Is this slipping, sliding and now sinking season somehow different from others the Steelers have seen under Mike Tomlin of late?
Been thinking about that a bunch since flying back from Chicago and that 31-28 burp against the Bears, and I've to say, maybe out of nothing more than a Charlie-Brown-staring-down-Lucy naivety, that I'm beginning to think it is.
Bullet along with me on this:
• The Steelers are now 7-10 in their past 17 overall games. You know, the length of a full NFL regular season. And just because Tomlin hates answering questions about season-to-season trends -- he does so only in January, at a single session -- it doesn't make that any less real. Or stark. Because 6-11 gets coaches fired or forced out in this league. No less a franchise icon than Charles Henry Noll was given his final nudge after going 7-9 in 1991.
• It's one thing to collapse after starting 10-3, quite another after starting 4-1. Because collapsing after 4-1, should that occur, could lead at long last to Tomlin's first-ever losing single-season record and, depending on how seriously anyone's ever taken that hollow streak, a crack in perception to rival the crack in reality. Maybe even with Art Rooney.
• The defense alone offers sufficient cause. It's the worst we've seen under Tomlin and, in fact, the worst anyone's seen since before Mr. Noll and Mean Joe Greene came along to set a proper stage for the half-century to follow. Even if Tomlin hadn't made that preposterous -- and utterly pointless, by the way -- projection in Latrobe that this defense could be "historic," it'd be beyond embarrassing that T.J. Watt, Cam Heyward, Jalen Ramsey and the highest-paid collective in the sport would rank 28th in total defense and 31st in pass defense. If Tomlin's not here for his defensive acumen, in a league now ruled by offensive-minded head coaches, why's he here at all?
• The whispers are now public. Complaints about defensive schemes that've been shared with me away from cameras and microphones -- which I've found a way to relay to readers, as well -- crossed into plain view in Chicago, with Patrick Queen piping up when asked what went wrong for the defense: "I think sometimes it was schematic issues that we had. It's kind of hard for two guys that are underneath defenders to try to guard two routes that's overhanging off the hashes and stuff. As much as you know it, you're trying to play the run. You try to get back to a bang or whatever it is, but it's hard to do that. It's kind of a bad spot to be in." I can't begin to describe the degree to which Queen isn't alone on this front.
• Queen didn't specify which play he was citing, but here are the Bears sending the common "four verts" concept toward the Steelers keeping three guys back:
CBS SPORTS
• He's being ridiculed across the football analysts' world these past 48 hours for scenes like these. Other similar sequences from Sunday are being brutalized almost as much. It's become its own sport. Here's Brian Baldinger of NFL Network on ... well, press play:
Now, from there, imagine being one of those two defensive linemen getting double-teamed and wondering why in hell it's happening.
• When discussing discipline under Tomlin, it's most common to bring up the sort of stupid pre-snap penalties that might well have cost them that game. But I just might hate myself for bringing up another, if only because I really, really respect Queen. And that's that, in a locker room that's functioning properly, he'd never be permitted to do all that piping up.
• Of all the seasons to blow a big lead atop the AFC North, this one deserves special context: The Ravens lost five of their first six games. The Bengals lost Joe Burrow. The Browns just did what they do. And the Steelers' response to that was a brutal loss in Cincinnati, followed by a fallback that allows Baltimore to have Lamar Jackson back in time for both head-to-heads. The division leaped right into the bucket on their boat, and they still threw it back in the water.
• The rest of the NFL buys into the Eagles' tush-push to such an extreme that it's so effective that it might get banned before long. Tomlin's only real response, besides being part of a vote to try have it banned earlier this year, has been to delay using it, delay using it, delay using it, and then, once finally coming around, deploy the smallest of his four tight ends, Connor Heyward, and watching him fail to get the first down because he barely moved his feet. He'd rather eliminate a play from the game than learn/apply something new.
• I find this one more vexing than any other:
NFL NEXT GEN STATS
Mason Rudolph's not an idiot. Neither's Arthur Smith. They had zero wish to attack the Chicago defense without barely throwing a ball into Tomlin's self-imposed Bermuda Triangle. But that's how this offense has operated since the day Ben Roethlisberger retired, and it hasn't mattered how many quarterbacks or coordinators have come and gone. Tomlin's all-too-often archaic planning for a given game doesn't allow him to proceed past the point where, in this case, the Bears were leading the NFL in takeaways.
Instant bogeyman!
So he slaps the symbolic handcuffs on his own quarterback and coordinator and, in the process, discards that Omar Khan, Andy Weidl and Smith crafted the offensive roster around -- gasp! -- not one, not two, but three tight ends, all of whom can barely register a pulse in this scenario. Pat Freiermuth and Jonnu Smith had three targets each, Darnell Washington two.
That's not just a coach living in his fears. That's a coach paralyzing his entire team through fear.
• Don't make me bring up, please, that the Bears were missing ALL THREE starting inside linebackers, which one might think would impact that huge empty oval up there.
• Sorry, but I need to take a break after that one. Infuriates me. I'll be back.
• OK, still here?
