put him back in,) then what hope do we ever have of getting a different outcome? The evidence of what will happen keeping things as they are now is out there, over multiple seasons. So what would YOU change to get us a different outcome? What would YOU do to shake things up and break this cycle of consistently playing down to terrible opponents?
JamfoFL
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I think there's enough blame to go around...
All I know is I don't like what I'm seeing now from the sidelines AND the playing field. But I do know we can't simply keep repeating the same things over and over. We've got to shake things up somehow.
All I know is I don't like what I'm seeing now from the sidelines AND the playing field. But I do know we can't simply keep repeating the same things over and over. We've got to shake things up somehow.
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You don't think people would complain that Tomlin benched arguably the best player on the team when we're down by 3pts?
You act like Ben is throwing INT after INT in the first quarter.. the team is competitive through out these games, Ben hasn't been getting it done in crunch time. You really want Landry Jones over Ben in the 4th quarter with 5 minutes left?
Fair enough.. I think Tomlin can make better in game adjustments, that's one of the problems I see at times. I just find it hard to believe the players aren't ready to play on Sundays because Tomlin is letting the team take the opponent lightly that week.
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The thing about it is this: losing to sub 500 team keeps us from getting buys and home games in the playoffs. It also keeps us out of the playoffs. And to top everything off Mr. Tomlin coaches the team just to the point where we don't get any real good draft picks either.
JamfoFL
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OK... I'm fine with that. Keep Ben in then.
But given that, you need to answer my question. If the problem isn't Tomlin, because he is just the coach and players are responsible for motivating themselves, and you can't bench a player who is obviously playing like crap (and Ben was obviously playing poorly the whole game, not just crunch time), then what are you going to do to break this cycle of choking against lesser opponents? Because what you are implying here is we do NOTHING. Tomlin makes no changes to his routines. The players aren't held accountable, and you can't sit the most crucial player on the field when his head obviously isn't there. We just keep repeating these gut-wrenching, season-killing bad losses over and over again.
So once again I'll ask... what would you do with this team to break the cycle of consistent, year-after-year, piss-poor play against the leagues worst teams?
see when you win just enough to not have a losing season, I think the owners are reluctant to force change.....
and I don't see our coaches forcing change.....
so it falls on Colbert to get some upgrades in...
and some think that won't come about due to money restrictions...
I think you can get upgrades besides breaking the bank..
but I could see the team not doing anything but resigning their own bringing in a few scrubs drafting rinse and repeating
we might be stuck in this cycle for awhile ....
JamfoFL
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On this we agree... I don't think Tomlin is incompetent or "letting the team take the opponent lightly."
What is frustrating the hell out of me, and others, is that he hasn't figured out anything to try and break that cycle. Sure, it falls on the players to make sure they are up and in to the game with all the furiousness it takes to win an NFL game. But when they have demonstrated time and time again that they are not able to do so, then it does fall to the coach to come up with something to make sure his players are ready. Otherwise, there's no hope and no point...
JamfoFL
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This is the part that scares me the most about Tomlin... and where I think he could make the biggest improvement: he doesn't seem to develop young players very well.
Yes, I guess we can throw some of the blame for this on Kevin Colbert as well... but from 2000 - 2007, Colbert (with Cowher) did an outstanding job with their first round selections (Hampton, Polamalu, Ben, Heath, Timmons) that the precipitous drop-off in quality after Cowher left is a mystery. Was it the tandem of Cowher/Colbert together that led to quality picks, while Tomlin/Colbert just does not have that same chemistry? Was Colbert just in the right place at the right time, and those hits really were Cowher's call all along? Or is Colbert still making quality picks, but Tomlin isn't developing and "coaching up" these young players?
Of this, we'll probably never know. But, if the team is committed to keeping Tomlin as coach, then maybe it's time to shake things up from above and replace Colbert? I wonder how Cowher would feel about a cushy front office job as director of player personnel? (OK... that last part was a joke.)