Much ado about nothing, but not a bad offseason topic. He did a good job here, but it was time for him to move on. I think he took Ben as far down the road as they were going to go together. In another words they may have grown too close personally, and the things Ben needed to change weren't going to come about with Bruce there.
Offensive line aside Ben does get the ball out quicker now. Ben's deep ball has improved to a tremendous degree. And Ben's pocket awareness has improved by leaps and bounds under Haley, which has resulted in his fumbling less. To wit in 6 seasons under Arians Ben lost 38 fumbles. Over 6 per year. In 3 seasons under Haley Ben has 9 lost fumbles, despite passing the ball more frequently. But it gets better yet. Ben's lost fumbles have gone down every year under Haley, from 6 to 3 to 0. I rewatch the games on my phone at the gym from seasons past, and now when Ben steps up in the pocket he always takes a glance to see where the defensive players are before stepping up and delivering a pass. I can live with interceptions, because if you have an aggressive passing game you're going to throw into tight windows and obviously that can sometimes backfire. But under Arians Ben became irresponsible in the pocket and fumbled way too frequently. Just look at his stat line. Under Ken Whisnehunt in 3 seasons Ben fumbles 5 times total. Then Arians takes charge and boom! Ben becomes the fumbler.
http://espn.go.com/nfl/player/stats/...roethlisberger
Anyway, this isn't hate on Bruce. I think Bruce helped Ben develop from a game manager to a game changer. He's obviously a very good coach, and not just a good head coach, but also a very good OC. But again he and Ben grew too close and I think to a point that it become detrimental to Ben's game.
So bottom line was Art II or Tomlin, whoever called the shot on firing Arians was right to do so. And this was obviously a case where both parties came out better in the end.
Now of course there are two underlying issues.
1) Who ordered the code red? Tomlin claims it was him, but the facts of the bygone day don't really support that notion. Art tried to oust him the offseason before (by multiple local press reports) and at the end of the 12 season Tomlin said on record that he was keeping the coaching staff intact.
2) The Steelers lied. BA didn't retire and yet they claimed he had when they announced his removal from the coaching staff. Yeah this comes off as cheesy on the Steelers part. But I think they had a great deal of respect for the man and didn't want to publicly fire him. Two things played in this.
a) Bruce and his wife had both had made some off the record remarkss indicating Bruce and particularly his wife were thinking about retiring in the near future.
b) I don't think the Steelers thought there was any interest from the rest of the league in Bruce's services. I think they were mostly right on this. Due to Bruce's age and health history I think there were 31 teams that had no interest whatsoever in making BA their OC.
But of course all it takes was one, and there was that one with Chuck Pagano reaching out to BA, and the rest as they say is history.
But getting back to the Steelers I think they announced his so called retirement as a face saving gesture for Bruce, not the team. The team fires coaches regularly, and maybe even part of it was they were trying to soft soap it to keep Ben from getting too butt hurt about it. If Bruce had actually retired to Ga. as they Steelers presumed I;m sure he would have walked away with a nice parting gift, as in in probably receiving all of his scheduled 2013 salary +.
So in my opinion there were no bad guys, and everyone in the end walked away a winner, so what more can you ask?
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Originally Posted by fansince'76
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Enthroned Into The Good Old Boys Club - 2024 
he retired right!
