Maybe it’s because the team had off on Tuesday or maybe it’s because the dog days of training camp are starting to take their toll, but whatever the reason is, Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin wasn’t happy with what he observed during the team’s Wednesday practice.
“Work not as good as its been in other days,” started Tomlin. “A little sloppy, some pre snap penalties on defense, too many dropped balls on offense. I acknowledge from time to time you’re going to have those days, but you can’t like them, you can’t stack them one after another. So we’re going to challenge this group to come back out and have a more productive day tomorrow.”
When asked if he thought that the day off Tuesday was the reason behind the Wednesday sloppiness, Tomlin didn’t want that to serve as an excuse.
“I don’t care about what created it,” Tomlin said. “The issue is for us not to stack those type of days. To make sure that we come out here every day with the mentality that we’re going to thrive and not survive and I just think we had too many survivors today, guys looking to just get through it as opposed to improving within it.”
This was really the first time all training camp that Tomlin really let on that the team didn’t have a good practice. There also weren’t any mentions of any ebb and flow taking place as that’s been Tomlin’s go-to phrase so far during this year’s training camp.
The Steelers now have one more practice ahead of them before traveling Friday to New Jersey to play the New York Giants in their first preseason game of the 2014 season. Hopefully they can cut out the sloppiness that was on display Wednesday and get back to thriving again instead of just surviving.
