When Should NFL Teams Move on from Coaches Like Mike Tomlin and Bill Belichick?

By Scott Kacsmar

The NFL is kicking off Week 14 with a Thursday night game that speaks to how far the Pittsburgh Steelers and New England Patriots have fallen after spending two decades as annual Super Bowl contenders. Mike Tomlin and Bill Belichick are still the head coaches, but the years-long decline of these teams under their watch begs the question of when it is time to move on from a coach who once brought you great success?

While they sit atop the leaderboard with six Super Bowl wins each, you do not see greatness anymore when you watch the Patriots and Steelers. The over/under for Thursday night’s clash is 30.0, which would tie the lowest for any NFL game in the last 30 seasons. Worse, that number might not be any higher if it was Mac Jones (benched) against Kenny Pickett (ankle) instead of backup quarterbacks Bailey Zappe and Mitch Trubisky.

Replacing Tom Brady and Ben Roethlisberger was never going to be easy for these teams, and the impact of their departures cannot be overstated. But in an NFL that has shifted to hiring offensive-minded coaches, are Belichick and Tomlin, two former defensive coordinators, the right coaches to lead teams through a rebuild?

Mike Tomlin: The Standard Is No Longer the Standard in Pittsburgh

One of Tomlin’s oldest sayings is “the standard is the standard.” At 7-5 in his 17th season, Tomlin is 2 wins away from securing a 20th consecutive season without a losing record for the Steelers, who started their streak when Ben Roethlisberger was drafted in 2004. It would surpass Belichick’s New England run of 19 seasons and only trail Tom Landry’s 21-year streak with the Dallas Cowboys in 1965-85.

But whether the streak survives this year or not, it is not as good of a run as Belichick and Landry had. First, Belichick had 19 consecutive winning seasons and was 6-3 in Super Bowls. After starting the streak with a 7-7 record in 1965, Landry then had 20 straight winning seasons and was 2-2 in the Super Bowl while only missing the playoffs twice.

While the Steelers are 2-1 in the Super Bowl during their run, it was Bill Cowher who coached the 15-1 season in 2004 and the first championship win in 2005. Tomlin is only 1-1 in the Super Bowl, he has missed the playoffs six times, he finished 8-8 on four occasions, and he has lost the first playoff game at home four times (2007, 2014, 2017, and 2020).

Still a great streak, but at some point in Pittsburgh, the standard dipped from competing for Super Bowls to not losing more than 8 games in a season to keep this streak alive. The Steelers have only reached 10 wins once since 2018, and that was their 11-0 start during the 2020 pandemic when they fell apart in December and finished 1-5.

There was a time in 1998-00 when Bill Cowher missed the playoffs three years in a row and people in Pittsburgh wanted him fired. What would those people say now that Tomlin has gone six seasons without a playoff win? It is the longest playoff win drought for the Steelers since the 1970 merger, and the way the Steelers are playing in 2023, this might easily be a seventh season without a playoff win.

Since 2021, the Steelers have had a negative scoring differential each season as they either win games close or lose big, putting Tomlin more in line with Chuck Pagano (Colts’ coach during the Andrew Luck era) or what Adam Gase did with the Dolphins and Jets.

The 2021 Steelers needed 7 game-winning drives from a 39-year-old Roethlisberger to sneak into the playoffs as a No. 7 seed where they were crushed 42-21 in Kansas City. Last year, the Steelers had another 5 game-winning drives to turn a 2-6 start into a 9-8 finish, missing the playoffs. This year, Pickett has led 3 game-winning drives as the Steelers have not won any game by more than 7 points.

That’s 15 game-winning drives in 2.67 seasons for a team that is 25-20-1 despite having been outscored by 130 points since 2021. That’s simply not sustainable and running back Najee Harris acknowledged this a few weeks ago in stating the Steelers won’t remain a winning team playing like this.

Furthermore, the Steelers have gone 54 straight games without winning any game by more than 14 points, the longest streak in Pittsburgh since 1937-42 (60 games). No game is a cakewalk for Tomlin’s team anymore, but the Steelers have been a cakewalk for several Super Bowl contenders in recent years as evidenced by their losses of 38-3 to the 2022 Bills, 35-13 to the 2022 Eagles, and 30-7 to the 2023 49ers.

