Over the past two weeks, C Mason Cole has had several botched snaps that led to negative plays for the offense. Last Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals, Cole botched a couple of snaps, including one at the feet of QB Mitch Trubisky. He was unable to recover the ball as the defense closed in, the Cardinals securing the turnover to get Pittsburgh’s offense off the field. Cole had a couple of poor snaps against the New England Patriots as well last Thursday, again struggling to get the ball to the proper spot as Trubisky had to work to corral the snap with the defense closing in on him.
Head coach Mike Tomlin was asked about Cole and his recent snapping issues during his weekly press conference on Monday, including if Tomlin has considered playing Nate Herbig until Cole gets his snapping issues fixed.
“There’s certain routine things that we work routinely,” Tomlin said via video from the Steelers’ YouTube channel. “We don’t wait ’til they become a problem in an effort to address it. (Quarterback-center) exchanges is something that happens on a routine daily basis, and we’ll continue with that. I acknowledge that we’ve had some that hadn’t been good of late, but our behavior regarding it hasn’t changed because we’re not reactionary. We like to be out in front of those things. We value routine things happening routinely.”
In essence, Tomlin contradicts himself as Cole’s snapping issues have become an apparent problem but states that he won’t react to it in a negative light. The fact is that Cole has had a poor 2023 season, not only in snapping the football but also in executing the basic duties of the center. He’s struggled in pass protection, getting dominated by bigger interior defenders when tasked to block them one-on-one. He also hasn’t met the bar consistently as a run blocker like he had in the past, falling off blocks regularly while failing to generate much of a push in short-yardage and goal-line situations.
All centers will suffer the occasional bad snap…even the great ones. Maurkice Pouncey was known for having bad snaps on occasion, but he still didn’t have them become a regular occurrence like Cole has had in 2023. The thing about routine things is that they should be done routinely, as Tomlin mentioned. That means you shouldn’t have to worry about each snap being adequate just like you shouldn’t have to worry about receivers catching a pass when wide open or the running back completing the exchange with the quarterback on a handoff.
When the routine things can’t be done routinely, that’s when you have a problem. That’s starting to become the case with Cole and his snaps. While Tomlin may want to say it as a non-issue, the rest of his words in his statement suggest that it should be.
