Dec 1, 2018 5 min read

Do you appreciate Mike Tomlin?

Based on what is on social media and what is heard from callers to local radio talk shows, it seems like he is more appreciated outside of Western Pennsylvania than in his own neighborhood.

If the Steelers beat the Chargers tonight, their record will be 8-3-1 and it will mean Tomlin is guaranteed his 12th consecutive season without a losing record.

He has a winning percentage of .662.

Don Shula, who has more wins than any NFL coach finished at .677, George Halas is second all-time at .682, Bill Belichick is at .681. and Paul Brown at .672. That puts Tomlin in some pretty good company. Vince Lombardi had a .738 winning percentage but only coached for 10 seasons. John Madden, who also coached for 10, finished at .759.

George Allen is the only coach to last longer than 11 seasons and finish above .700. He finished at .712 after 12 seasons and might be the most underrated coach in football history.

With one Super Bowl win in two appearances, Tomlin is a borderline Hall of Fame coach right now. He hasn’t been perfect and you could say that his teams have been knocked out of the playoffs too soon, but a lot of great coaches got knocked out early or there would be a lot more than 17 of them with two or more trips to the Super Bowl. If he goes to one more he’ll be tied with Bill Walsh and Bill Parcells.

Tomlin is 46.

Walsh coached until he was 57, Parcells until he was 65.

A website called Stadiumtalk.com listed the greatest NFL coaches of all time last week and had Tomlin at 14. If you took a survey among Steelers fans today and asked them to rank the Steelers’ head coaches, Tomlin would probably finish third behind Chuck Noll and Bill Cowher.

He’s not. He’s second.

Tomlin’s detractors will tell you that he inherited a good team left to him by Cowher and has been fortunate to have a future Hall of Fame quarterback in Ben Roethlisberger since day one.

Where would Belichick have been without a franchise and future Hall of Fame quarterback? Bill Walsh had two, Joe Montana and Steve Young.

Cowher had three losing seasons and barely survived after missing the playoffs for the third straight season in 2000.

The Steelers went 6-10 in 2003 with Tommy Maddox at quarterback and his boss, Dan Rooney, revealed in his book that it was he who insisted that Cowher draft Roethlisberger in 2004. Cowher wanted to draft an offensive lineman.

This season has a long way to go and the Steelers have three possible Super Bowl teams left in their last five games, but Tomlin may have done his best coaching this season. He had to play without one of his most valuable players, Le’ Veon Bell, deal with lots of distractions and overcome a bad start. He’s going to win another AFC North Championship and has as good a chance of advancing to another AFC Championship game as anybody in the conference.

Tomlin’s not a good coach. He’s a great coach. The numbers don’t lie.

• Stadiumtalk.com has Belichick at the top of the list, but the website also includes a list of sports’ greatest cheaters of all time and the New England Patriots made that one. You can’t put Belichick at the top of any list without mentioning that he wasn’t just suspected of cheating. He got caught. His team lost a number one pick and he was fined $500,000 and anybody who was paying attention knows that the NFL did its best to destroy the evidence and make the scandal disappear.

Belichick’s middle name should be Asterisk.

• There are coaches with more wins than Chuck Noll who came in fifth on the list but nobody in NFL history can match the coaching job he did from 1969-1979.

• Roethlisberger completed 79 percent of his passes for over 400 yards last week and played a bad game. He missed too many open receivers and the interception in the end zone, with under a minute to go, was hideous.

• A quarterback’s stats don’t correlate with wins the way they used to. Titans quarterback Marcus Mariota completed his first 17 passes and finished 22 of 23 with 307 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions against the Houston Texans Monday night and his team lost.

• By the way, would it seem a little strange if Pittsburgh had a major sports team called the Pittsburgh Pennsylvanians? How about the New York New Yorkers? Cleveland Ohioans?

• There has been talk that Kris Letang is the Penguins MVP so far this season. He’s not. Sidney Crosby is and it’s not close.

• Give the Kansas City Chiefs credit for releasing running back Kareem Hunt after a video showed him pushing and kicking a woman in a hotel hallway. He’s great player and he’s a big reason why they’re a serious Super Bowl contender. I don’t know about you but I’d be okay if Hunt ends up like Ray Rice. Gone. Forever.