The standard is no longer the standard in Pittsburgh, and this is where Tomlin having unlimited job security hurts the team as it chooses to rest on its laurels instead of making any sweeping changes.

One of Tomlin’s biggest flaws in recent years has been extending that job security to his assistant coaches even when they did not deserve it. Offensive coordinator Todd Haley fell on the sword for the team’s 45-42 loss to the Jaguars in the 2017 AFC divisional round, but somehow it was defensive coordinator Keith Butler who kept his job for another four seasons.

In replacing Haley, who helped Roethlisberger adapt to a style of getting the ball out faster, Tomlin resorted to a cheap in-house promotion. He promoted Randy Fichtner to OC in 2018 after he had been on the staff since Tomlin’s rookie year in 2007 as wide receivers and quarterbacks coach.

After the offense fell apart late in that 2020 season, Fichtner was gone and replaced by Matt Canada. The offense looked even more broken in 2021, but Canada somehow retained his job for 2022 to work with rookie quarterback Kenny Pickett. Despite some fool’s gold progress late in the season, many fans called for Canada’s job to get Pickett a real coordinator for 2023 with options out there like Eric Bieniemy, Kellen Moore, and Todd Monken. But the Steelers stuck with Canada, and it took a 13-10 loss in Cleveland where fans started turning on Pickett for the Steelers to make the rare in-season move of firing an assistant coach for the first time since the 1940s.

But since Canada’s removal, the Steelers are still averaging just 13 points per game and have gone into the locker room at halftime with 3 points in each game the last two weeks.

So many teams are looking for an offensive mind that has learned from the coaching trees of Andy Reid, Kyle Shanahan, or Sean McVay. It doesn’t even have to be the head coach as you can look at Houston this year. The Texans hired DeMeco Ryans as their head coach, but they made sure to hire Bobby Slowik as his offensive coordinator to develop C.J. Stroud. Slowik was in San Francisco with Ryans and Kyle Shanahan and has already brought an exciting offense to Houston with Stroud leading the league in passing yards as a rookie. Oh yeah, Stroud also dominated the Steelers in a 30-6 game this year, so that could be another contender in the AFC that the Steelers are stuck looking up to for years to come.

The Steelers continue to make cheap moves that have not fixed what has fundamentally been a broken offense ever since 2019 when Antonio Brown was traded and Roethlisberger suffered his elbow injury. Things have never been the same since. Even in 2020 when they were 11-0, they thrived on winning close games with Roethlisberger making a ton of his best plays on third down and in the red zone before things fell apart in December.

As for Pickett, he just may not be the guy as he has looked injury-prone, leaving 5-of-25 games with injury already, and he has the lowest touchdown pass rate in NFL history (1.8%) for anyone with at least 700 pass attempts. Had Pickett gone to a different college than Pittsburgh, it’s quite possible the Steelers never even thought to draft him in 2022.

This loyalty to traditions and standards is hurting the Steelers from progressing forward with the rest of the NFL this decade. The standard has fallen in Pittsburgh because going 9-8 with virtually no hope of winning a playoff game has not been the goal for decades here.

Bill Belichick: The GM Has Failed the Coach (And It’s the Same Person)

We covered the decline of Belichick’s Patriots almost two months ago after he was blown out 72-3 against the Cowboys and Saints in back-to-back games. Since then, the scoreboard hasn’t been that lopsided, but it’s also barely in use as the Patriots are 2-10, the worst record in the AFC, and are averaging a league-low 12.3 points per game.

In many ways, the careers of Belichick and Tomlin are linked together as AFC contenders at the same time with overlapping streaks of non-losing seasons. You could argue Belichick was the roadblock for Tomlin’s last real chances at postseason success.

Tomlin’s last playoff win was in the 2016 season when the Steelers snuck out of Kansas City with an 18-16 win in the divisional round. That set up a match in New England in the AFC Championship Game, but that one was all New England in a 36-17 blowout where Tomlin’s defense made Chris Hogan look like Randy Moss with 180 yards and 2 touchdowns.

