The NFL has a draft system where the worst team in the league gets the best pick in the next year's draft.
Tomlin dragging teams that should have won 2 or 3 games into the playoffs each year just to lose immediately meant that the Steelers never got any good draft picks and thus never improved the team year of year.
They were stuck in a purgatory of sorts.
In fact there are way more examples of bad teams crashing into high picks, and then continuing to crash, than dramatic turn-arounds into Super Bowl victories shortly thereafter.
Good teams and coaches go for the Super Bowl every year because it is impossible to predict when you’ll get there and win. That includes when you have (or don’t have) a great quarterback. You just have to try your hardest every year and hope.
And excellence is a habit, not a dial you can quickly turn from one side to the other over the summer. Most players have short careers and so a team needs them to get better every year in order to hope to peak as a team.
It seems to me like a lot of sports criticism is based in regretful retrospection. “Oh, if only they’d done this or that, they would have won.” But it’s impossible to know what would have happened. Injuries alone are unpredictable and hugely impactful from year to year.
It’s a natural thought, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good way to actually manage a team.
The Browns are perpetually bad because their owners allow it.
Look at the Lions, new owner, completely new mentality.
Browns fan in. Baker had them legit good the COVID year - beat the Steelers in the playoffs, then lost to the Chiefs in large part to a hugely controversial call. Then Baker hurt his non-throwing shoulder trying to tackle someone on and interception that happened because the sprinter masquerading as a wide receiver (Anthony Schwartz) stopped his route. Then Jimmy Haslam, already famous for being a criminal and drafting Johnny Eightball when told to do so by a houseless person in downtown Cleveland told him to, made one of the worst trades in NFL history. Andrew Berry has had really good drafts the last two years which underscores your point.
Funny that Aaron Rodgers thought he would go #1 to his hometown 49ers who instead took Alex Smith. And that SF is killing it this year with Mr. Irrelevant Brock Purdy (further demonstrating your point).
I was also in Boston when Tom Brady happened; earlier that year I nearly physically ran into Drew Bledsoe. Just to keep things nerdy on HN, later that year I brought down the uni's network but it was not Harvard. Maybe I shouldn't have paid attention to sports so much