Let local football history record that it was at 6:53 p.m. on this cold-in-every-way Sunday evening at Acrisure Stadium that the Steelers' season-ticket holders, the Pittsburghers whose collective voice always counts the most for this franchise, cut the cord with their coach:
It was unprecedented in scope and setting.
It was unmistakable in message.
It was immutable, too, as we'd witness at 6:55, when some egghead within the stadium's in-game entertainment staff must've thought, gee, that'd represent a swell time to begin the 'Renegade' routine:
Oh, for real. As if the Pirates had hijacked operations.
'BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!'
The booing blew away the speakers booming Styx before Tommy Shaw and his 'Mama' had a prayer. It was relentless. The jig as a whole was up. Barely a Towel could be seen waving. The players on the field, often seen further revving things up, simply stood there, arms at their sides.
And what'd started out as maybe a minor disturbance at most now, as soon as the song mercifully faded out, became a civic cause at the next play stoppage at 6:58.
'BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!'
This time multiple decibel levels louder than before.
I couldn't believe it. I'm writing this now, and I still can't believe it. None of it. I've covered pretty much every NFL game played in this place since it opened in 2001, and I never could've envisioned such a scene. I've covered the entirety of Mike Tomlin's tenure here, for better or worse, and I never could've envisioned what it'd take to spur such a reaction.
Here we go?
Nah. Here we are.
____________________
Simply stating that the Bills beat the Steelers, 26-7, wouldn't begin to describe what unfolded -- or unraveled, really -- over these three hours.
Not when ...
• The Buffalo offense ran for 249 you-read-that-right yards, a record for any opponent in this place and the most by any opponent on Pittsburgh soil since 1975 at old Three Rivers. James Cook alone ran for 144, Ray Davis for another 62, and Josh Allen ran for 38 presumably to keep himself from dozing off while only needing to complete 15 passes.
"It's obviously frustrating," Payton Wilson would say. "I feel like we have this conversation quite a bit. We have this conversation every other week."
Yeah, at least.
Derrick Harmon was missing, and Patrick Queen was hurt early, but my God.
• It sure helped Cook that the Bills were allowed to run the same scheme with which Cook took the first snap from scrimmage 19 yards by bouncing to the outside ... what, a half-dozen times?
CBS
It was so many times that T.J. Watt, who works that side as outside linebacker, would bring up afterward on his own, "I've never seen a team run the same play as much as they ran that one tonight and have as much success as they had. I'm out of words for it."
• Not that Watt was blameless in any capacity. The Bills were the Steelers' second opponent in three weeks to be missing both starting offensive tackles -- the Chargers were the other, in Inglewood, Calif. -- and the results were similar: No sacks, one quarterback hit, no sweat.
• The Steelers' own rushing attack, which Tomlin had insisted all week and again at bleeping halftime on the broadcast would be the top priority against Buffalo, carried only 15 times for only 55 yards -- Jaylen Warren 35, Kenny Gainwell 20 -- before a couple of late mopup runs by Kaleb Johnson.
It's as if Tomlin's not receiving his own memos.
• This was an actual attempt at a third-down conversion:
CBS
Because putting up what's basically a jump ball to the smallest wide receiver in the world was bound to work sometime, right?
"At the end of the day, it always comes down to details," Calvin Austin would say of an offense that wound up with 166 yards after going 3 for 9 on third downs. "Small things."
He didn't mean himself.
• The middle of the field remained the Bermuda Triangle for the passing game, as evidenced by Aaron Rodgers' target chart ...
NFL NEXT GEN STATS
... but also the utterly insane call to have Mason Rudolph, when Rodgers was hurt, enter ice-cold and try to throw deep down the left sideline for Darnell Washington, who doesn't exactly high-point passes, and into triple coverage for a pick.
Because it would've been unthinkable to send Washington -- or Jonnu Smith or Pat Freiermuth, the latter of whom wasn't targeted once -- over the middle, where tight ends belong?
I asked Rodgers if the Steelers are avoiding the middle by design.
"There's no avoiding it," he'd reply. "There's plays called every single week. There's just not separation and not the coverage to dictate the ball doing down the middle of the field."
See that one deep green circle up there?
That was a 26-yarder to Washington, which I also mentioned to Rodgers.
"On that play, they played two-high," he'd continue, "and Darnell did a nice release."
The separation's a fair point to raise. These receivers are either running incorrect or uninspired routes way too often.
But they tried one pass there on this day. And zero times in Chicago. Hardly an after-effect.
• Rodgers broached, without being asked, that the Steelers had a lousy week of practice, citing concerns about "energy" and "tempo," and that his receivers, in particular, aren't preparing hard enough: "When there's film sessions, everybody shows up. And when I check to a route, you do the right route. We have our meetings every week. We have other opportunities outside of the facility, and I look forward to seeing all the boys there."