In 2017, the teams met in a critical Week 15 game in Pittsburgh that would determine the No. 1 seed. The Steelers thought they had a game-winning touchdown in the last 30 seconds to Jesse James, but the controversial play was ruled an incomplete pass. Two plays later, Roethlisberger’s deflected pass was intercepted and the Patriots won and went on to another Super Bowl while the Steelers lost at home to the Jaguars in the divisional round. To this day, no one knows if they’d call James play a touchdown now after fine-tuning the catch rules again because of it, but that was a big moment in this rivalry.

While 2017 was the last real contender for the Steelers, 2018 was the same way for Belichick’s Patriots as he put on a masterclass that postseason in winning his sixth title. But that run was similar to the end of the Chicago Bulls’ dynasty with Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson, who all left the Bulls after that sixth win. Belichick probably should have retired on top of the world along with Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski (who did retire before returning in 2020 with Brady in Tampa Bay). But what else was he going to do with his life?

But just as how we cite the 2020 Steelers’ 11-0 start as fool’s gold, the 2019 Patriots’ 8-0 start based on historic defense was also a case of fraud. The Patriots finished 4-5 and were bounced at home by the Titans in the wild-card round. They have not won a playoff game since Super Bowl 53.

Another thing Belichick has in common with Tomlin is that he is not very good at hiring assistant coaches anymore. At least other teams want to hire his assistants to be coaches, but we have seen Joe Judge (Giants), Matt Patricia (Lions), and Josh McDaniels (Raiders) all fail miserably away from him on their own.

Say what you will about McDaniels as a head coach, but the guy is a good offensive coordinator, and he helped Mac Jones to a solid rookie season in 2021 when the Patriots snuck out a playoff year thanks to strong defense taking advantage of the worst teams on the schedule. They also got lucky with extreme wind in Buffalo on a Monday night game where they won 14-10 after throwing 3 passes. Of course, that postseason ended in Buffalo when Belichick’s defense allowed the greatest offensive performance in NFL history when Buffalo scored a touchdown on all 7 of its possessions in a 47-17 blowout.

But Belichick had to replace McDaniels in 2022 when he took the Vegas job, and his solution was to bring Judge and Patricia back to coordinate the offense. The results were disastrous, and he called back Bill O’Brien, another former partner in crime, to coordinate the offense in 2023. After a couple of close, respectable losses to the Eagles and Dolphins to start this season, things have only gotten worse. They’ve also gotten weird as the Patriots have lost their last 3 games despite not allowing more than 10 points in any of them. This has not happened to any team in the NFL since the 1938 Chicago Cardinals, who did it in 4 straight games a year before World War II started.

The Patriots just have no real prospects on offense, the quarterback decision (Mac Jones or Bailey Zappe) is grotesque either way, and the defense is thriving again under Belichick despite not having its best pass rusher (Matt Judon) and best corner (rookie Christian Gonzalez) due to injuries.

But before you give Belichick a “if he only had a quarterback” pass, remember that he is the de facto general manager in New England. He built this roster, and it stinks, especially at wide receiver, a position that has always been an issue for him as a scout.

That is why Belichick the GM has failed Belichick the coach, because he can still coach. But it is much harder when you lack elite players as at least the Steelers can win games on the efforts of players like T.J. Watt, Cameron Heyward, and Minkah Fitzpatrick, and they have a reliable kicker (Chris Boswell) and talented receivers. Hell, Tomlin is 2-12-1 since 2017 when T.J. Watt, the most valuable defender in the league, doesn’t play at least 50% of the snaps in a game. The Patriots have no one of that caliber anymore. Even their rookie kicker, Chad Ryland, has missed a third of his kicks and missed a 35-yard game-tying field goal against the Giants in Week 12.

But the area where Tomlin and Belichick may differ the most right now is the success in close games. We mentioned the Steelers have had 15 game-winning drives since 2021 alone. The Patriots have just 6 game-winning drives since the 2019 season, and that even includes the very unexpected one against Buffalo this year for the team’s only recent win.

While Jones and Pickett have both been lousy successors to Brady and Roethlisberger so far, their success in close games couldn’t be any more different:

• Pickett is 7-4 (.636) at game-winning drive opportunities, the best record among active starters (min. 10 games).
• Jones is 2-13 (.133) at game-winning drive opportunities, the worst record among active starters.
• The 2023 Patriots are 1-7 at game-winning drive opportunities and 2-7 in close games.
• The 2023 Steelers are 3-2 at game-winning drive opportunities and 7-2 in close games.

