Head coach Bill Cowher throws a pass to a player during drills at St. Vincent College in Latrobe (8/9/06).
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
How do you go from buffoon to genius in 60 minutes?
Win a Super Bowl.
It is most humorous that the very people who previously ridiculed Bill Cowher -- the ones, in fact, that howled in anger and frustration when the Rooney family sensibly extended his contract -- are now so eager to lavish praise on him. They can barely utter a sentence about Cowher without the word "great" being included.
Greatness cannot be established by one game. It can only be established by a body of work.
Cowher had an excellent body of work before the Steelers won the Super Bowl in February against the Seattle Seahawks, which makes it understandable that winning such a momentous game might change his public perception. But he's not a genius today and he wasn't a buffoon before the Super Bowl.
He was and is an excellent coach. Let's wait until the end of his career before we confer greatness on him.
He has a large challenge in front of him beginning this weekend when the Steelers open training camp. If he can win a second Super Bowl, he'll go a long way toward establishing his greatness. If the Steelers falter, the very same people who are calling him great today will be ridiculing him. Some, in fact, will be demanding that he be replaced as coach. That's the nature of coaching, particularly coaching the Steelers where the fan base is so involved it allows emotion to overrule logic.
The absurdity of the anointing of Cowher with greatness is that if a few officiating calls in the Super Bowl went the other way -- a situation over which he had no control -- the Steelers could have lost. He might have done absolutely nothing different within the context of that game, but his reputation would have taken a massive hit. He would have been labeled, perhaps forever, as the coach who couldn't win the big game because, again, of circumstances over which he had no control.
The following is presented not to diminish the Steelers' Super Bowl victory but to show how easily the game could have gone the other way. The Super Bowl determined that the Steelers were the best team in football. It did not determine that Cowher is a great coach or that Mike Holmgren of Seattle is a lesser coach.
To refresh your memory:
If the back judge hadn't called offensive pass interference on Darrell Jackson against Chris Hope in what was then a scoreless game late in the first quarter, the Seahawks would have taken a 7-0 lead and the entire complexion of the game could have changed. It was the right call -- Jackson did push off -- but if the call hadn't been made it hardly would have been the biggest mistake made by an official.
Early in the fourth quarter, with the Seahawks losing by four, a Matt Hasselbeck to Jerramy Stevens pass to the Steelers' 1 was nullified by a holding call. If that call is not made, and lesser holds have been overlooked, the Seahawks probably score.
That's two touchdowns officiating calls took away from Seattle.
To this day it could be argued whether Ben Roethlisberger broke the plane of the goal line on the Steelers' first touchdown, which came on third down from the 1 early in the second quarter. It was an impossibly close call that went the Steelers' way. It almost as easily could have gone the other way.
That could have been one less touchdown for the Steelers.
Again, the point is not to diminish the Steelers' accomplishment but to show the absurdity of pronouncing greatness on Cowher when he might have coached exactly the same game and lost.
It brings to mind all the verbal abuse Cowher took after the Steelers lost the AFC title game to New England in 2001. It was almost as if Cowher dropped the winning pass while all alone in the end zone. In fact, if two Steelers linemen had held their blocks on a field-goal attempt that was blocked and returned for a touchdown, the outcome of the game might have been different.
Cowher would have been praised, although he would have coached exactly the same game that he was ridiculed for losing.
Cowher was an outstanding coach before the Super Bowl and he'll be that regardless of the outcome of this season. Just don't try to tell that to many Steelers fans if he doesn't win a second Super Bowl.
What do you think?
(Bob Smizik can be reached at bsmizik@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1468. )
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