So, uh, yeah, nothing to see with any of that.
• For fairest context, Rodgers also went out of his way to rip himself, even offering specific plays as examples. And when pressed if he sees coaching as an issue: "I believe in the coaching staff. I believe in Mike Tomlin. That's why I came here. Players need to take accountability, myself included, and I will continue to. I gotta play better. But there's 11 starters on offense, 11 on defense plus the personnel groupings that we run. We're gonna have a Monday-to-Saturday that we can be really proud of, our best Monday-to-Saturday, and go out and play our best game and take control of the division."
Next Sunday in Baltimore, he meant.
• Time of possession: Buffalo 41:59, Pittsburgh 18:01. First downs: Buffalo 26, Pittsburgh 10. Total rushing plays: Buffalo 51, Pittsburgh 18. All connected. All gross.
• Four post-snap penalties? FOUR?
And Cam Heyward hit with a taunting flag after a touchdown by ... Buffalo?
"He kneed me in the stomach," Heyward would fume of Allen. "And admitted it."
OK, and?
Anyone call the old NFL Films clip when Tomlin chased down Maurkice Pouncey after one such flag and shouted into his facemask: "This thing's bigger than you, isn't it? ISN'T IT?"
Didn't notice any of that on this sideline.
• I could dial these up all day, but I'll stop with the sequence that ultimately set off the citizenry:
CBS
Oh, boy.
Fourth quarter. Fourth-and-2. Ball at the Buffalo 7. A touchdown's a must. And Gainwell gets sent up the middle ... only to be bounced back for a 2-yard loss.
Gainwell. Not Warren.
(By the way, circled up there just for fun, that's Smith, a light-blocking tight end, on none other than Greg Rousseau, who'd make the tackle ... while Washington's out on a decoy route! Woo!)
Previous possession. Third-and-9. Ball at the Pittsburgh 27. Bills are up by only nine. And Gainwell gets send to the right ... to be stopped two yards short of the stick. Which, of course, brought on the requisite Tomlin punt.
"Come on, man, do you guys want to start talking philosophical? Is that what you want?" Rodgers would retort to a question on the subject. "It's third-and-9. They brought pressure off that side, so we checked. We had a run called, and we checked the blocking. They did it on the run, and we had a chance. We had a chance. If that thing hits, nobody says a goddamn thing. I mean, literally everybody's blocked up, and we've got to hold and sustain those blocks on the outside. Kenny gets that first down, and nobody says a darned thing."
What if he doesn't get that first down? Twice?
Also and related: Gainwell. Not Warren.
____________________
Fire Tomlin. I'll say it myself. Yet again, as I began doing this past January from Baltimore.
Enough's enough. He hasn't won a blessed thing for the better part of a decade. He hasn't done anything with the chance he was afforded this season with all these mega-name acquisitions, extensions and so forth. And he sure as hell wouldn't be anyone's choice to carry the franchise further into the future, when the transparent priority of those above him remains securing that young stud quarterback.
This is it. This has to be it. His contract running two more years can't matter. His standing in the Steelers' history can't matter, either, meaning the whole we-never-fire-anyone-here thing. Even Chuck Noll and Bill Cowher were nudged off into their respective sunsets, to varying degrees, and neither of them ever endured a stretch as dismal as the ongoing 6-11 dive, complete with all these added theatrics.
You know, having fans chant for a firing. And being so apparently disillusioned with the brand that an iconic staple of attending a game was booed ... just because it was.
Asked how it felt to hear those chants, Tomlin replied, "Man, I share their frustration tonight. We didn't do enough. That's just the reality of it."
That was it. He did accurately assess it as "an awful performance by us," but as ever, when it came to accountability -- a subject brought up by several players -- he'd willfully whiff.
I asked why the Steelers won't pass over the middle.
"There's just not enough production," he replied, citing a symptom rather than a cause, as often occurs with him. "We're not going to make excuses for it."
When Aubrey Bruce of the Pittsburgh Courier, seated just to my right, followed up by asking why a package for Washington couldn't have been created earlier than the fourth quarter, Tomlin blew him off, too: "All of those questions are reasonable given what we put out there. We've got a lot of work in front of us."
He'd also, at varying points, share ...
"Not a lot needs to be said."
"We've got to absorb that result."
"We've got to absorb the responsibility."
"I'm not going to say too much tonight."
"Keep watching."
"Good question. I don't have the answer to it."
"I'm looking at everything."
"We didn't produce plays."
"We didn't produce enough plays."
"I'm not big-picture-oriented tonight. I'm just talking about what we did or, more importantly, what we did not do tonight."
He did no such thing.
But that's fine, since there was a slew of the 66,068 on hand here happy to do that for him.