Belichick’s skill players have committed some very egregious turnovers late in close games in recent years that have sunk the team. Tomlin still had the experience and edge of Roethlisberger in 2021, and Pickett has been surprisingly good in situations where he has to put a drive together to win a game. Oddly enough, Pickett would probably be a better fit in New England than Jones as he can keep the turnovers low and maybe still lead a few clutch drives to save low-scoring wins like he has in Pittsburgh.

There is no doubt both teams need something better at quarterback. But Belichick has done worse in rebuilding the team as a whole after spending all he could to win that last Super Bowl in 2018.

Super Bowls Are Won in Windows

History says it is very unlikely that Tomlin or Belichick will win another Super Bowl for the Steelers and Patriots, which would break the tie for the most ever as the franchises are at six each.

The truth about Super Bowls is that they are won in small windows, usually runs of no more than 6 years, and that is true no matter if you have a generational coach or quarterback. We may only have 57 years of Super Bowl winners to go on, but we have over 1,200 examples of teams that did not win a championship to go by as well.

The fact is there has never been a coach (or quarterback) who has won a Super Bowl in their 2nd, 9th, and 16th seasons – a random example of something spread out over time to suggest titles can be won if you stay good for an extended period of time.

The fact is we have a Five-Year Rule where no team has ever won its first Super Bowl starting the same quarterback for the same coach for more than five years. We’ll see if John Harbaugh and Lamar Jackson can change that in Year 6 in Baltimore this year, but maybe they deserve an asterisk since Lamar didn’t start the first half of his rookie year and missed the end of the past two seasons due to injury.

You can usually tell early on if your coach is going to win a Super Bowl or not. Of the 35 head coaches to win a Super Bowl, 30 of them did it within their first 5 seasons with a team. The only ones who needed longer:

• Chuck Noll, Steelers: Needed 6 seasons to win a Super Bowl, then he won 4-of-6.
• Andy Reid, Chiefs: His 7th season in Kansas City was the charm, but it was also just his 2nd season with Patrick Mahomes as his starter.
• John Madden, Raiders: He came close before but kept losing to Noll’s Steelers before getting revenge and his ring in Year 8.
• Tom Landry, Cowboys: It took 12 years, but the Super Bowl also didn’t exist for the first half of that run, and Landry took over an expansion franchise in 1960.
• Bill Cowher, Steelers: He was in the Super Bowl in his 4th season in 1995, but he did not get the one for the thumb for Pittsburgh until 2005, his 14th season as head coach.

Pittsburgh’s two Hall of Fame coaches making that list may give them more encouragement to stick with a coach through thin years, but we are talking about unprecedented territory for Tomlin to win another Super Bowl for the Steelers this long after his first (and only) one way back in 2008.

Fourteen coaches have won multiple Super Bowls. Here is the gap of seasons between those wins:

• Tom Landry – 6 seasons
• Joe Gibbs – 5 seasons
• George Seifert – 5 seasons
• Tom Coughlin – 4 seasons
• Bill Parcells – 4 seasons
• Tom Flores – 3 seasons
• Bill Walsh – 3 seasons
• Andy Reid – 3 seasons
• Bill Belichick – 2 seasons
• Vince Lombardi – back-to-back
• Don Shula – back-to-back
• Chuck Noll – back-to-back
• Jimmy Johnson – back-to-back
• Mike Shanahan – back-to-back

Four coaches have won at least 3 Super Bowls, and here are those full gaps:

• Bill Belichick – 2, 1, 10, 2, and 2
• Chuck Noll – 1, 3, and 1
• Bill Walsh – 3 and 4
• Joe Gibbs – 5 and 4

Again, it’s usually about a 5-year window before you can expect too much of the core team to age out or move on to different teams. Landry (6) and Belichick (10) are the only coaches to ever win another Super Bowl with a gap longer than 5 seasons. For Landry, he won in 1971 and 1977, but he also lost to Noll’s Steelers in 1975. He was always in contention back then. For Belichick, there was that huge gap of no rings in 2005-13, but we know they blew it big time to the Giants as big favorites in Super Bowls 42 and 46.

