I feel like at the NFL level, the head coach accounts for a fairly small percentage of why a team wins or loses. Players account for about 90% in my opinion. That's why I get such a kick out of the Tomlin induced Armageddons we see here so often. It amuses me to no end.
And yes I think Tomlin will have his first losing season after Ben goes unless they luck into another great QB right away. Hence the fact that players account overwhelming amount of wins and losses. If you have any doubt take a look of Chuck Noll's early tenure before multiple HOF players and a Franchise QB came aboard. Look at his late tenure once said HOF'ers retired.
That's probably not real far off to be honest, but how do you explain the Buffalo game. The coach of the team winning at halftime (McDermott) talks about how many adjustments they need to make at halftime, while Tomlin, the coach that is losing says we just need to execute better and they don't need to make any adjustments. Buffalo came out with a totally different approach in the 2nd half and won the game.
How about the Washington game, we were up 14-3 at halftime, Washington came out and totally changed it up targeting their RB and TE, who combined for 19 catches on like 20 targets for 170 yards, we did nothing in either game to counter that.
Should we talk about the Browns playoff debacle? We just played that team, they were missing starters and coaches, couldn't hold team meetings, and yet they still made several adjustments. They ran away from Watt early, used quick passes to negate our pass rush, which the week before without Watt and Heyward pressured Mayfield a decent amount. They used their #1 WR on Spillane often, but this is a common thing under Tomlin. Spillane who just came off IR and wasn't in game shape was still trying to cover their #1. Every offensive TD Cleveland scored was vs a 2 DL front. Cleveland is a traditional running team, they used RB's and just run at you, why in the hell are we using so much 2 DL fronts vs them?
Coaches are supposed to put the players in the best position to succeed, and make in game adjustments.