Tomlin deserved at least one vote

By Jeff

How in the hell did Mike Tomlin not get a single vote for the AP Coach of the Year?

If you read my NFL awards prediction post here, you'll know I didn't expect Tomlin to win the award. But I fully expected him to be in the running. Instead, Bill Belichick ran away with 30 of 50 votes, Raheem Morris finished second, Todd Haley took third and a group of coaches all tied for fourth with one vote apiece.

Someone just called him Omar.

Really? Steve Spagnuolo of the 7-9 St. Louis Rams was more deserving of Coach of the Year than Tomlin? He did a nice job with a bad team, but what problems did he and his team overcome? They didn't have a win against a team over .500, they only won two road games and they were terrible in their biggest game of the season. At least Haley won a division before his team collapsed at the end of the season.

Meanwhile, Tomlin had to hold together a team that didn't have it's starting quarterback for the first four games. Hell, he didn't even have his No. 2 and No. 3 quarterbacks for four and three games, respectively. The young coach also lost both starting tackles and arguably the best 3-4 defensive end in the league before the midpoint of the season. When his team absolutely needed wins to clinch the NFC North, they got it done.

I get that Belichick and Morris were deserving of the award. Belichick took a team with a group of no-names, other than Brady and Welker, and led them to the No. 1 seed in the playoffs. Morris took an incredibly young and raw team and had them playing for a playoff spot in Week 17. There is no questioning the great jobs they did, and it really hurts me to compliment Belichick.

But how can these 50 voters look at the Steelers' season and not take note of the challenges Tomlin and his squad overcame? He held a team together that could have easily fallen apart. We all questioned his decision to give Roethlisberger so many snaps in the preseason, but then you see the result and realize there's a reason he is an NFL head coach and we're not.

Now, for any of you out there who makes the argument that he's winning with Bill Cowher's players, you're being silly. Please stop this nonsense. LaMarr Woodley, Ziggy Hood, Lawrence Timmons, Rashard Mendenhall, Mike Wallace, Emmanuel Sanders and Anontio Bryant have played critical roles on the team this year, and they are all Tomlin guys. Oh, and there is that small fact that Cowher couldn't reach the playoffs the year after the team full of "his" guys won the Super Bowl.

I know Tomlin doesn't care that he didn't receive any recognition for the job he did this year. I know all he cares about is the ring, and that's all he should care about. But the man deserves recognition for the great work he's done. He should have at least got more votes than a guy with a losing record.

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