Tomlin’s Strategy: Get Assistant Coaches from Bad Teams

However, the coaching decisions he has made during his tenure haven’t exactly been inspiring.

You may be asking how we come up with that conclusion. He was able to retain should-be-Hall-of-Famer Dick LeBeau when the rest of the upper staff was bolting for Arizona. He retained defensive line coach John Mitchell, linebackers coach Keith Butler, and tight ends coach James Daniel.

These two retentions were great and enabled our defense to maintain their high level of play. But let’s look at some of the other coaches he brought in.

Bruce Arians was already in the Steelers ranks when Tomlin was hired. When The Whiz got the head coaching job in Pittsburgh West, Arians was promoted from Wide Receivers coach to Offensive Coordinator. Arians only other offensive coordinator gig was in Cleveland from 2001-03. During his time, Cleveland’s offense was in the bottom 10 in the league in Total Offense. The Browns were 21-27 during his 3 years there.

Randy Fichtner was the architect of the spread offense at Memphis that re-wrote the university’s record books for offensive efficiency. He was hired as the Steelers Wide Receivers coach when Tomlin took office and Arians promoted to offensive coordinator.

Ray Horton was promoted to defensive backs coach from assistant secondary coach. Prior to the Steelers he was the Lions defensive backs coach, and we all know how good the Lions secondary has been. The Lions were in the bottom 5 in the league in passing defense during his two years there.

Bob Ligashesky was brought in from St Louis to be the special teams coach.

Assistant Special Teams Coach Amos Jones was brought in from Mississippi State where he was special teams and linebackers coach.

Kirby Wilson was brought in via the reverse route Whiz and Grimm took to be running backs coach. Yes, Tomlin hired the guy responsible for all those great rushing season Arizona had in the mid-2000s to be our running backs coach. During his time in Arizona the Cards were 22nd, 32nd, and 30th in the league in rushing yards.

Harold Goodwin was hired to be our Quality Control Coach on offense. Prior to Pittsburgh he worked with the potent Chicago Bears offense from 2004-06 that was 32nd, 29th, and 15th in Total Offense.

Larry Zierlein, recently-fired offensive line coach, was brought in from Buffalo by Mike Tomlin. Zierlein had spent 1 year in Buffalo where the Bills were 30th in Total Offense, 27th in Rushing offense, and gave up 47 sacks. Before that he was with Cleveland for 4 years. During his time the Browns offense was in the bottom 10 of the league every season.

As we mentioned at the outset, we haven’t been entirely thrilled with the people Tomlin has hired as assistants. This particularly stems from the fact that all of the coaches he has brought in have been from bad teams.

So let’s summarize. Without question, what were the three biggest weaknesses on our team this past year: Offensive line, special teams, secondary.

Now, where did those coaches come from? Cleveland/Buffalo, St. Louis, and Detroit. Wow. Not exactly an inspiring resume for those coaches. And, as could have been expected, two of those coaches have been fired.

But has Tomlin learned his lesson? It was announced today that the Steelers agreed to a deal with Sean Kugler to be their offensive line coach. Let’s look at his body of work.

Offensive Ranks: 16, 28, 32, 24, 27. Bottom 5 in the league for the last 4 years of his tenure.

Sacks allowed: 66, 20, 11, 37, 31. There was some improvement here, but it also didn’t hurt that Joey Harrington decided it was better to throw interceptions than to get sacked.

Yes, that Boise State team. He was there for the magic of the Fiesta Bowl beating of Oklahoma.

Offensive Ranks: 30, 25, 30. Ouch. Looking at these numbers is just painful.

Sacks allowed: 26, 38, 46. Obviously Buffalo starting two rookies on the line (Andy Levitre and Eric Wood) along with trading away Pro Bowl LT Jason Peters to Philadelphia hurt their line in ’09. That being said, what is there in this guy’s body of work that makes him seem like a legitimate candidate to actually improving our offensive line?

As we said at the outset, we like Tomlin, but his personnel decisions leave something to be desired. We can’t make blanket statements about the coaches that Tomlin decided to hire, because some of them have (Fichtner) haven’t been abysmal failures. However, given the track record of these coaches in the past, it’s no surprise that the Steelers are struggling in some areas of the game. Obviously, the talents of players on the field has made up for these deficiencies in some regard. But at some point you have to look at the evidence and say, “Gee, maybe if we brought in some coaches with a proven track record of success, rather than bringing in coaches from crappy teams.”

To end on a positive note, we’re willing to give Kugler a shot. Maybe he just had crappy luck with bad players/a bad offense in Buffalo. We’re certainly not going to argue that point. The point we would like to make, in closing, is that it would be great to see the Steelers actually bring in an assistant coach with a track record of success and stop bringing in cast-offs from places like Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and St. Louis.