Random Post Playoff Debacle Thoughts

I think Ben's knee was far worse than any of us realized. Fichtner will take a lot of blame for the play calling. But the reality is his hands were tied. The Steelers were running the only offense that Ben could run.

Some things I believe to be true based off what I have watched the last quarter of the season.

Ben does not want to be under center because it hurts for him to bend his knee.

Ben has to get the ball out fast because he is scared to death to get hit.

A lot of the drops have been Ben's fault. The balls have been coming out of Ben's hand funny for over a month. I think the receivers had a tough time adjusting to the uneven velocity of Ben's passes.

I think the cold exacerbated Ben's health problems. Everything gets tight when its cold. Everything gets tight when you are old and beat up. I think Ben's knee hurt that much worse once the temperature dropped.

I have been a pretty big Tomlin supporter this year. I will continue to be a supporter going into next season. That being said he completely dropped the ball here yet again.

Some things I believe to be true based off what I have watched the last quarter of the season.

Team discipline again took center stage. He never addressed the JuJu problem all season long. The team has appeared unjustifiably over confident since the Ravens game. Again it cost us.

The body language of the team coming out of the tunnel yesterday was terrible. They looked completely unprepared to play this game. It showed on the field.

Lack of adjustments again killed the Steelers. They trot the same game plan out there week after week, even after it became obvious that the jig is up. I can almost give Tomlin a pass on the offense. But defensively there is no excuse. We had enough healthy guys to perform way better than we did.

Tomlin's complete and total unwillingness to make changes to his staff doesn't seem to give Steelers fans much hope going forward. The standard will be the standard. Right now the standard SUCKS.

 

Yes the coaching staff sucks I really believe there will be change from the front office this has just be going on for too long now

 

I know we made a major comeback and that showed great heart, but I was getting so frustrated with the nickel and dime passing. We didn't have time for all those short passes. So if we actually had a running game, would we have been handing the ball off 60 times last night? I think not! We needed shots down field as time was of the essence. Unfortunately, we know Ben can not make those throws consistently.

 

What comeback? Never lead in this game just like vs Jacksonville. Coaching is getting out coached big time in the playoffs and Ben isn’t helping. Not sure what we can do to fix it but it wont be soon. I call this purgatory. Hope and failure

 

If Ben’s body is failing him then he needs to man up and walk away. Eight months rest may give a false sense of confidence, but that body is going to break down again before the season ends

 

$$$$$$

i would milk it too

 

Yet you're ok with MT continuing on doing the same things? I mean how many years has he been here and nothing really changes year to year or game to game? There is no leadership on board. If I were HC, I would have put Mason in periodically after the Girls game when it was obvious Ben was struggling. How many pics does a QB have to have before something is done about it? I see a lot of HC's intimately involved in sideline game strategy, making adjustments, so on and so forth. We have a statue that totally delegates the conduct of the game to others. Not because he doesn't want to, I don't think he can. He's an empty suit with a smug attitude knowing nothing will happen to him NO MATTER WHAT. Ben is the same way always saying he needs to play better and other recycled horse dung. To me, there is no cure unless you cut out the infection that harming us and that starts with MT on down. MT is not a tactician, but drives what he can via emotion (cheerleading that was unsuccessful yesterday). Saying that doesn't mean that is all bad, its just there is a void to what we're doing that is missing something (like discipline) and we need more than someone who is just buddies with his players. Coaches will hit a wall and need to move on to greener pastures. Reid, Bellicheat, Arians?, you know the names. Not here though, we're going to ride this ship until hits an iceberg, then back up and repeat. MT has had a marvelous tenue here but there is limitations that we keep butting up against and change is obvious. Not tryng to challenge SteelWinds in size of posts verbiage, but this basically concludes my venting for a while.

 

The Steelers seriously need to take a look at cutting Ben and they need to really consider what they want to do with Mike Tomlin moving forward. What happened last night was unacceptable and Tomlin has to be held accountable for it somehow someway. I don’t know if firing him is the absolute best decision to make but I think it strongly needs to be looked at by Art Rooney.

 

Yes but he has already earned close to a quarter of a billion dollars. After a certain point, the money isn’t as important as the pride and what legacy you leave behind.

 

Tomlin sucks. This team is always under performing and over running their mouths. They constantly provide bulletin board material and it's been that way for Mike Tomlins entire HC career. Ben needs to look himself in the mirror and decide that if he is not able to come back 100% healthy and give it all he's got then he should not come back at all. I'm pretty sure he will play out his final season though. Randy Fitchner's play calling makes Todd Haley look genius. Pouncy cost this game from the very first snap. Ben should have kicked the ball thru the end zone which would have been a 2-0 score instead of 7-0. Feiler should have been benched. Refs always suck. 2500 fans my ass! More like 250. How the f*ck does a team give up 28 points in the first qtr of a game? Rooneys don't care cause we as fans will be back. We never disappoint no matter how lousy we witness losses. BLOW THE WHOLE ORGANIZATION UP AND START FROM SCRATCH. The Steelers will never win another Lombardi with the status quo of standard Tomlinisms.

I'm so pissed right now but my TV survived!

 

At the very least Randy should definitely be let go.