• All right, trudging onward ... but not moving on, since this one's in the same swim: In a season that's seen NFL teams convert more fourth-down attempts -- 55.4 -- than at any point in 34 years, Tomlin's stayed stuck in the past, and the Steelers have gone for it on fourth down only 11 times, second-fewest in the league, and converted only five times, also second-fewest. Only the Browns have been worse in both categories, so maybe they're the inspiration.
• As if to stick this stubbornness up everyone's noses, Tomlin punted the ball away with 2:01 left in the fourth quarter on fourth-and-9 while down, 31-28. According to the automated NFL Surrender Index -- a real and glorious thing -- that punt would rank in the 94th percentile of what they call 'cowardly punts' in the 2025 season, and the 91st percentile of all punts since 1999.
Asked afterward if he'd thought about going for it there, he replied, “I did not. I was holding all three. And as you can see, we got the ball back.”
Yeah, he had all three timeouts. And the defense admirably forced a three-and-out.
Ends don't justify means. He knows that.
It's close to nonsensical that a coach who's terrorized by the loss of possession through takeaways will so gleefully just gift the ball back to the opponent through punts. There's data to support this. Data, I'm betting, he's never even weighed.
• So Rudolph again gets the Steelers back to midfield, only now with less than a minute. But Tomlin, rather than attempting a field goal with Chris Boswell, oversees a senseless 2-yard completion to DK Metcalf that keeps the clock running, then a batted pass on fourth down that ends the game.
Boswell's kick, based on ball placement at the Chicago 48, would've been 65 or 66 yards, depending on where Boswell would want Corliss Waitman to hold. This has been a year of record kicks in the league, in part, some kickers will attest, due to a ball that's benefited them. Boswell himself converted a franchise-record 60-yarder earlier this season. And in warmups before this game, which was played in pristine wind-free weather in the Windy City, he was connecting from 55 with a few yards to spare.
And yet, when Tomlin was asked about this reasonable, easily supported scenario afterward, he'd reply in what's become a characteristically condescending tone, “I’m not into the hypothetical world.”
• Same guy who only a year ago boasted before a roomful of reporters, "That's why I'm well compensated," to crow over a decision that, as it'd turn out, was deemed completely incorrect by no less an authority than Tomlin himself, when he publicly acknowledged wishing that Justin Fields was healthy enough to take his job back from Russell Wilson.
• Whatever. I could do this all day.
Just know that, when it comes to calling for Tomlin to be fired, I'd be repeatingmyself.
THE ASYLUM
DK: Tomlin's seldom looked or sounded smaller
Is this somehow different?
Is this slipping, sliding and now sinking season somehow different from others the Steelers have seen under Mike Tomlin of late?
Been thinking about that a bunch since flying back from Chicago and that 31-28 burp against the Bears, and I've to say, maybe out of nothing more than a Charlie-Brown-staring-down-Lucy naivety, that I'm beginning to think it is.
Bullet along with me on this:
• The Steelers are now 7-10 in their past 17 overall games. You know, the length of a full NFL regular season. And just because Tomlin hates answering questions about season-to-season trends -- he does so only in January, at a single session -- it doesn't make that any less real. Or stark. Because 6-11 gets coaches fired or forced out in this league. No less a franchise icon than Charles Henry Noll was given his final nudge after going 7-9 in 1991.
• It's one thing to collapse after starting 10-3, quite another after starting 4-1. Because collapsing after 4-1, should that occur, could lead at long last to Tomlin's first-ever losing single-season record and, depending on how seriously anyone's ever taken that hollow streak, a crack in perception to rival the crack in reality. Maybe even with Art Rooney.
• The defense alone offers sufficient cause. It's the worst we've seen under Tomlin and, in fact, the worst anyone's seen since before Mr. Noll and Mean Joe Greene came along to set a proper stage for the half-century to follow. Even if Tomlin hadn't made that preposterous -- and utterly pointless, by the way -- projection in Latrobe that this defense could be "historic," it'd be beyond embarrassing that T.J. Watt, Cam Heyward, Jalen Ramsey and the highest-paid collective in the sport would rank 28th in total defense and 31st in pass defense. If Tomlin's not here for his defensive acumen, in a league now ruled by offensive-minded head coaches, why's he here at all?
• The whispers are now public. Complaints about defensive schemes that've been shared with me away from cameras and microphones -- which I've found a way to relay to readers, as well -- crossed into plain view in Chicago, with Patrick Queen piping up when asked what went wrong for the defense: "I think sometimes it was schematic issues that we had. It's kind of hard for two guys that are underneath defenders to try to guard two routes that's overhanging off the hashes and stuff. As much as you know it, you're trying to play the run. You try to get back to a bang or whatever it is, but it's hard to do that. It's kind of a bad spot to be in." I can't begin to describe the degree to which Queen isn't alone on this front.
