Bettis now blaming Tomlin

http://steelerswire.usatoday.com/20...mes-mike-tomlin-for-steelers-loss-to-jaguars/

So far every media outlet has blamed Mike Tomlin for the failure. We all know how Bradshaw feels as he continuously piles on but now you can add Bettis to the mix.

It just may be a way to take up time with a topic that stirs up emotion but I'm smelling issues for Mike Tomlin next season. No matter what his teams did in the past, losing so many games in which the teams was favored by 7 points or more, no matter other playoff losses, he has always got a pass form most of the media.

Now it seems like the chickens have come home to roost, I know most here won't agree but this may be it for Tomlin. I honestly think that if the Steelers have similar problems next year he will get the axe, and I say that because I have never witnessed so much criticism of Tomlin......EVER.

As I said, most here won't agree and I'm probably wrong as usual but he hasn't been hammered this bad for this amount of time in his career. The only coach who got hit this hard for this long and had issues the following season who never got fired was Marvin Lewis, seems continuity doesn't always pan out.

 

Where there smoke there's fire. He is a position coach at best.

 

but fans on this board beg to differ. They like coming in 2nd.

 

I abstain being called a whiner against coaches. But what BK 99 said was informative...very informative.

 

I was a big fan of Tomlin but after seeing how these two Super Bowl Coaches handle their players I have lost a lot of respect for him. It seems he lets the chickens run the coop. Billipoop would never let things that have happened with the Steeler players slide like Tomlin does.

 

Did the season end disappointingly? Sure. But lets say we wouldve beat jacksonville. Lost to pats. Would the narrative been different? I mean its still short of the goal but most probably expected that.

Lets even go further. Lets say we lost a super bowl. Short of goal. I get why people arr blaming him. The onside decision doesnt bother me as bad as the 2, 4th and 1 calls or the horrid defense. Ultimately its on him. Maybe firing haley solves that problem. At least he tried something

I also believe his footprint will be bigger on defense this year. He will have next year for sure but what worries me is, what is to short of the goal? Make a super bowl and lose? Afc title game? What is not good enough for him to stay?

 

Haley really wasn't fired, they just didn't renew his contract.

 

I actually don't necessarily disagree with you regarding the onside kick decision but you and I are definitely in the minority, lol. Our defense hadn't stopped the mighty Blake Bortles and the anemic Jags offense all day long so I don't necessarily blame Tomlin for wanting the ball back immediately and trying to keep that pathetic defense off the field. But Tomlin's legacy of playing down to lesser competitors, looking ahead of the next opponent, not keeping his teams focused, not making adequate in-game adjustments, not having his teams well-prepared, failing miserably in situational football scenarios. These are all legitimate criticisms. And now I think he's showing incredibly weak leadership by not making any changes to the defensive coaching staff.

 

"Obviously " we as fans would love a SB win every year but it's not realistic. I think the biggest issue with Tomlin is all the things that have been issues with him for years. Situational football,clock management , players seemingly unprepared and all the things that go with that. The problem is it seems these issues aren't going away or being improved on. Throw in all the off the field BS and guys just spouting off about the wrong things at the wrong time . I see it as a lack of discipline. Our window is closing with Ben and that only adds to the panic and the need to want to see improvement and change. He seems to be reluctant to accept blame and responsibility. He put his fingerprints on the D and it was a embarrassment. That's a hard pill to swallow when he is a defensive coach. Watching this team lose isn't the hard part....it's watching them underperform and beat themselves because of many of the reasons mentioned above that has many of us fans calling for his head or a major improvement in his philosophy and performance.

 

True but if his contract wasn't up he could very well have been. We will never know but in the end it really don't matter now.......

 

This is where I am and I have to think most fans are. We have heard all the talk about how great this offense is yet we struggle at times...important times.....redzone 4th and short. Haley is gone so let's see if that changes. The other thing is we keep draft 1st round talent on D and our D looks like a high school team at times. How many games have we played vs the Cheats and finally this year we changed away from the zone....to only fall back to it later in the game. MT's game planning is where my problem is and the results back up his poor job. I for one am glad this is all coming to light cause we all know how hard it is to get fired as a Steeler head coach. This is the year, barring injury if there is any kind of distractions with this team it may cost MT his job especially with so many people talking out.......