Tomlin is coaching his 15th season since his last Super Bowl win. He hasn’t been back to the big game since 2010, his 2nd season after his first win. This is why it would be a huge outlier for him to ever get back and win another as coach of the Steelers.

Most teams would have moved on already as we will look at in the next section. But a good rule of thumb should be that if things have been stagnant for 5-to-6 years, it is time to make that change no matter how fond the memories of past success were. Get a fresh mind and set of eyes in there.

The Coaches Who Left and It Was for the Best

Sometimes, long-term relationships get stale, they sour, and the best thing for both parties is to move on. This can apply to coaching tenures in the NFL as well.

At 2-10, you can write it down that Belichick will have gone 5 seasons without a playoff win in New England, the longest streak of his career. Expectations are that this will be his last year as coach of the Patriots too.

But Tomlin is working on a 7th-straight season where he won’t win a playoff game in Pittsburgh. Most coaches do not get to stay on this long when that happens, and winning one ring has not given most coaches the job security it has like Tomlin.

Jon Gruden (2002 Buccaneers) and Brian Billick (2000 Ravens) rode historic defenses to Super Bowls, but they were both ousted after a 6-year playoff win drought. Notice that the Eagles let go of Doug Pederson just 3 years after his Super Bowl win in 2017, and he even won a playoff game a year later in 2018 with Nick Foles again.

Let’s assume the Steelers do not win a playoff game this year, giving Tomlin a 7-year drought without a playoff win. He is almost certainly returning as the coach in 2024, which would be the 8th season since his last playoff win. That would make him only the third coach in the Super Bowl era to return to a team for Year 8 of a playoff win drought.

Jim Mora made it 11 years with the Saints despite going 0-4 in the playoffs. However, he was a beloved figure there as he led the Saints to the playoffs for the first time in franchise history after a poor start to that franchise. He was eventually fired halfway through his 11th season in 1996.

Marvin Lewis lasted 16 years as head coach of the Bengals despite going 0-7 in the playoffs. Similar to Mora, some of Lewis’ success with a struggling franchise was viewed favorably despite the lack of January wins. The Steelers were also a thorn in Lewis’ side as his best teams, 2005 and 2015, both lost at home in the wild-card round to Pittsburgh after Carson Palmer was injured on the opening drive and a decade later when AJ McCarron had to start in place of an injured Andy Dalton.

Updated correction: Don Shula also went 8 straight seasons without a playoff win in Miami in 1974-81 following his back-to-back titles. He was excluded since the research was based on coaches who started their careers in the Super Bowl era since 1966, and Shula’s career began with the Colts in 1963. But during his Miami tenure, he did have an 8-year playoff win drought, so Tomlin would be the fourth coach to go into Year 8 with a team during a playoff win drought. But do keep in mind for Shula that the double wild card did not exist during half of that 8-year window, and he twice missed the playoffs entirely in years he finished 10-4 (1974 and 1977), which would never happen today with 14 playoff teams and 17-game schedules.

We know Mora and Lewis infamously never won a playoff game in their careers. But did any of the teams in the Super Bowl era who kept a coach beyond a 6-year playoff win drought get rewarded for it? The answer is not exactly.

• Sam Rutigliano (1978-84 Browns, 0-2 in playoffs): Fired during his 7th season and never had another NFL head coaching job.
• Jack Patera (1976-82 Seahawks, no playoffs): Fired during his 7th season and never had another NFL head coaching job.
• Jeff Fisher (2004-10 Titans, 0-2 in playoffs): Fired after his 7th-straight season without a playoff win, and he was 31-45-1 with no playoff appearances with the Rams in 2012-16.
• Chuck Knox (1985-91 Seahawks, 0-2 in playoffs): After starting his tenure with 3 playoff wins in 1983-84, he was 0-2 in the playoffs the rest of the way, usually flirting with .500 purgatory.
• Monte Clark (1978-84 Lions, 0-2 in playoffs): After back-to-back playoff losses, he was 4-11-1 in his 7th and final season as head coach of the Lions.
• Bart Starr (1975-81 Packers, no playoffs): After finally winning a playoff game in his 8th season, the Packers gave their former quarterback-turned-coach one more season before parting ways. He was a far better quarterback than head coach.
• Mike Holmgren (1999-04 Seahawks, 0-3 in playoffs): In his 7th season with Seattle, Holmgren finally broke through and got to a Super Bowl where he lost to Bill Cowher’s Steelers. Holmgren went 4-3 in the playoffs after that initial 6-year drought.
• Mike Shanahan (1999-04 Broncos, 0-3 in playoffs): There was a 6-year playoff win drought for Shanahan in Denver after John Elway retired following the back-to-back titles, but after beating Belichick’s Patriots, Shanahan lost at home to the 2005 Steelers in the AFC Championship Game. He never coached another playoff game for Denver and was fired after 2008.