THE ASYLUM
DK: A fed-up city (rightly) pipes up about Tomlin
'FI-RE TOM-LIN! FI-RE TOM-LIN!'
Let local football history record that it was at 6:53 p.m. on this cold-in-every-way Sunday evening at Acrisure Stadium that the Steelers' season-ticket holders, the Pittsburghers whose collective voice always counts the most for this franchise, cut the cord with their coach:
It was unprecedented in scope and setting.
It was unmistakable in message.
It was immutable, too, as we'd witness at 6:55, when some egghead within the stadium's in-game entertainment staff must've thought, gee, that'd represent a swell time to begin the 'Renegade' routine:
Oh, for real. As if the Pirates had hijacked operations.
'BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!'
The booing blew away the speakers booming Styx before Tommy Shaw and his 'Mama' had a prayer. It was relentless. The jig as a whole was up. Barely a Towel could be seen waving. The players on the field, often seen further revving things up, simply stood there, arms at their sides.
And what'd started out as maybe a minor disturbance at most now, as soon as the song mercifully faded out, became a civic cause at the next play stoppage at 6:58.
'BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!'
This time multiple decibel levels louder than before.
I couldn't believe it. I'm writing this now, and I still can't believe it. None of it. I've covered pretty much every NFL game played in this place since it opened in 2001, and I never could've envisioned such a scene. I've covered the entirety of Mike Tomlin's tenure here, for better or worse, and I never could've envisioned what it'd take to spur such a reaction.
Here we go?
Nah. Here we are.
____________________
Simply stating that the Bills beat the Steelers, 26-7, wouldn't begin to describe what unfolded -- or unraveled, really -- over these three hours.
Not when ...
• The Buffalo offense ran for 249 you-read-that-right yards, a record for any opponent in this place and the most by any opponent on Pittsburgh soil since 1975 at old Three Rivers. James Cook alone ran for 144, Ray Davis for another 62, and Josh Allen ran for 38 presumably to keep himself from dozing off while only needing to complete 15 passes.
"It's obviously frustrating," Payton Wilson would say. "I feel like we have this conversation quite a bit. We have this conversation every other week."
Yeah, at least.
Derrick Harmon was missing, and Patrick Queen was hurt early, but my God.
• It sure helped Cook that the Bills were allowed to run the same scheme with which Cook took the first snap from scrimmage 19 yards by bouncing to the outside ... what, a half-dozen times?
CBS
It was so many times that T.J. Watt, who works that side as outside linebacker, would bring up afterward on his own, "I've never seen a team run the same play as much as they ran that one tonight and have as much success as they had. I'm out of words for it."
• Not that Watt was blameless in any capacity. The Bills were the Steelers' second opponent in three weeks to be missing both starting offensive tackles -- the Chargers were the other, in Inglewood, Calif. -- and the results were similar: No sacks, one quarterback hit, no sweat.
• The Steelers' own rushing attack, which Tomlin had insisted all week and again at bleeping halftime on the broadcast would be the top priority against Buffalo, carried only 15 times for only 55 yards -- Jaylen Warren 35, Kenny Gainwell 20 -- before a couple of late mopup runs by Kaleb Johnson.
It's as if Tomlin's not receiving his own memos.
• This was an actual attempt at a third-down conversion:
CBS
Because putting up what's basically a jump ball to the smallest wide receiver in the world was bound to work sometime, right?
"At the end of the day, it always comes down to details," Calvin Austin would say of an offense that wound up with 166 yards after going 3 for 9 on third downs. "Small things."
He didn't mean himself.
• The middle of the field remained the Bermuda Triangle for the passing game, as evidenced by Aaron Rodgers' target chart ...
NFL NEXT GEN STATS
... but also the utterly insane call to have Mason Rudolph, when Rodgers was hurt, enter ice-cold and try to throw deep down the left sideline for Darnell Washington, who doesn't exactly high-point passes, and into triple coverage for a pick.
Because it would've been unthinkable to send Washington -- or Jonnu Smith or Pat Freiermuth, the latter of whom wasn't targeted once -- over the middle, where tight ends belong?
I asked Rodgers if the Steelers are avoiding the middle by design.
"There's no avoiding it," he'd reply. "There's plays called every single week. There's just not separation and not the coverage to dictate the ball doing down the middle of the field."
See that one deep green circle up there?
That was a 26-yarder to Washington, which I also mentioned to Rodgers.
"On that play, they played two-high," he'd continue, "and Darnell did a nice release."
The separation's a fair point to raise. These receivers are either running incorrect or uninspired routes way too often.
But they tried one pass there on this day. And zero times in Chicago. Hardly an after-effect.
• Rodgers broached, without being asked, that the Steelers had a lousy week of practice, citing concerns about "energy" and "tempo," and that his receivers, in particular, aren't preparing hard enough: "When there's film sessions, everybody shows up. And when I check to a route, you do the right route. We have our meetings every week. We have other opportunities outside of the facility, and I look forward to seeing all the boys there."