 

These problems didn't just happen last year. We kept him for 6. If his contract wasn't up he might have been kept around actually. The offense didn't do badly overall under him. Situationally it had some problems.

 

I think the window of winning another SB with Ben has closed. Hope I'm wrong but that is the way I see it.

 

True however this was the first year Ben said he might retire and that right there is where the pressure came from....jmo. There was problems from day one I agree

 

This, I agree 100% and you said it the best on how I feel.

Watching this team lose isn't the hard part, It's how the lose with under-performance and beating themselves, being out-coached in situational football, unprepared, undisiplined, clock management, missed tackles, missed assignments, and on and on. Your so right, improvement in philosophy and performance are really needed. Not sure we have the coaches in place to fix this.

 

Heres what a team does when their defense is lousy after a bad season, you fire defensive coaches of course, The Packers defense needed major changes after struggling in 2017. They finished 22nd in total defense, 26th in scoring defense, 23rd in passing defense and 17th in rushing defense.

So fire the coaches:
Dom Capers isn't the only Green Bay Packers coach to be let go.

According to Rob Demovsky of ESPN, the Packers have fired defensive line coach Mike Trgovac and inside linebackers coach Scott McCurley. This comes on the heels of the Packers firing Capers who has been the team's defensive coordinator since 2009.

 

Tomlin is showing incredibly weak leadership by failing to act here. I'm still hopeful that Rooney will mandate that Tomlin make changes to his defensive coaching staff, but I'm sure that's a false hope.

 

What makes it look worse for us is that so called bad Packer defense almost pulled off a win against us with 3 starters out, and a rookie QB, who the week before was shut out by the ravens defense while our defense couldnt stop him from scoring 4 TDs and we had to get a field goal at the end of regulation to pull off a 31-28 win, that game alone should have sent up a thousand red flags that our defense was nothing to fear....

 

"We do what we do!"
--Mike Tomlin

Interpretation: "What we do" is make incredibly mediocre quarterbacks look like Tom Brady!

 

You know I toyed with the idea of starting my own Tomlin thread not to join the myriad of bashing threads but to have a solid discussion about who he is as a coach and in my opinion how he really has been boxed in for almost his entire 10 years in Pittsburgh. Anyways I will just throw my thoughts in here and hope they don’t get lost.

What type of coach is Tomlin, after 10 seasons he is ambiguous today as he was at his opening press conference. It that presser he was asked what type of team he envisioned having his answer was a tough team but mentally and physically. He had been given his marching orders by the Rooney’s about what their franchise was all about, tough defense and a strong run game. That is side one of the box.

Side two comes in the form of the offensive side of the ball, coming in Tomlin was coming from the Dungy coaching tree which means heavily influenced by Noll as well but not a huge background on offense. He was getting a veteran offense with a franchise QB with some very strong opinions on what he wanted. Instead of reaching outside the orginazation for his 2nd in command at Ofeensive coordinator they promote Bruce Arians who Ben likes. Now none of us is sure how much input he put into the offense but Ben and BA heavily collaborated to make a playbook to Ben’s liking. It worked they won a Super Bowl but with Ben taking a lot of punishment. They made it to a second SB losing it after implementing a game plan that may have been unexpected and showcased Ben’s passing but which played into the Packers strength and not their weakness(run defense). That was enough for the Rooney’s and they forcefully retired Arian’s in a move to keep their franchise QB playing.

Side three is the defense. Tomlin’s bread and butter rising from a DB coach to DC in Minnesota to being picked by Pittsburgh as head coach after blowing the doors off in the interview process. Yet after getting the job he makes the choice to keep veteran DC Dick Lebeau and take a backseat because who wouldn’t take advantage of that opportunity. It culminated in two of the best defenses the team has had since the 70’s in but it also had warts and with those signs of aging. Then there was Butler and the Rooney’s seeming promise of taking over when DL was done. It’s tough to say if Tomlin’s fingerprints were on those units in the first few years, I think there are especially in the players both he and KC targeted in the draft but for the most part he was hands off.

