There are still a ton of Tomlin fans, including the owner.
I just find it incredible how they live in denial and none of them face the truth.
Every team needs to rebuild. Every team needs to hire new coaches.
The Steeler Way has been broken for a decade and it’s time to face reality.
I've been of the mind that the "Steeler Way" of championing never having losing seasons as often as they do is an assinine way to go about building for actual championships, you know, the only thing that should actually matter? The league is designed to punish perpetually succesful teams in the regular season, and reward losers. In what way is taking pride in not ever taking advantage of that built in handicap a conducive way to build towards a championship?
How many people 20 years from now will remember all the non losing seasons the Steelers had this decade, and how many will remember the Eagles winning the Super Bowl 3 years ago sandwiched in between years of utter crap? Which is the more worthwhile goal to strive for?
It's part of why I have no hope for the future of this team anytime soon, as even when a close to perfect possible scenario for a needing to rebuild team is staring them right in the face next season (a bunch of contracts coming due, little to no cap space, an aged qb ready to be put out to pasture with no true successor ready, and a difficult as hell schedule all setting up for the perfect opportunity to actually "tank" a year for once and set themselves up better for the future), it's looking like they're going to try once again to salvage Tomlin's record streak instead of doing what's actually best for the future of the team.
A lot of people disagree with me when I bring it up, but I'll never understand being so proud of non-losing seasons or not firing coaches. This is the only team in the league that has to invent obscure statistical accomplishments because of the standard they pretend they hold themselves to, where any other organization would view a decade of talented rosters amounting to a 3-8 playoff record as an abject failure.
They constantly preach that the standard is the standard in this town, and that standard is winning (championships), yet they have to repeatedly redefine what winning actually entails so they can continue to peddle that nonsense empty platitude.