After the Pittsburgh Steelers lost to the Arizona Cardinals last Sunday, radio icon Jim Rome postulated that there wasn’t much in football that could aggravate Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin more than RB Jaylen Warren’s comments about the team taking the Cardinals too lightly. After all, Tomlin is a head coach who emphasizes every game and every practice. So there can’t be anything more frustrating than accusations that he and his team took anyone lightly, right?
Well, then there was the debacle on Thursday night against the New England Patriots. That marked two straight losses against teams that only had two wins coming into Pittsburgh. On Friday’s episode of the Jim Rome Show, Rome took aim squarely at Tomlin.
“How the hell do the Patriots, who have nothing to play for except for a high draft pick, come into your house when you have everything to play for and play with grit and heart and your dudes just lay down?” Rome asked. “How is that possible? And how is that possible from a Mike Tomlin-coached team?”
It was a game that had extremely low expectations. The Patriots were held scoreless in their previous game and were on a three-game streak of failing to score double-digits. We all know the Steelers’ offensive issues, and then you factor in starting QB Mitchell Trubisky in place of the injured Kenny Pickett, and expectations were low. The results were somehow worse for anyone who supports Pittsburgh, and Rome shared in those same feelings.
“I mean, we all fully expected ass,” Rome said. “What I did not expect was triple ass.”
The Steelers let a team led by QB Bailey Zappe score three touchdowns en route to a 21-3 lead about halfway through the second quarter. In fact, all three touchdowns came on throws by Zappe, who had only thrown five touchdowns total through nine career games before Thursday night. He hadn’t even thrown a single touchdown in 2023 through three appearances before earning the start for New England.
Zappe outperformed Trubisky whose performance was not pretty. He did throw a touchdown pass to WR Diontae Johnson late in the second quarter to make it 21-10. Early in the fourth quarter, he scored on a quarterback sneak and completed the two-point conversion to TE Pat Freiermuth, so he was also responsible for the majority of his team’s scoring.
However, Trubisky threw an interception, something Pickett hadn’t done in weeks. Then on the penultimate offensive drive of the game for the Steelers, Trubisky could not convert on two straight passes facing a 3rd-and-2 and a 4th-and-2 from his own 49.
“I really didn’t know that Kenny Pickett was Terry Bradshaw compared to Mitch Trubisky,” Rome said.
It wasn’t just a failure on offense, though. Trubisky was outplayed by Zappe in part because Trubisky was that bad, but also because the Steelers’ defense allowed Zappe to look pretty darn good in the early going.
Zappe finished the night with 19 completions on 28 attempts for 240 yards and three touchdowns with one interception. He averaged 12.6 yards per completion and 8.6 yards per attempt. That’s great for the Patriots and really bad for the Steelers. It was also the second straight game in which the Steelers struggled to keep a tight end out of the end zone as Hunter Henry had two touchdowns and 40 yards on three receptions.
In all, it was a debacle on both sides of the ball. The Steelers failed for the second straight game to stop a team so far down the standings that they are jockeying for draft position, not a potential playoff spot. For Rome, that blame falls on one man’s shoulders, and that man is Tomlin.
“I have never seen one of your teams look more lifeless, more unmotivated, and more out of it than it looks right now,” Rome said. “More depressed than it looks right now. More miserable than it looks right now.”
Right now, the Steelers are in a tailspin. The playoffs, which seemed so assured this time last week, look impossible to reach with how the team has looked in the last five days. Tomlin has a reputation for being one of the best coaches in the league, but that reputation is unraveling before our very own eyes. Can he turn it around? How much time does he have to do so? Even Ray Fittipaldo believes Tomlin is only at 50-50 odds to be the Steelers’ head coach next season.
So now, between trying to get back to the playoffs and maintaining his streak of non-losing seasons, Tomlin might be coaching for his job.
You can watch the rest of Rome’s thoughts on the Steelers-Patriots game below.