Tomlin would like to compare to Holmgren and Shanahan than the rest of these coaches, but you also have to factor in how the team is trending. Shanahan had some rough patches after Elway retired and he had to find a new quarterback. He had a 3-year playoff run with Jake Plummer and did put together that one special year in 2005.

Holmgren also peaked in 2005 with Seattle where he had Matt Hasselbeck and league MVP Shaun Alexander at running back. But the Seahawks had close playoff losses to the Packers (2003) and Rams (2004) in the wild-card round, so they were building towards something like that.

You just don’t see the Steelers building towards being a legit playoff contender right now with Pickett and this offense. Not to mention a defense that has been shredded by most contenders in recent years.

The Steelers pride themselves on only having three head coaches since 1969, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the league has been wrong in cutting ties early. Let’s look at some examples where ending the relationship and going in a new direction was for the best (for both parties).

Andy Reid (2012 Eagles to 2013 Chiefs)

The Eagles were the best team in the NFC in the early 2000s, but they kept falling short in the Conference Championship Game. They peaked in 2004 after adding Terrell Owens, but they still lost to Belichick’s Patriots in the Super Bowl. Things soured from there as quarterback Donovan McNabb had multiple season-ending injuries, Owens went crazy in 2005, and the defense wasn’t as strong anymore. Reid’s last playoff win was in 2008, then he watched a couple of one-and-done years in 2009-10 before the so-called “Dream Team” missed the playoffs in 2011. The 2012 Eagles finished 4-12 and Reid was done after 14 years.

Reid went on to have success with the Chiefs of course, but it is hard to say he wouldn’t have kept coming up short with huge blown leads in the playoffs if the team never drafted Patrick Mahomes in 2017. That was a game changer as it also adhered to the 5-year rule with Mahomes replacing Alex Smith after a 5-year run of trying to make that work.

But the Eagles are not likely sad about it. While Chip Kelly did not work out in the NFL, he did get one magical playoff season out of Nick Foles, and without that, there likely isn’t a 2017 Super Bowl run with Foles leading the way for Doug Pederson’s offense after Carson Wentz tore his ACL. The Eagles also have reloaded well with Nick Sirianni and Jalen Hurts reaching a Super Bowl last year, fittingly losing to Reid and Mahomes.

Mike McCarthy (2018 Packers to 2020 Cowboys)

While it only took three years for Mike McCarthy to win a Super Bowl with Aaron Rodgers as his starter in Green Bay in 2010, the duo shockingly never got back to the big game. They saw a 15-1 season blowup at home to the Giants in 2011. They were swept out of the playoffs by the 2012 49ers, 2013 49ers, 2014 Seahawks, 2015 Cardinals, and 2016 Falcons.

The 2014 NFC Championship Game in Seattle was the beginning of the end for McCarthy in Green Bay. He blew a 16-point lead and made very conservative choices in a game the team lost in overtime as close games were always a bugaboo for his teams.

With the offense becoming stale in 2015 and Rodgers no longer looking like an MVP candidate in his offense, McCarthy was fired after a brutal loss to Arizona in 2018 when it was clear the Packers were going to miss the playoffs again.

But it worked out for the best for both parties. The Packers hired Matt LaFleur and became the first team in NFL history to win 13 games in 3 straight seasons, appearing in two more NFC Championship Games and Rodgers won two more MVP awards.

