Friday, December 30, 2016

On Tomlin-Bradshaw

There are few things dumber in sports right now than the Terry Bradshaw-Mike Tomlin "feud". If you've been living under a rock, or simply paying more attention to your relatives than to sports fluff, it's very simple. Bradshaw opened his yap and declared that he didn't think Tomlin was a good coach. Tomlin, whose record is something like 100-67, fired some shade back. And everyone went a-flutter.


And it's just plain stupid. By any measure, Tomlin's an excellent coach. You want to talk wins? He's got them. You want to talk winning with his own players? He's done that. You want to talk surviving injuries? He's done that. You want to talk excellence so consistent it's boring? He's got that. If it weren't for Mr. Snowmeiser in Foxboro, we'd be looking at Tomlin as maybe the premier coach of this era.

The flip side of the coin is Bradshaw, who, at this point, says whatever he feels like because he's goddamn Terry Bradshaw. I mean, good for him, but he got hit so hard and so often that you can hold him up to your ear and hear Troy Aikman. His hot takes are, to put it gently, lukewarm. He's built a broadcasting career out of aw-shucks folksiness, not actual analysis, and at this point if he said the sky was blue I'd ask for a second opinion. And the only reason anyone cares what he thinks about the current Steelers coach is that he is a bona-fide Steelers Legend(TM) and thus, based on stuff he did 40 years ago, he is expected to be sage and all-knowing today. Which ain't happening. 

So, on one hand, facts. On the other, blithering guy. In this, at least, let's go with facts and move on.

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