No, he inherited a team with talent, but a team that had a lot of problems brewing as well. Porter couldn't shut his mouth, so he was gone. Alan Faneca was actively/verbally opposing coaches telling players to ignore what the OC was saying (there were a bunch of articles written on it at the time), so he was gone. Jeff Hartings was at the end of his career and retired along with Cowher. Marvel Smith was a shell of his former self his last two years (first two years with Tomlin). Kendall Simmons was losing his ability to play effectively due to his diabetes (strength issues, had to drop weight as well). Who were their backups? We were left with an aging line and no one situated to replace them. The stake through the heart was Faneca's childish behavior.Quote:
Originally Posted by st33lersguy
Hines Ward was the only good/reliable WR—Santonio Holmes was a rookie. He has a nice place in our heart because of his punt return and catch in the SB, but career wise, he sucks. His career target to reception rate stands at 53 percent, 3 percent LESS than Wallace's 56 percent. Outside of him, we were relying on Cedric Wilson (56 percent reception rate) and hoping that a kid named Nate Washington would come along. A kid who, wait for it . . . has a 52 percent career reception rate.
In the running game, we'd lost the bus the previous year, and Cowher replaced him with Dookie to be Willie P's change-up back, because the Duce Staley experiment had failed.
On the defense, two of our linebackers were Clark Haggans and Larry Foote, both of whom were journeyman level at best. Haggains benefited tremendously from having Porter on his other side. Foote only grew to anything more than journeyman after he came back from Detroit and took over the LILB position the following year.
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So, did we have a talented team? Yes. But anyone who thinks that all Tomlin had to do was come in and make sure he stayed out of the way is fooling themselves. He dealt with a host of potentially locker room splitting problems, two accusations against his franchise QB, complete turnover on his o line with nobody waiting in the wings that was anything close to ready to play (thank you very much, Russ Grimm), a host of wide receivers that couldn't catch the football except for Hines Ward, a one-man run game with no one who could relieve him effectively, and the two biggest moves on defense to stabilize a very short bench was bringing in old man Chad Brown, Rodney Bailey (our cut from the previous year) and hoping beyond hope that Travis Kirschke could still play if called upon.