 

I'm not okay with Tomlin doing the same things. Changes need to happen. I agree with a lot of what you said. Tomlin needs way better coaches around him. He does great as a leader of men. If you are going to delegate gameplaning to your assistants, then you better have some damn good assistants. Tomlin doesnt.

 

This is it. My problem is his stubbornness

 

I take back what I said. I hope you made your son go to bed. I made mine go to bed at halftime. No young man should watch something so obscene.

 

Fitchner’s contract ended. He better not be back in any capacity or there will be a huge amount of backlash from the fans

 

I made my son go to bed at halftime and then Claypool caught that TD and he came back to watch the rest of the game until the final INT.

I figured he might witness the greatest comeback in Steelers history but it simply was not to be.

 

His stubbornness and the Rooney's tradition of not wanting to fire a coach is a bad combination. They are so afraid of what the media would do to them if they broke tradition. I truly believe that.

 

It's not that. The Steelers are a very family oriented franchise. I think that Rooney, Tomlin, and Colbert are all very close. It's hard to fire family.

 

And that's when you have to come to the reality that it's a business. And l get the impression that Tomlin is a guy you have to force to get rid of staff unlike Cowher who would take that bull by the horns.

 

You need to look higher up than just Mike Tomlin. This isnt the Chiefs steelers anymore. This isnt Dan Rooneys Steelers anymore. Do you think Tomlin put up with AB's crap managed that whole situation cause he went to Art and said this guy is s good we have to keep placating him? I know what Dan Rooney would have done with AB's antics, do you? Im just using AB as an example. JuJu's behavior has been terrible this year (not AB level but not good). Why do you think that is? Cause its where the Bar is set. Art Rooney doesnt care about this team like his father and grand father did. Which is why Tomlin is allowed to continue with his unprepared teams. No matter how long you have been a Tomlin supporter or hater or anything there are two things certain about him. He consistently has teams that do not look prepared at all, and he is terrible with X's and O's. We can throw a 3rd one in there that is more of a generalization. He's soft. He command ZERO respect. Yes the players love him but they dont respect him there's a huge difference. And if Tomlin has issues then whos to blame for that? The fish rots from the head. Art Rooney is on cruise control. He inherited a franchise that was built into a model of excellence inthe league but he has no clue what it takes to maintain it.

The Fish rots from the head.

 

Correct n agree. Now whatever ailments he has will heal up by start of next season, but he will get new ones n they're in the same boat.

If you are worried about getting injured you will get injured n shouldn't be out there. Rewatch the Week 1 Giant game, he was scared to get hit then out of shoot

Were his knees bothering him, who knows

But they ran the spread dink.n dunk because Ben wanted to regardless of injuries , IMO

He needs to retire or release period

 

I wouldn't. I have chosen happiness over money before and I'd sure as hell do it if I already had way more than I could spend.

 

Tomlin can personally take the blame for the interception Johnson caused when the ball bounced off his hands. Were is the accountability? This guy should have been demoted a long time ago. Same goes for the multiple drops by Ebron. The guy led all TE's in drops at Indy so this isn't new for him. When he does catch the ball he can't break tackles. What McDonald lacks in speed he makes up for in power ....his YAC makes him every bit as good as Ebron and he's willing to fight for 1st downs and that extra yard. Ebron should have been demoted as well.

The dozens of passes knocked down at the LOS is not solely on Ben's shoulders. When you run an offense like this there's going to be lots of tipped balls. That issue along with drops really killed this offense and increased the turnovers. It was all showcased last night.

The bad snaps have been an issue for a long time. This wasn't new. Was anything done to correct it?

No running game? The offense we run spells doom for any running game. Opponents crowd the LOS, play press coverage, stack the box, and defend the short game. This eliminated the run game and it turned our passing game into a failure. At that point major adjustments needed to be made but weren't.

What was that defense we were running for a while there? Did we really think 1 LB was going to stop Chub? You could tell the Browns were even shocked by it. They were like ok, we will gladly run the ball down your throat.

FB hand off the 2nd time was moronic. They knew it was coming up the middle and blew up Pouncey which is why Watt ran right into his back.

Was starting Spilane a good idea? We bring in a cold LB who wasn't exactly good at coverage in the first place and let him cover WR's. He was clearly not ready for the speed of the game and was owned. As soon as the Browns saw our formation they knew it was an easy pass play to get Spillane isolated on Landry. That was just BAD game planning. We out thought our selves which is a common theme during Tomlin's entire career.

Why is Claypool not the primary read on more pass plays? He's clearly the best WR we have. The mismatch was exposed last year by our back up QB. So I'm guessing Tomlin thought...oh they'll see that coming so let's not let claypool take over the game...lets beat them with Diante Dropperton and Eric Stonehand Ebron. That was the offensive game plan....Ebron and Johnson. Ben took the offense and started feeding JuJu as that seems to be the ONLY receiver he trusts. I'd love to know why Ben doesn't trust Claypool more....or is it the routes we have him running? I have a feeling the OC thinks Diante runs better routes so they could use Ben's ability to run timing routes...that rarely work because he drops them.

The reasons we lost were the same reasons we lost in ever post season game we've played for the past decade.

 

This. It was never close. Steelers were consistently down by 2 scores, at least. I'm pretty sure the closest point margin was 12 points... and it didn't last long.