Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin told reporters going into last night’s game that he doesn’t view the third preseason game any differently than he did when there were four games instead of three. That means playing your starters for a longer period of time than in any other exhibition game, and more of them as well.
That is how they approached Thursday night’s blowout victory over the Atlanta Falcons, who took the opposite approach of resting their starters with the goal in mind of getting into the regular season as healthy as possible.
Asked after the game if he felt the need to play his starters because there was still more he wanted to see out of them to validate his beliefs, Tomlin’s answer was direct.
“I don’t really need validation”, he said, via the team’s website. “I just think it’s difficult to box without sparring. Preseason is the opportunity for us to spar and sharpen our sword for the battle”. This is nothing he hasn’t said before. Indeed, he used the sparring analogy a couple weeks ago when asked about how much his starters would play.
It is now Aug. 25. The Steelers’ next game is on Sept. 10. That’s more than two weeks away, a long time to sit your starters. Now imagine not playing them last night. A three weeks’ break between their last work inside a stadium.
That is how a lot of teams approach things—that’s what the Falcons are doing, and surely many other teams will withhold their starters this week as well—but Tomlin is just trying to minimize the potential rust that can set in during a long layoff while providing them the necessary live reps to get into the match.
After all, their first round is with a heavyweight contender in the San Francisco 49ers. They will host the Los Angeles Chargers tonight in their final preseason game, and head coach Kyle Shanahan also intends to play his starters.
“It’s all about having guys ready to play a real football game”, he told reporters, via transcript. “There’s so much that goes into mentally being ready, physically being ready. I mean, you can’t have any hesitation in this game. When Week One starts, people see that and you can lose games very fast just being a little bit off”.
“I’ve had guys that I’ve sat for the whole preseason games and then fumble their first play that they get in and then you kick yourself in the butt for it”, he added. “It’s just like, ‘What was I doing?’”.
So it appears that the two coaches are very much in line with their philosophy in approaching playing time for their starters at this stage of the season. It should lead up to quite a boxing match in Pittsburgh in just over two weeks. Because the sparring is now over. No more pulling punches.