• Queen didn't specify which play he was citing, but here are the Bears sending the common "four verts" concept toward the Steelers keeping three guys back:
CBS SPORTS
• He's being ridiculed across the football analysts' world these past 48 hours for scenes like these. Other similar sequences from Sunday are being brutalized almost as much. It's become its own sport. Here's Brian Baldinger of NFL Network on ... well, press play:
Now, from there, imagine being one of those two defensive linemen getting double-teamed and wondering why in hell it's happening.
• When discussing discipline under Tomlin, it's most common to bring up the sort of stupid pre-snap penalties that might well have cost them that game. But I just might hate myself for bringing up another, if only because I really, really respect Queen. And that's that, in a locker room that's functioning properly, he'd never be permitted to do all that piping up.
• Of all the seasons to blow a big lead atop the AFC North, this one deserves special context: The Ravens lost five of their first six games. The Bengals lost Joe Burrow. The Browns just did what they do. And the Steelers' response to that was a brutal loss in Cincinnati, followed by a fallback that allows Baltimore to have Lamar Jackson back in time for both head-to-heads. The division leaped right into the bucket on their boat, and they still threw it back in the water.
• The rest of the NFL buys into the Eagles' tush-push to such an extreme that it's so effective that it might get banned before long. Tomlin's only real response, besides being part of a vote to try have it banned earlier this year, has been to delay using it, delay using it, delay using it, and then, once finally coming around, deploy the smallest of his four tight ends, Connor Heyward, and watching him fail to get the first down because he barely moved his feet. He'd rather eliminate a play from the game than learn/apply something new.
• I find this one more vexing than any other:
NFL NEXT GEN STATS
Mason Rudolph's not an idiot. Neither's Arthur Smith. They had zero wish to attack the Chicago defense without barely throwing a ball into Tomlin's self-imposed Bermuda Triangle. But that's how this offense has operated since the day Ben Roethlisberger retired, and it hasn't mattered how many quarterbacks or coordinators have come and gone. Tomlin's all-too-often archaic planning for a given game doesn't allow him to proceed past the point where, in this case, the Bears were leading the NFL in takeaways.
Instant bogeyman!
So he slaps the symbolic handcuffs on his own quarterback and coordinator and, in the process, discards that Omar Khan, Andy Weidl and Smith crafted the offensive roster around -- gasp! -- not one, not two, but three tight ends, all of whom can barely register a pulse in this scenario. Pat Freiermuth and Jonnu Smith had three targets each, Darnell Washington two.
That's not just a coach living in his fears. That's a coach paralyzing his entire team through fear.
• Don't make me bring up, please, that the Bears were missing ALL THREE starting inside linebackers, which one might think would impact that huge empty oval up there.
• Sorry, but I need to take a break after that one. Infuriates me. I'll be back.
• OK, still here?
• All right, trudging onward ... but not moving on, since this one's in the same swim: In a season that's seen NFL teams convert more fourth-down attempts -- 55.4 -- than at any point in 34 years, Tomlin's stayed stuck in the past, and the Steelers have gone for it on fourth down only 11 times, second-fewest in the league, and converted only five times, also second-fewest. Only the Browns have been worse in both categories, so maybe they're the inspiration.
• As if to stick this stubbornness up everyone's noses, Tomlin punted the ball away with 2:01 left in the fourth quarter on fourth-and-9 while down, 31-28. According to the automated NFL Surrender Index -- a real and glorious thing -- that punt would rank in the 94th percentile of what they call 'cowardly punts' in the 2025 season, and the 91st percentile of all punts since 1999.
Asked afterward if he'd thought about going for it there, he replied, “I did not. I was holding all three. And as you can see, we got the ball back.”
Yeah, he had all three timeouts. And the defense admirably forced a three-and-out.
Ends don't justify means. He knows that.
It's close to nonsensical that a coach who's terrorized by the loss of possession through takeaways will so gleefully just gift the ball back to the opponent through punts. There's data to support this. Data, I'm betting, he's never even weighed.
• So Rudolph again gets the Steelers back to midfield, only now with less than a minute. But Tomlin, rather than attempting a field goal with Chris Boswell, oversees a senseless 2-yard completion to DK Metcalf that keeps the clock running, then a batted pass on fourth down that ends the game.
Boswell's kick, based on ball placement at the Chicago 48, would've been 65 or 66 yards, depending on where Boswell would want Corliss Waitman to hold. This has been a year of record kicks in the league, in part, some kickers will attest, due to a ball that's benefited them. Boswell himself converted a franchise-record 60-yarder earlier this season. And in warmups before this game, which was played in pristine wind-free weather in the Windy City, he was connecting from 55 with a few yards to spare.
And yet, when Tomlin was asked about this reasonable, easily supported scenario afterward, he'd reply in what's become a characteristically condescending tone, “I’m not into the hypothetical world.”
• Same guy who only a year ago boasted before a roomful of reporters, "That's why I'm well compensated," to crow over a decision that, as it'd turn out, was deemed completely incorrect by no less an authority than Tomlin himself, when he publicly acknowledged wishing that Justin Fields was healthy enough to take his job back from Russell Wilson.
• Whatever. I could do this all day.
Just know that, when it comes to calling for Tomlin to be fired, I'd be repeating myself.
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