I don’t know what kind of electives Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin might have participated in during his varsity days at William & Mary, but yesterday’s press conference struck me as a well-polished stand-up act. Many parts of it were simply comical, with one of his all-time great deadpans.
“I was talking about the physicality component or the lack thereof and it didn’t take long for me to realize practice attire early in the in the year”, he said via the team’s website when asked what changes needed to be made, referencing his post-game comments on Sunday following their blowout loss to the Houston Texans.
In his opening remarks, he waxed prosaic about his team’s lack of physicality after preaching about it all offseason. His conclusion? Put pads on the players this week. Not that it’s a bad idea to do so, but what an absolutely comical response to the first month of the season.
One day in pads during practice is not going to solve this team’s lack of physicality. Tomlin got his plaudits during training camp when he was able to get up on his soap box and get out his sound clips to tout his philosophy about the urgency of physical practices. “If we’re gonna box, we have to spar”, he said.
Okay, so they sparred. And they still can’t box. So what’s the point? What is the point of a physical, aggressive, live-tackling training camp if it appears to make no difference when it actually matters in the regular season?
And if those efforts in July and August make no difference now, what difference is a padded practice going to make now? They’re not going to be made a more physical unit all of a sudden. Any team that is tough in the trenches is going to bully the Steelers right now even if they sleep in their helmets.
To be clear, introducing a padded practice in and of itself is a good idea. The thing that’s comical is that this is virtually his lone response to everything he has witnessed over the past month. Granted, there may be only so much that he can do at this point in time, but going from “Hell yeah we’ve got to make some changes” to “Hey guys let’s wear our full outfits today”? It’s a damn joke.
It’s a damn joke. And it’s not a change. Tomlin partially blamed his team’s lack of physicality on the Steelers’ early schedule and post-game travel complications, limiting their work weeks and making it more difficult to practice in pads in an effort to have more inclusive practices with banged-up players. But every team is in the same boat, which, to his credit, he did acknowledge. Did the San Francisco 49ers practice in pads? Did the Houston Texans? Does anybody even know? Does it matter? There’s no excuse for the product on the field.
A lack of physicality isn’t going to be solved by some in-season padded practices, for which every team is regulated in the CBA. It’s not like everybody else is beating themselves up every day and the Steelers are just doing walkthroughs. Chances are, each week, their opponents have done no more physical work than they have. They’re just worse in most every respect on those given weeks from coaching on down. And it’s getting laughable.