So, uh, yeah, nothing to see with any of that.
• For fairest context, Rodgers also went out of his way to rip himself, even offering specific plays as examples. And when pressed if he sees coaching as an issue: "I believe in the coaching staff. I believe in Mike Tomlin. That's why I came here. Players need to take accountability, myself included, and I will continue to. I gotta play better. But there's 11 starters on offense, 11 on defense plus the personnel groupings that we run. We're gonna have a Monday-to-Saturday that we can be really proud of, our best Monday-to-Saturday, and go out and play our best game and take control of the division."
Next Sunday in Baltimore, he meant.
• Time of possession: Buffalo 41:59, Pittsburgh 18:01. First downs: Buffalo 26, Pittsburgh 10. Total rushing plays: Buffalo 51, Pittsburgh 18. All connected. All gross.
• Four post-snap penalties? FOUR?
And Cam Heyward hit with a taunting flag after a touchdown by ... Buffalo?
"He kneed me in the stomach," Heyward would fume of Allen. "And admitted it."
OK, and?
Anyone call the old NFL Films clip when Tomlin chased down Maurkice Pouncey after one such flag and shouted into his facemask: "This thing's bigger than you, isn't it? ISN'T IT?"
Didn't notice any of that on this sideline.
• I could dial these up all day, but I'll stop with the sequence that ultimately set off the citizenry:
CBS
Oh, boy.
Fourth quarter. Fourth-and-2. Ball at the Buffalo 7. A touchdown's a must. And Gainwell gets sent up the middle ... only to be bounced back for a 2-yard loss.
Gainwell. Not Warren.
(By the way, circled up there just for fun, that's Smith, a light-blocking tight end, on none other than Greg Rousseau, who'd make the tackle ... while Washington's out on a decoy route! Woo!)
Previous possession. Third-and-9. Ball at the Pittsburgh 27. Bills are up by only nine. And Gainwell gets send to the right ... to be stopped two yards short of the stick. Which, of course, brought on the requisite Tomlin punt.
"Come on, man, do you guys want to start talking philosophical? Is that what you want?" Rodgers would retort to a question on the subject. "It's third-and-9. They brought pressure off that side, so we checked. We had a run called, and we checked the blocking. They did it on the run, and we had a chance. We had a chance. If that thing hits, nobody says a goddamn thing. I mean, literally everybody's blocked up, and we've got to hold and sustain those blocks on the outside. Kenny gets that first down, and nobody says a darned thing."
What if he doesn't get that first down? Twice?
Also and related: Gainwell. Not Warren.
____________________
Fire Tomlin. I'll say it myself. Yet again, as I began doing this past January from Baltimore.
Enough's enough. He hasn't won a blessed thing for the better part of a decade. He hasn't done anything with the chance he was afforded this season with all these mega-name acquisitions, extensions and so forth. And he sure as hell wouldn't be anyone's choice to carry the franchise further into the future, when the transparent priority of those above him remains securing that young stud quarterback.
This is it. This has to be it. His contract running two more years can't matter. His standing in the Steelers' history can't matter, either, meaning the whole we-never-fire-anyone-here thing. Even Chuck Noll and Bill Cowher were nudged off into their respective sunsets, to varying degrees, and neither of them ever endured a stretch as dismal as the ongoing 6-11 dive, complete with all these added theatrics.
You know, having fans chant for a firing. And being so apparently disillusioned with the brand that an iconic staple of attending a game was booed ... just because it was.
Asked how it felt to hear those chants, Tomlin replied, "Man, I share their frustration tonight. We didn't do enough. That's just the reality of it."
That was it. He did accurately assess it as "an awful performance by us," but as ever, when it came to accountability -- a subject brought up by several players -- he'd willfully whiff.
I asked why the Steelers won't pass over the middle.
"There's just not enough production," he replied, citing a symptom rather than a cause, as often occurs with him. "We're not going to make excuses for it."
When Aubrey Bruce of the Pittsburgh Courier, seated just to my right, followed up by asking why a package for Washington couldn't have been created earlier than the fourth quarter, Tomlin blew him off, too: "All of those questions are reasonable given what we put out there. We've got a lot of work in front of us."
He'd also, at varying points, share ...
"Not a lot needs to be said."
"We've got to absorb that result."
"We've got to absorb the responsibility."
"I'm not going to say too much tonight."
"Keep watching."
"Good question. I don't have the answer to it."
"I'm looking at everything."
"We didn't produce plays."
"We didn't produce enough plays."
"I'm not big-picture-oriented tonight. I'm just talking about what we did or, more importantly, what we did not do tonight."
He did no such thing.
But that's fine, since there was a slew of the 66,068 on hand here happy to do that for him.
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