After the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 21-18 loss to the New England Patriots, Steelers safety Minkah Fitzpatrick, playing through a broken hand, was fed up. During Friday’s episode of Good Morning Football, NFL Network showed a postgame interview of Fitzpatrick in the locker room, and Fitzpatrick ripped the Steelers’ attitude and mentality, saying that players don’t want to work and just walk into games expecting to win because of the uniform they’re wearing.
“In order to see fruit, you gotta toil for it. I think too many people don’t want to toil for it. They just wanna walk out here and think they’re gonna make plays and think they’re gonna perform at the high level,” Fitzpatrick said. “Dudes just think that because they’re wearing the Black and Gold that they gonna win games. And I think we need to check that mentality and make people realize they gotta earn that mentality.”
The Steelers just aren’t that team anymore. This is a team that’s now dropped back-to-back games to 2-10 teams, one that has struggled to score points all season, and one that just came out incredibly flat against a Patriots team that had somehow managed to look worse offensively than Pittsburgh before last night.
It starts at the top. For Mike Tomlin to not have this team ready to go against a 2-10 team not just once, but twice with the second occasion happening five days later, is absolutely ridiculous. Add that to the fact that the players just didn’t execute. The defense allowed 21 first-half points and the offense struggled to move the ball and then had horrible execution on 4th and 2 twice in the fourth quarter, and now the Steelers are falling out of contention.
For players to be dealing with attitude issues and the thought that they just think they’re going to win, especially after coming off one loss to a 2-10 team, is a major indictment of Tomlin. How does that not get cleaned up and fixed, and how do players not taking every game seriously not get benched? Bill Belichick, who is now 10-3 against Tomlin, has no problem benching players if they do something wrong. Heck, he benched his top cornerback for the Super Bowl during Super Bowl LII. For a team that hasn’t proven much of anything all year — and even while winning, hasn’t looked good doing so — it’s quite the attitude to have to just walk onto the field expecting to win, and Tomlin is culpable for allowing that culture to continue.
Good for Fitzpatrick for calling it out, as the Steelers’ performance right now is just pathetic. Guys need to be called out if they’re not putting the work in, and as a veteran leader, it’s not something Fitzpatrick or anyone else should tolerate. It’s really sad that this organization is dealing with attitude issues and players not doing what they should be in Week 14, but here we are.
There need to be changes, to attitude and maybe even to personnel. If the attitude and resulting play on the field doesn’t change by Week 15, you can stick a fork in the 2023 Steelers.
