Originally Posted by
steelreserve
What if they got rid of Tomlin in like 2015 and had a coach who knew anything about identifying and coaching up players, and had a mind for innovating on defense.
Bam, suddenly our three high picks at CB/S are used on players who aren't meatheads, and they plus Haden form one of the top defensive backfields in the league, with the other young players as solid depth because they developed instead of regressed. Our linebacking corps is solid.
Overflowing with talented young players, our new 3-3-5 base defense is the innovation that the league didn't see coming, and other teams scramble to copy it but are always playing catch-up, as the right kinds of players are now expensive and hunted to extinction, much like tall cornerbacks after Seattle's sudden rise.
The Patriots fail to reach the Super Bowl even once during this time, as all roads lead through Heinz Field and the aggressive defensive scheme provides the perfect counter to the pass-heavy meta that had dominated the past decade. Tom Brady retires in 2017 after 12 seasons without a championship, having never captured that elusive fourth title. Ben Roethlisberger enters 2019 aiming to win one more Super Bowl before retiring, to pass Bradshaw and Montana for the most of all time.
Certainly seems better than the actual sequence of events.