It's not really here nor there, but man people really have rose-colored glasses when discussing Cowher. They missed the playoffs completely 5 of his last 9 years and had 3 losing seasons and another .500 season in that span. Many of the same criticisms that people levy at Tomlin were equally true of Cowher - dude was conservative to a fault and the dude churned coordinators almost annually. There is so much less difference between them than what people like to suggest.
Lots of differences and I'll try to address your post 1 by 1
- Yes Cowher had losing seasons and oftentimes underperformed in the playoffs. But he also had extremely mediocre QBs leading his teams. The QB's he lost to in the playoffs were fairly accomplished and mostly better than what he had on his own team.
- Note Cowher won tremendously as soon as he got Ben. His rookie year he went like 15-1. Next year the SB. Believe Ben Kissed a Cadillac in 2006 so that was a wash. So in the 3 years he had Ben he won a SB and made it to the Championship game. Tomlin had Ben for 3x as much and got essentially the same results from an aggregate standpoint.
- Cowher did have turnover on his staff, but that was due to many teams wanting to poach. That has literally never happened under Tomlin. THere's 1 thing to have turnover when your underlings want to move on for better opportunity. It's quite another to churn them over due to flat out incompetence.