All you need to know to understand how low the Pittsburgh Steelers are right now is just to take a measurement of how many programs are talking about them. None of it is good, and that’s because they haven’t given commentators and analysts much reason to think otherwise.
Following three straight losses and multiple controversies with their players’ behavior, the scrutiny is now on head coach Mike Tomlin more than ever—even more so than at the height of the corrosion of the team’s relationship with WR Antonio Brown.
Right now it’s about George Pickens. A few weeks ago it was about Diontae Johnson. Last year it was about Chase Claypool. And you can keep going down the list. Shannon Sharpe believes it’s time to start pointing the finger in the right direction.
“Let me tell you why it’s happening. Because Mike Tomlin has allowed it”, he said on his Nightcap podcast with co-host Chad Ochocino, who had differing views on the subject. “There are two things at play here. Either he’s coaching that type of behavior, or he’s condoning that type of behavior”.
That “type of behavior” includes undisciplined play on the field, lack of effort, on-field outbursts, and poor professionalism in public. As well know, Pickens has been the focal point of much of it. But Ochocinco questions how much falls on the head coach’s lap.
“Mike Tomlin does not control grown men. He does not control grown men. Let’s not put that on the coach”, he said. But Sharpe kept a list. “Talk about Antonio Brown. Chase Claypool. Diontae Johnson, Martavis Bryant. George Pickens. Santonio Holmes. Is just gave you six, seven names”.
“Think about it. Traded Santonio Holmes. [Traded] Martavis Bryant. Traded Claypool. Traded Antonio Brown. Do you see a reoccurring theme?”, he questioned. “Do you see a reoccurring theme? They tolerate you until they can replace you. You see the behavior”.
He went on to bring up the Facebook Live incident with Brown during the locker room after the Steelers defeated the Cincinnati Bengals in the 2015 postseason. He streamed the locker room live on social media, supposedly as part of a paid sponsorship, while Tomlin was speaking to the team.
He did it with “no ill intent”, though, Ochocinco suggested, which did not register with his co-host. “You know the locker room is off limits, Ocho. You know damn well. Come on, don’t do that now”. However, as the former receiver points out, there’s always a camera in the locker room now. And the players themselves constantly stream live from there, though perhaps not in the exact same situation.
For Sharpe, it just speaks to a pattern of behavior that has been permitted to endure under Tomlin’s watch, and really, it’s hard to ignore when you look at the track record. The evidence is there. The only question is how much blame Tomlin as a coach, rather than as an evaluator, deserve for it.
For Ochocinco, who had his fair share of controversy in his day, he laid it on the player, not the coach. “Everybody’s their own individual. We’re not gonna say, ‘oh, George Pickens is only acting like this because of what Antonio Brown did’”, he said. “That’s a grown man”.
But Sharpe insists that Tomlin has developed and reinforced a pattern of “rewarding negative behavior”, condoned by his comments earlier this week that essentially amounted to saying they’re playing Pickens because they need his talents.
I don’t think it’s possible to argue that there isn’t more Tomlin could be doing to address these situations. We don’t know what he may be doing behind closed doors, but we certainly know he’s flying in the face of conventional wisdom by not taking away playing time. He didn’t do it to Johnson, either, who was subject to calls for benching, or for Claypool.
I think Santonio Holmes got sat for a quarter or something many years ago after telling a fan to kill himself on social media. That’s about it. And they eventually traded him while he faced a looming suspension and the prospects of free agency the following year.
You can still criticize Tomlin’s handling of the situation while believing that he can be part of the solution. But can he be part of the solution if he only keeps doing what he’s been doing? And if the argument is that we don’t even know how bad it is that he covers up behind the scenes, then there’s obviously a much deeper problem than even that—a problem with Tomlin the evaluator. You need to bring in people you can coach. He’s struggling with that right now, from the looks of it. If you can’t do that, then you have to stop doing one or the other, if not both.