McCarthy joined Dallas in 2020 and lost Dak Prescott to a broken ankle, but the Cowboys have been one of the best teams since 2021 and are a Super Bowl contender right now. McCarthy, for all his flaws, has a real shot at becoming the first coach to ever win a Super Bowl with two franchises.

Tony Dungy (2001 Buccaneers to 2002 Colts)

Tony Dungy proved to be a stabilizing force for two franchises. He built up one of the best defenses in modern NFL history in Tampa Bay, turning that team into a consistent winner and playoff threat. But with inept offense cratering some playoff runs, Dungy was moved to Indianapolis while the Buccaneers traded for Raiders coach Jon Gruden, who improved the offense in 2002 and rode that incredible defense to a Super Bowl win.

But Dungy was important in Indianapolis in getting Peyton Manning to raise his game to an MVP level by cutting down on turnovers and maximizing efficiency. The Colts won Super Bowl 41 in 2006 and Dungy is in the Hall of Fame.

The grass is not always greener on the other side, but it is still much easier to replace a coach than a franchise quarterback.

While Tom Landry had his most success with Roger Staubach in Dallas, he still had winning seasons and deep playoff runs with solid starters like Craig Morton and Danny White, who came before and after Staubach. That is what Tomlin and Belichick are missing right now. Instead of getting someone who could potentially be the 14th-best quarterback in the NFL, they are saddled with players who rank 26th and 27th in QBR. A quarterback on par with 2012 Joe Flacco in Baltimore would be a game-changer for Belichick and Tomlin.

Conclusion: The Dog Days Have Only Just Begun for the Steelers and Patriots

In all likelihood, Belichick will not be back as head coach of the Patriots in 2024. Owner Robert Kraft will announce it as a “mutual parting of ways” rather than a firing out of respect, and Belichick will be highly sought after as he is still on track to break Don Shula’s record for career wins.

But Belichick would be wise to join a team with a proven quarterback where he can spruce up the defense. The Chargers, the team he just lost 6-0 to, would be a fantastic choice if they do the right thing and get rid of Brandon Staley. But Belichick also needs to drop the dual general manager role and just focus on coaching at this point. Maybe he can further his legacy by becoming the first coach to win a Super Bowl with two teams.

As for the Steelers, you can count on Tomlin to return even if he blows a pair of home games this week to 2-win teams from Arizona and New England and it leads to the non-losing season streak ending. But he better hire a real offensive coordinator from outside the building, and they probably need to investigate the quarterback market as well.

There is this notion that you can’t get rid of Tomlin (or Belichick) because there is no better option.

But who was Mike Tomlin in 2007 when the Steelers hired him? He was just a 1-year defensive coordinator in Minnesota in 2006, a middling defense that ranked No. 1 against the run and opponents simply passed the ball at will against as Belichick did in a Monday night matchup. Even Bill Cowher was just a 35-year-old defensive coordinator from the Chiefs who grew up in Pittsburgh. We know way more about assistant coaches around the league than we did in the pre-internet and social media days when they still found Cowher and Tomlin.

The point is great coaches can come out of anywhere if you just give someone with leadership skills a chance, and if you provide them with a good enough roster. Tomlin by and large won his only ring with Cowher’s roster.

But the Patriots and Steelers are not as attractive openings for coaches as they were in the previous two decades when Brady and Roethlisberger were the quarterbacks. You have to have that position nailed down to have any shot at sustained success in this era.

The Patriots and Steelers are in for some dog days until they fix the quarterback position no matter how long Belichick and Tomlin stay on. In the AFC alone, you have to look up to Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert, Joe Burrow, Trevor Lawrence, Tua Tagovailoa, and C.J. Stroud looks like a stud already. That’s eight names and only seven teams make the playoffs, and we haven’t even mentioned the final years of Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson or the potential of Anthony Richardson and Will Levis.

Other AFC teams are finding their answer at quarterback, so the Steelers and Patriots need to do the same as Jones and Pickett do not look legitimate.

God knows what Thursday night is going to look like when it’s Trubisky and Zappe. This game will give new meaning to “Race to 7” for these franchises.

The standard is no longer the standard in Pittsburgh.

The Patriot Way is dead in New England.

Even kings and popes have to be replaced eventually. Such is the order of life in the NFL.