Former Pittsburgh Steelers’ cornerback Arthur Maulet spent the morning of his 30th birthday not with candles but with cameras. He joined NFL Network’s Good Morning Football crew to discuss his NFL career and hopefully his next team after requesting his release from the Steelers in May.
Though Maulet’s time in Pittsburgh didn’t seem to end well, there was definitely some friction, he said all the right things about playing for Mike Tomlin. Most notably, Maulet discussed how Tomlin created accountability in a way he hadn’t seen before.
“When I first signed there,” Maulet said, “they have this big board and we get into training camp and most of the times when you mess up, you wait until you get to individuals and they’ll break it down. Mike Tomlin, no, everybody’s gonna see it. And that was just a big eye-opener for me. Being in the league seven years, that never happened to me.”
We don’t know all the details of how the big board system works but this isn’t the first time a player has referenced it. Last summer, struggling guard Kendrick Green got on the wrong end of the big board with Tomlin showing the entire team his in-game mistakes and errors, putting him on the spot for the rest of the players to watch.
“Coach T [Tomlin] had us up on the board, and me specifically, a lot during the team meeting,” Green told reporters at the time. That doesn’t feel good at all.”
But Green surely hasn’t been the only one to be put in front of the rest of the class. It’s likely happened to most of his teammates at one point or another, though you wonder if any of the team’s stars get the same treatment. Of course, they make fewer mistakes so their odds of being singled out are reduced.
Regardless, it’s an interesting approach from Tomlin. To hear Maulet tell it, that’s not something that occurs in every locker room, and he had been with three NFL teams by that point. As he says, many other teams will correct mistakes during individual group film study, the offensive linemen going over their tape in their room after the morning meeting. Not in Pittsburgh. Make a mistake in practice and the whole team is going to see it the following day.
“That just shows accountability to everybody,” Maulet said. “Nobody’s special. So that’s one thing that I really respected about Mike Tomlin.”
It’s a parallel to New England’s Bill Belichick, who wasn’t afraid to air his grievances in front of the whole team, including with star QB Tom Brady. Belichick would later say he intentionally did it not because Brady’s play was so egregious but because he needed to prove to the rest of the team Brady could be held as openly accountable as anyone else on the roster. Clearly, it worked. And it’s largely worked in Pittsburgh, Tomlin building consistent teams though the Steelers are in urgent need of ending their playoff drought.
Maulet didn’t go into detail over what led to his release from the team. Shortly after, he took subtle (and not so subtle) shots at the team but wasn’t asked about those comments during his GMFB appearance. That comes as little surprise. Maulet is still looking to sign with a team and bad-mouthing your former employer is a way to be perceived as a locker room problem that would hurt his likely limited market. But he should end up in a camp with a club at some point this summer as a plucky slot corner and energy bringer to the locker room.
