John Steigerwald: Coach of the Year? Not Steelers' Mike Tomlin

Sorry, Mike Tomlin, but John Harbaugh is NFL Coach of the Year.

You deserved serious consideration when your Pittsburgh Steelers somehow were in position to get into the playoffs after losing Ben Roethlisberger for the season and having to deal with so many injuries to other key players along the way. However, you lost to the Jets and put your fate in the hands of the Houston Texans, who had no real interest in beating the Tennessee Titans, who got the last AFC playoff spot.

Imagine how much it would have hurt if the Steelers managed to beat the Ravens’ JV team in Baltimore.

If it makes you feel any better, even if you had gotten the Steelers to the playoffs, you would have been no better than the second best coach of the year.

John Harbaugh is the man.

His Ravens are a No. 1 seed, and he took over the league by going against the grain with a run-first offense in a pass-happy league.

It’s amazing it took so long for an NFL coach to have the guts to draft a running quarterback and decide to build his offense around his mobility.

Harbaugh didn’t only do that, he also told the world he would. Here’s what he said on the “Pardon My Take” podcast in March before the NFL Draft:

“I mean, to me, it’s on us as coaches. Like our job is to make sure that we do everything we can to create this offense that, I would say, the league has never seen before 1950. So, like, what comes around goes around. It’s not evolution. It’s revolution.”

Lots of people around the league were laughing about that. They knew it was ridiculous to think a team could contend for a Super Bowl with a running quarterback and his guy, Lamar Jackson, just wasn’t an NFL quarterback.

And this had some of the experts in the media rolling in the aisles:

“The thing I like about Lamar is he’s a motivated guy. He knows he’s a quarterback, and he’s not gonna be told that he’s not a quarterback. And all the naysayers that want to say ‘dude you’re not a quarterback’, he’s gonna be like, ‘we’ll see. We’ll see about that.’ “

Who’s laughing now?

You might have noticed Jackson is a quarterback. He runs a lot, enough to set a record for rushing yards by a quarterback, but he also can throw just fine.

The Ravens went 13-2 with him as their quarterback and, since he took over for Joe Flacco last season, they’re 19-4.

The revolution is on. And NFL fans, with the possible exception of fans of AFC North teams and the New England Patriots, should be happy to see something other than a dink-and-dunk offense reach the Super Bowl.

Meanwhile, back to the Coach of the Year discussion. Maybe Tomlin should have tried to talk his boss, Kevin Colbert, into signing a more experienced backup when Roethlisberger went down.

Mason Rudolph never had started a game, but if he was going to be a backup, the Steelers needed to find out if he was, as Tomlin said, “not going to kill us.” However, there had to be an experienced backup for the backup who would have been better than Devlin Hodges.

Paxton Lynch, who has started four games in his career, wasn’t the answer.

Signing a serviceable veteran QB off the street might have gotten the Steelers to the playoffs.

Finding one for next season should be a major priority.