The Pittsburgh Steelers have experiencedquite a bit of roster turnover heading into the 2023 season. There are a lot of rookies as well as veterans the team acquired through the offseason who look to play a big role for the team this year.
For Mike Tomlin, this creates an opportunity and a need to teach these guys the Steeler way of doing things. As Tomlin enters his 17th season as coach of the Steelers, he’s certainly built up the respect and reputation needed to run training camp the way he sees fit.
And for Tomlin and the Steelers, camp has always been more than just going through the motions and walking through the playbook. It’s a chance, a unique chance, to see what players are made of. How they deal with situations that don’t go their way.
At practice on Thursday, Tomlin did just that. The first-team offense was running through its last two-minute drill of the day, and on the final play, QB Mitch Trubisky completed a pass up the seem to rookie TE Darnell Washington. Washington was ruled down by the refs at the 1-yard line, but Tomlin had other ideas. He overruled the ref, and called the play a touchdown, resulting in the drill being a win for the offense.
Tomlin touched on this in a SiriusXM NFL Radio interview with hosts Pat Kirwan and Jim Miller.
“I love controversial moments and I’m not afraid to make a decision. That’s what this process is about.” Tomlin said. “Emotions are a part of what we do. I ask these guys to compete. Sometimes decisions are gonna weigh in their favor. Sometimes it’s gonna be against them. They gotta absorb it and move on. And so sometimes, I create adversity intentionally in an environment like this to get to know people.“
In this case, adversity struck the defense, not unlike it might in the regular season. Between bad calls, missed assignments by teammates, bad weather conditions, and so much more there is a multitude of things that could throw a monkey wrench in the Steelers’ plans in any individual game.
Tomlin has been around the block enough to know this. And that’s exactly why he’s getting his players prepared for it now, and it also perfectly explains why he loves the heat at practices so much. Anyone can be successful when the conditions are perfect and things are going their way. But conditions are far from perfect in the NFL, and if training camp is going to prepare players for the season, it would make no sense to have conditions be perfect there either.