Which leads us to the fourth side Haley and Butler. The replacements one of which was promised a promotion the other I’m sure signed off on by Tomlin but also a candidate with a strong tie to the franchise. Haley again would collaborate with Ben and have a contentious relationship with him since obviously he wasn’t BA and Haley knew he was tasked with saving Ben from Ben. Tomlin’s window for putting his stamp on the offense seemed to close. Butler began to work on crafting his version of the Lebeau defense and its a work in progress until this year.

Breaking out of the box this past season Tomlin has taken a more visible role in his defense and that maybe why there was communication problems through out the unit. Haley was not extended and the choice was made to promote from within again to fill the position and keeping Ben happy and playing for three more seasons. We could see Tomlin who should be more comfortable by now with offensive play calling and game planning taking a more open role in crafting the playbook with RF and Ben. I think he is going to continue to take a bigger role in the defense as well.

That is my take on the restrictions Tomlin has had to deal with through out his time in Pittsburgh and how we could finally be seeing who he is as a coach going forward.

 

I don't know if the last line makes me excited or petrified.......

 

You make some good points and I'll concede he may have been limited the first 3 maybe 4 years. Even though he may have had some restriction he is responsible for getting the team prepared both mentally and physically and he has never been able to do that consistently. The BA thing and Ben, a lot of that problem was the fact we couldn't run the ball, the o-line was worse than bad. I would want to ram my head through the wall when I would see hand-offs on 2nd and 6 only to see the same result, run up the middle for no gain or bounce it outside for a loss of 4.

I didn't care for BA, he never used a full back knowing how bad the o-line was, I mean it was the worst o-line to ever win a SB and the worst one to even make the playoffs. In many ways we could say BA was in a box given the task of having a game plan with such a poor o-line but we gave him no slack so Tomlin doesn't deserve and either, he has more control than BA had.

The other issue has already been made, even after position coaches came and went, Tomlin's teams have consistently lost to sub par teams. Yes, it happens to every team but not on such a regular basis that that under his tutelage they actually lose more games in which they are favored by 7 or more than they win, that is 100% on the head coach.

You can blame the players but why does this not happen regularly for other coaches? What that tells me is the coaches are unable to motivate their players for that game, and it starts during the practice week, how much attention is paid to detail? You know it has to do with lackluster practices during those weeks, all you have to do is watch the first quarter and you knew how the game would look.

That is the last issue, lack of a plan B for lack of a better term. When they would come out in a game and ended up looking unprepared and making mistakes and nothing they did worked, it stays like that the entire game. Under Tomlin the team has been terrible at making any in-game adjustments, no matter how bad it is they continue to do the same things over and over.

I don't hate him or think he is a horrible coach, I just think he lacks situational awareness and is more of wordsmith and likes to let players play. I just read a good write up on Pederson on how he looks at every game and puts new wrinkles into offense and defense that haven't been put on tape for other coaches to see. That is how coaches are suppose to coach, but under Tomlin it is the same thing over and over, rely on guys winning their match-ups and when they do you win, if they don't you lose. No trying to scheme to get favorable match ups that make it easier for you to win, just continue to "Do what we do" and hope it works out.

 

I don't agree with your framing. Obviously the goal right now is the SuperBowl Win because it's a reasonable goal. Sure every team has that goal but it wasn't realistic for, say, the Colts. For us it was absolutely a reasonable goal.

The issue is more around whether the team looks like it showed up to play and is properly managed situationally. There's a difference between showing up and getting outmatched and showing up and underachieving.... sometimes it's grey... it didn't seem so grey in the Jax game (it seemed a little grayer in the NE game).

So I'm not talking about "participation" trophies but his teams often feel like they show up with insufficient intensity and are improperly managed during the game... that's the narrative... not whether we won or lost (loosing sucks... no need to spin a narrative around that even if you're the colts )

 

ok... i guess i should have read all the replies before I wrote my own

+1 JAD

 

I seem to recall that 2001 Steelers team that Bettis was on overlooking the Patriots in the AFCCG, there were players on that team talking about their Super Bowl plans before the game. Belichick used as that motivation for his team, they clowned the Steelers afterwards.