I have been down on Tomlin, especially the not winning in the playoffs and playing down to lesser teams. We have had many years of under achieving and that was IMHO on Tomlin. Remember when he held Ben out of the Oakland game because he didn't want to interfere with the flow of the game? Some of his challenges were head scratching to say the least. These were all reasons I was ready to move on from Tomlin.
That being said I also have to give him credit for the team's performance this year. When Ben went down I did not expect much, mostly just wanted to see what we have in Rudolph. I wanted to see him progress but wasn't expecting much. I figured 500 would be a success, and anything beyond that was out of the realm of possibilities. The drafting of Busch and bringing in Minkah has really paid HUGE dividends and has transformed this team.
Our Offense has been leaned on hard to win us games. Scoring was not an issue but the D could never seem to get off the field when we needed it the most. We invested dearly in the Offense, were willing to break the bank for Bell and not sure if we could have kept AB we would not have done the same. I think losing those 2 actually worked in our favor. The injuries also seem to have been more of a blessing than I would have thought, but hopefully those are over. I am excited to see what this years team does and even more excited to see what Ben can do when he comes back next year.
I am willing to give credit for what he has done this year, maybe this is the year we over achieve for a change.