The Steelers Have a Mike Tomlin Problem

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Again, thanks a ton for your support of Nine Straight Threes. And without further ado, let’s talk about what we all witnessed Sunday night and Monday Morning on the North Shore.

-Chris

Pop quiz:

What’s the through line that connects the following bad things?

-The Steelers’ defense looking lost, with numerous coverage busts, and leaking like a sieve against the Dallas Cowboys Sunday night.

-The Steelers’ offense once again languishing at the start of a game, not even racking up 100 total yards in the first half.

-George Pickens looking disinterested and being very clearly benched for said disinterest.

-The Steelers getting into the final two minutes of play with just one timeout at their disposal.

-Starting quarterback Justin Fields being unable to answer when asked after the game what the team’s offensive identity is.

-The Cowboys (last in the NFL at 75 rushing yards per game entering the night) running the ball five times for 30 yards on their game-winning drive.

-A give-up run call on third-and-eight on the first drive of the game, one clearly designed to ensure a field goal, and not risk a turnover.

-Fundamental sloppiness, including penalties, dropped passes, missed tackles and a host of other issues.

The answer is Mike Tomlin.

Did you get it right?

What’s printed above might read as blasphemous to the Rich Eisens, Cris Collinsworths and Mike Tiricos of the world, and the rest of the national media that fawns all over Tomlin for every 9-8 season.

For Steelers fans looking at this team up close, and not from 10,000 feet, the answer is obvious. They’ve seen this movie before, and they’re going to see this movie again. The plot doesn’t change from year to year, only some of the actors. Never the director, though.

Tomlin, long held up as the main reason for the Steelers’ stubborn refusal to sink to the bottom of the NFL, particularly in their post-Roethlisberger existence, is actually one of the team’s biggest impediments to success.

I know, I know. Saying that means that I just don’t know ball. Tomlin does no wrong. Just ask those national media acolytes. To hear them tell it, any coach who beats him, particularly in his own building, must be a Vince Lombardi-level leader. Surely someone like Greenfield’s Mike McCarthy, who has been on the hot seat since almost the day he was hired in Dallas, merely got luckier than he ever has in his life.

So many of the problems against Dallas, and the week before that against Indianapolis, can be traced back to the head coach. Talking about it is starting to make me feel a little crazy. Every time you think something might change, you’re reminded that no, these are Tomlin’s Steelers, and what was a problem last week will be a problem this week, a problem next week, and for every week after.

It feels like football’s version of purgatory.

Tomlin’s preferred style of football is outmoded. He wants to win with defense and the running game. The best teams in the modern NFL pass the ball at a high level. They defend well, usually, but that’s the complementary part of the game. The best teams are thoughtfully aggressive, play the percentages, and run creative offenses that routinely scheme open their best skill players.

The Steelers do none of those things. And Tomlin seems fine with that. He believes that if the game is close in the fourth quarter, the other team will blink, his team will rise up, and he’ll walk out of the stadium with a win.

Problem: That doesn’t always, or even often, happen. The Steelers have a slim margin for error, owing to the fact that they don’t have an elite quarterback who can cover up warts elsewhere. Tomlin’s coaching style reduces that margin even more. Every third-down conversion allowed feels like a dagger. It’s just not a sustainable way to play.

The problem is that there’s no impetus for Tomlin to change. Art Rooney II cares more about the Steelers’ reputation as the steady organization that doesn’t fire coaches than he does about honestly evaluating Tomlin’s work. This team has not won a playoff game since the 2016 season. If he worked for anyone else, Tomlin likely would have been fired already, and would definitely be coaching for his job this year.

That is, of course, not the case with the Steelers. Whenever Tomlin does stop coaching this team, it is overwhelmingly likely that the decision will be his, not Rooney’s.

He runs the defense, which costs $126 million this year, and yet had to burn a timeout with four minutes left to avoid a penalty for having 12 men on the field. Safety Minkah Fitzpatrick opined after the game that Tomlin needed to simplify his schemes and let his secondary in particular play faster. It’s hard to disagree with Fitzpatrick’s suggestion, given how often corners and safeties looked confused and out of sorts.

Tomlin also has his hands on the offense, particularly from a philosophical standpoint. You really think Arthur Smith, who wants another head coaching job in the league, wanted to run a toss sweep to Aaron Shampklin on third-and-eight on the Steelers’ opening possession? Smith wants to put points on the board. In that situation, it’s pretty clear Tomlin wanted to guarantee three instead of court even modest risk in an effort to get seven.

It’s Tomlin who sees a player like “Open F***in Always” George Pickens, whose attitude-based red flags caused him to slide well into the second round in 2022, and sees opportunity. Tomlin has been resolute in his stance that he can get the most out of Pickens, and help him grow up. What did we get yesterday? Pickens played 34 snaps, which accounted for 59% of the Steelers’ total. He had just three catches and looked disinterested on several routes, including at least one that was very specifically drawn up for him.

Asked about the low snap count after the game, Tomlin suggested that the team thought that less was more for Pickens, and that fewer snaps might lead to better performance. He actually compared the strategy to the way the Steelers are handling Cam Heyward. There’s a big difference between a 35-year-old defensive end and a 23-year-old wide receiver.  

The explanation was as offensive as it was absurd. Pickens was benched, Tomlin just doesn’t want to admit it. It’s clear that that relationship is curdling. The player is frustrated and taking plays off, and the coach is not happy about it. But again, Tomlin would rather tell a ridiculous cover story than just say the truth in plain words.

Good teams don’t turn in performances like what the Steelers put on tape against a wounded opponent missing its best defensive player, plus two more high-end starters on that side of the ball. They bury those teams. Had Dak Prescott not been so careless with the ball, Pittsburgh might have lost by two touchdowns.

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Where do we go from here? Nothing in Tomlin’s past suggests that he agrees with the notion that his style is antiquated. He continues to wax poetic about the sport in general in the same terms as always. He has perhaps one lever to pull for this team, and that would be inserting Russell Wilson into the starting lineup, which I suspect will happen. If that fails, then what? Back to Fields? Last year, he only went to Mason Rudolph and allowed Rudolph to open up the offense when the team was backed into a corner.

It worked.

Did he learn from that? Of course not. It has mostly been right back to the same old same old. And the same old got results, until it didn’t.

The best leaders are constantly self-evaluating; they’re also proud, and confident, but not so much that they think their methods are infallible. I’ve never gotten the sense that Tomlin is interested in that kind of introspection. He got control of the offense back when Ben Roethlisberger retired, and he’s kept a tight grip on it.

The Steelers’ problems could be fixed. But doing that involves admitting that they exist in the first place.

I don’t get the sense that Mike Tomlin has any intention of doing that.