Pros and Cons of Steelers moving on from Mike Tomlin
By Eric Hassel
The Steelers may end up in never-ending cycle of having to replace the Head Coach
To me, that is probably the single, biggest reason for Rooney not to move on from Tomlin. You just don’t know if you’ll have to repeat the hiring cycle in a year or four years but considering that we have had only three head coaches since 1969, it speaks to the stability that we fans have enjoyed for fifty-four years.
Yes, there were plenty of losing seasons in those fifty-four years, but, as of the timing of this discussion, Tomlin has never had a losing season. Think about that for a minute. What other current Head Coach with a similar tenure as Tomlin has never had a losing season? The answer is no other Head Coach.
Am I pleased about the fact that we have not won a Super Bowl since the 2008 season? Of course, not and no fan should be happy with that. Art Rooney should not be happy about that. Mike Tomlin should not be happy about that. So, why would we want Art Rooney to move on from Mike Tomlin to hire a coach who may or may not be any better or any worse than the Head Coach we have right now?
I believe another con of hiring a new Head Coach is this: we don’t know if players like Kenny Pickett, for example, would be in the plans, so to speak, of the new coach. Maybe that new coach would want to draft a QB whom he believes would be a good scheme fit.
Let’s then suppose that we draft a QB in the first round, trade Pickett or keep him as a backup, and the newly drafted QB does absolutely nothing but our new Head Coach doesn’t want to admit to making a mistake so we wallow in mediocrity until we either draft another QB, re-establish Pickett as the starter, assuming Pickett would still be on the roster by that point, or we move on from that coach and hire a new one.
I think you get my point. We may find ourselves in a vicious cycle from which we would not be able to escape. We may be drafting a QB in the first round every four or five years. We may be moving on from our Head Coach every four or five years. I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want to find out if the aforementioned would come to fruition.
Let’s take a look at other factors that may manifest themselves if we move on from Mike Tomlin.