Coming off a third straight loss, the Pittsburgh Steelers are in a bad, bad spot, not only in the AFC playoff picture, but in general, too.
Against the Indianapolis Colts, the Steelers allowed 30 unanswered points, turned the ball over three times, struggled on special teams outside of a punt block, and couldn’t stop a makeshift run game from the Colts. All of it resulted in another embarrassing, frustrating loss that dropped the Steelers to 7-7 and has raised more questions regarding the future of the team under head coach Mike Tomlin.
The seat, right or wrong, is getting hot for Tomlin, who has seemingly lost control of his team. Once again, a wide receiver had awful effort on a run play, standing around blocking nobody. This time it was George Pickens. And his defense absolutely folded when the Colts ran the ball 13 straight times on a drive in the fourth quarter, snatching the Steelers’ soul.
But for ESPN’s Domonique Foxworth and Mike Greenberg on Get Up! Monday morning, they find it rather puzzling that Tomlin is on the perceived hot seat in Pittsburgh after just one tough season and an ugly three-game stretch.
“I get your point about saying if it’s not on the coach and who it’s it on? But this is the first thing that we’ve been able to put it on the coach since he’s been the coach there,” Foxworth said regarding Tomlin and his tenure in Pittsburgh. “It’s outrageous to me that we’re like, ‘Hey, everything that we’ve been up until this point, we owe in large part to Mike Tomlin being able to get more out of players than we expect.’
“‘And then this season we have three plays that we can point to that we say a couple of receivers aren’t playing hard, and now we’re like, hot seat this man.’ It seems a bit outrageous.”
Earlier in the season, when the Steelers were 7-4, there wasn’t much talk about Tomlin being on the hot seat, even with the offense being rather poor. In fact, Tomlin was getting a ton of credit for the Steelers finding ways to win ugly, low-scoring games despite a poor offense.
Things changed when Tomlin and the Steelers fired offensive coordinator Matt Canada, putting the issues with the struggles solely on Tomlin. Though the Steelers won their first game post-Canada, the Steelers have now dropped three straight and seemingly gotten worse not only on offense, but on defense, too.
Granted, the defensive issues are being exacerbated due to injuries taking their toll.
But the team has seemingly lost all confidence and is getting worse and worse in all three phases. Penalties are a major problem. So is the effort after George Pickens was seen on tape standing around on a Jaylen Warren run just a few weeks after Diontae Johnson did the same thing.
Maybe Tomlin’s message is falling on deaf ears. Maybe things have run their course with Tomlin. But to Foxworth’s point, it’s a bit strange that Tomlin went from being a big reason why the Steelers were winning to being on the perceived hot seat in just a few weeks.
“The Mike Tomlin thing: Look, I hear you Pittsburgh. Just be careful what you wish for,” Greenberg stated. “You wanna get on that hamster wheel of other coaches? Trust me, it’s not so pretty on the other side.”
It might not be pretty on the other side, but all good things must come to an end. Change will happen at some point. Tomlin can’t coach forever. The Steelers are going to have to figure out the next era at some point. Maybe that time is now.
