Reggie Bush admitted he’s a big fan of Mike Tomlin. But that respect is not without criticism and on Good Morning Football Friday morning, Bush laid down some heavy criticism of Tomlin and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
In Bush’s words, he believes the Steelers haven’t “learned their lesson” and aren’t focused enough to match the talent they have. He began by recapping how 2017 ended.
“Everyone knew that Pittsburgh were heavily favored to win that game [against Jacksonville] and had way more talent,” he said. “Leading up to that game, what do we hear? Guys already looking forward to the Patriots game, they’re already talking about the Patriots game. They’re looking past Jacksonville like this is going to be a walk in the park.”
Tomlin’s comments made to Tony Dungy were brought up in the discussion too as evidence for the team looking ahead. A lot of that is probably unfair, Tomlin’s comments were made weeks ahead of time and it’s unreasonable to believe he was looking past Jacksonville and the same probably goes for most players. But it’s a bad look to get beat the way they did. Optics-wise, it couldn’t have been worse.
To Bush, he sees a trend in the Steelers underachieving, a subjective point but I think a fair one. And he points the finger back at Tomlin.
“It seems like this happens year in and year out. And I hate to start to look at the coach because I love Tomlin, I love what he brings to this team. But at what point do you start to say maybe the players aren’t responding to the coach or maybe there needs to be some form of a culture switch there.”
Bush also took issue with what’s already happened this year. Namely, the report that Antonio Brown isn’t at OTAs because he only wants to catch passes from Ben Roethlisberger.
“You can’t have guys sending the wrong message saying ‘I don’t want to catch passes from the backup.'” Bush said, referring to Brown.
That’s the most relevant and valid criticism of them all, a topic we discussed on Friday’s Terrible Podcast. If that report is true, it’s an ugly look for Brown, who prides himself on showing up to practice, even when he was going through his contract dispute with the team.
There’s plenty that can be debated in Bush’s comments but speaking objectively as possible, I don’t think he’s out of bounds in anything he says. Maybe you don’t agree with it all, I don’t, but the concerns aren’t hot take trash like you get from other TV personalities. And if the Steelers fall short of expectations again this year, the rumblings about Tomlin will only heat up.
You can check out Bush’s full comments below along with the full segment:
