Mike Tomlin's coaching statistics have been among the best in the league when it comes to results. He has the second-highest winning percentage of active head coaches with at least 50 games. The only coach above him in that statistic is Bill Belichick.
He has the fifth-most wins of any active head coach, and all those in front of him had multiple years of a head start. He does rank among the middle of active coaches with playoff wins, but all but John Harbaugh are coaches with longer tenures. He also holds the record for most consecutive seasons to start a coaching career without a losing season (12).
You can debate his records or if injuries have played into his playoff struggles in recent years, but what cannot be debated is his problems with replay challenges.
In the 2017 and 2018 seasons, Tomlin challenged calls on the field nine times and lost every single challenge. Before that run, Tomlin had a challenge record of winning 32 of 62 replays. So what happened that led to this recent 0-9 run?
We start back in October of 2017, when the Steelers lost to the Jaguars:
Here's how this is going to work; I'm going to break down each challenge play and explain how the challenge came about, the result of why the call was upheld and grade Tomlin's decision. Considering he won none of these challenges, the grades per each challenge are between "Bad Challenge" if Tomlin had little to no merit on the challenge, "Reasonable" if it was a tough call and the challenge made sense, or "Blown Call" if you can definitively see it was a bad call by the official on the review.
Oct. 8, 2017: Steelers vs. Jaguars, Lost 30-9
Second quarter
The Steelers were down 7-3 to the Jaguars early in the game, as the offense struggled to find any consistency against the Jaguars' aggressive defense. On a third-and-4, Blake Bortles completed a short hitch route to Keelan Cole right under Artie Burns, who made an immediate tackle.
The initial spot awarded Cole the first down, but on the live view it did look questionable whether Cole possessed the ball before or at the 40-yard line. No definitive view was provided and Tomlin challenged, but the call was upheld:
Decision: Reasonable
The Steelers were down only a single possession in a game their defense had under control. The offense had the firepower of Ben Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown, LeVeon Bell, and young JuJu Smith-Schuster with Martavis Bryant. It made sense if the Steelers could get the ball right back to their offense and see if they could crack the Jaguars' defense, and the spot call was very close.
Ultimately the decision wasn't very consequential as it only cost the team a timeout in the first half of what was a very close defensive game. This wasn't an egregious error, if one at all.
Oct. 8, 2017: Steelers vs. Jaguars, Lost 30-9
Fourth quarter
The next failed challenge came in the final quarter of the same game. By this time, the Jaguars were in the process of putting the Steelers away and had all but shut down the Steelers' offense. Roethlisberger was desperate and had already thrown four interceptions, and the offense had yet to score a touchdown.
Roethlisberger appeared to complete a 17-yard pass to Brown over the middle, but the official ruled incomplete. From the live view it looked like a catch, the announcers said as much and both the Steelers and Jaguars were moving to what they thought would be the new spot.
But the officials waved off the catch and Tomlin immediately challenged. It was Brown, who was in the middle of the greatest six-year tear of any receiver in NFL history, so having faith that he would have made such a catch seemed plausible on its face:
Decision: Bad challenge
What made this a bad challenge was Tomlin's timing in throwing the challenge flag. Almost as soon as the CBS broadcast team realized the pass was ruled incomplete, Tomlin's challenge flag was on the field.
The problem with that was that you can see on the replay that the ball definitely hit the ground and it was incomplete. What makes this bad for Tomlin is that he had to know that he was at Heinz Field, and with possession of the ball, Tomlin could've given the offense a play but told them to wait. That would've given him time to watch his own scoreboard show a replay of the catch to give him a better chance to decide.
But the decision was rushed and the Steelers lost their first second-half timeout in a game they were down two touchdowns:
That might be the absolute worst of Tomlin's challenges, but I'm giving you an up-close detail of each of those decisions all this week. Come back tomorrow as we go over his final two challenges of the 2017 season against the Chiefs and Bengals.
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