Following 6 straight playoff appearances...come on...you understand how that's different right? Of course I do. But I was asked yesterday "how much mediocrity must we endure before we stop living in the past?" The fans calling for Smith's head would very likely, imo, be calling for Cowher's after the first two non-playoff seasons. If he followed the same pattern as his Steelers tenure, he wouldn't have had his second non-playoff season until his 8th year as head coach...so we'd have a while to go before we worried about it. But we wouldn't win a Super Bowl in that time, which (according to previous Smith-bashing in this thread) is all that matters. We wouldn't have a 13-win season either. I'm not gonna sit here and defend someone else's non-quoted arguments from somewhere else in this thread. I don't know how someone can look at what Lovie Smith has done, and what Bill Cowher has done, and not see that Bill Cowher has had a better career, and is more likely, a better football coach. I don't think Lovie is awful. But I don't think he's anything special. Since Wanny, we've had 2 low key, low emotion, low energy coaches in here. It's worked sometimes, and not others. Cowher is a proven coach, who is high energy, and defense oriented. I like that.