While I would likely be very sorry for asking several of you where you would currently rank Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin league-wide, I am willing to tell you where NFL.com analyst Elliot Harrison has him listed.
In his recent 2017 head coach power rankings, Elliot has Tomlin ranked fourth overall and here’s what he has to say about listing him there:
Perhaps the AFC version of Pete Carroll … Like Carroll, Tomlin seems to have a way with his players that other teams can’t emulate. Like Carroll, he owns both a Super Bowl ring and a Super Bowl loss. And like Carroll’s Seahawks, Tomlin’s Steelers tend to drop some “gimme” road games people expect them to win. Thus, Tomlin isn’t always considered a top-shelf head coach. But that’s rubbish. His guys play for him, and at the end of the day, that’s what counts.
It’s easy to guess that Elliot has New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick first and I don’t think any of you will argue with that choice. From there, Elliot has Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll and Green Bay Packers head coach Mike McCarthy ranked second and third, respectively.
As far as career regular season wins go, Carroll (103) has the same amount as Tomlin does (103) while McCarthy (114) has 11 more. All three have also won a Super Bowl during their careers and McCarthy got his by beating Tomlin’s Steelers to close out the 2010 season.
Overall, I don’t have any major issues with Elliot’s rankings and outside of Belichick, his remaining 31 can probably be reshuffled quite a bit depending on what happens during the 2017 season and especially his top 15 for obvious reasons.
Let me pose this question to all of you to end this post: Should the Steelers wind up being Super Bowl champions this season, would Tomlin deserve to be ranked second overall behind Belichick? That’s a harmless enough question, right?
