I must admit that the Monday Mike Tomlin press conference on Labor Day caught me off guard a bit. Normally on a regular season game week, Tomlin holds his weekly Tuesday press conference to discuss the upcoming opponent, go over the injury situation and who may or may not practice through out the week. He then fields questions from the media and is not really heard from again until his post game press conference.
The presser yesterday was merely to talk about the newly elected team captains, how healthy the team is overall and to announce that Dennis Dixon will be the starting quarterback against Atlanta on Sunday. What? Wait! When did Tomlin become so forthcoming about the quarterback situation unprovoked? Since Byron Leftwich was injured? He made it a point on Monday to say that Leftwich was to be considered doubtful and has not officially been ruled out and also made a point to say how fragile Charlie Batch is. One other thing, he blinked quite a bit during the presser. You have to wonder why all the rush of information on a day when he was not really scheduled to give a press conference. Why not just wait a day on this? Is there indeed a Tuesday press conference scheduled? I tweeted with Chris Mack of ESPN 1250 Pittsburgh this morning and he seems to think it is still on for noon eastern today.
I hate conspiracy theories as much as the next person, but you do have to admit it is quite curious why a coach and team that are normally close to the vest on details like this all of sudden want to make sure the media gets the word out as soon as possible. I am probably reading way too much into this, but if Dixon does indeed start and Batch is mixed in throughout the game at certain points, we will see exactly why Tomlin did this. Now if you will excuse me, I think my chin strap is too tight on my tin foil helmet. It is starting to make me sound like Mike Florio.
