The Pittsburgh Steelers have experienced a bit of a fall from grace over the past couple of years, being a team that many would peg as a potential contender to a team that is just scraping by in attempt to make the playoffs. The changing of the guard, particularly on the offensive side of the football, hasn’t helped matters. Pittsburgh has gone through some major growing pains trying to replace a Hall of Fame quarterback and a once-dominant offensive line and the results haven’t been there despite having this current unit together for nearly two seasons.
Things have bottomed out with Pittsburgh feeling the heat after suffering back-to-back home losses to the Cardinals and Patriots, two teams that have no hope of making the playoffs this season. The resentment toward head coach Mike Tomlin has only grown, leading Kyle Brandt of Good Morning Football to pick the Steelers as his choice for the team playing on Saturday with the most at stake.
“What was Mike Tomlin saying last week?” Brandt said on GMFB. “‘It’s who we are. It’s what we do.’ Ok Mike, I respect it and you’re right, it is what you do. You lost at home to the Cardinals and the Bailey Zappes, dude. Like, that’s not what you do. Now, you’re on Saturday and you’re going against a Colts team that’s pretty fearless, playing at home in the dome and they’ll just chuck it around. Did you realize that there’s heat on Tomlin this last couple of weeks? If you listen to real Steelers fans, they’re getting sick of it and they’re tired of it and that press conference after I don’t think helped.
“He’s Mike Tomlin. He can say whatever he wants, and when he says that’s who we are, it’s usually followed up with a win. You can’t lose three in a row to the Cardinals, Colts, and Patriots in the playoff stretch. It’s not Steeler football.”
Steelers fans are getting sick and tired of Tomlin’s remarks at the podium; his words haven’t yielded any fruit to suggest that positive change is being made. Alex Kozora of Steelers Depot mentioned following the loss to the Patriots that Tomlin should be feeling the heat for the team’s recent failures, dialing up poor play calls on fourth down as well as having his team flat out unprepared for two-win teams in back-to-back games.
That is who the Pittsburgh Steelers are. A team that plays with an offense that operates at a JV level, makes multiple pre-snap penalties a game, can’t go a week without a center-quarterback exchange going wrong, and has a lack of execution by someone on nearly every drive to prevent it from scoring. The offense is also known for not being able to come back from sizable deficits as we’ve seen the last two weeks, putting more pressure on the defense to hold the opposition below 17 points. That sometimes isn’t even enough as we saw against the Cleveland Browns a few weeks ago. This isn’t all an indictment of Tomlin but rather what the standard has sunk to in Pittsburgh, winning close and winning ugly rather than dominating the opposition.
The fact of the matter is that this feels like the hottest Tomlin’s seat has ever been during his tenure as head coach, and for good reason. He isn’t delivering a winning football team and a team that matches the standard in Pittsburgh, being directly responsible for the product on the football field. Getting a win Saturday against the Colts is imperative for Tomlin and Pittsburgh not only to keep their playoff hopes alive, but to quiet the masses calling for Tomlin’s job.
