Saturday’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals feels significant for Mike Tomlin and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
After decades of stability, the yellow-and-black seem to be cracking. What was once one of the strongest franchise’s in the NFL, rich with history and pride has recently had its culture come into question due to the on-field choices of George Pickens, Dionate Johnson and others.
One of Tomlin’s favorite sayings is to “smile in the face of adversity” and according to former Bengal and current Bengals color commentator Dave Lapham, the Steelers will be facing plenty of it tomorrow.
“They’re making business decisions,” said Lapham on his podcast In the Trenches. “If you’re making business decisions you’re in trouble. So which team will show up? Because that’s a rarity for Mike Tomlin. I mean Mike Tomlin doesn’t have these kind of problems.”
I’ll bump the brakes there for a second with Lapham because Tomlin has had these types of issues in the past. Can I present to you one Antonio Brown? What about Chase Claypool?
This isn’t to knock Tomlin down, he’s a great coach and should be in the Hall of Fame, but to say this hasn’t happened before is untrue.
Lapham went on to ask if the team will implode in this game. With tensions high, it’s hard to feel like it’s not, but let’s not forget that third-string quarterback Mason Rudolph will be starting. It’s difficult to call anything an implosion when your team is looking to the man who lost his starting position to Devlin Hodges is running the show.
It already has imploded.
Whether the game ends in a loss or win, the team looks fractured. And regardless of the state of the locker room, what’s undeniable is a product on the field unworthy of the Steelers standard.
So much so that former Steeler and Tomlin-believer Ryan Clark said on ESPN’s Get Up this morning that he believes Tomlin and Pittsburgh should go their separate ways.
“Mike Tomlin needs to figure out if this is the place for him, because I don’t believe it is, the same way Andy Reid had to leave Philadelphia, and he’s now have had two separate Hall of Fame careers,” Clark said.
Whether Tomlin leaves the Steelers this offseason or not, I do not know. But this much is fact: changes are coming to Pittsburgh regardless of Saturday’s outcome.
