Perhaps some Pittsburgh Steelers fans thought Mike Tomlin hired Arthur Smith to say, “Please, take this off my plate”. If you have been a Steelers fan long enough, though, you should be ashamed of yourself. Because of course Tomlin has his hands all over the offense, as he does everywhere else.
The Steelers brought Arthur Smith in because he fit the culture Mike Tomlin and the Steelers have built. Ultimately, Smith serves at Tomlin’s behest and adheres to whatever philosophical strictures he puts into place. Historically, short of the Killer Bs era, that has been a conservative approach. And even the beat writers are tired of it.
“That’s the approach he believes in and continues to employ”, Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote in a chat of Tomlin’s conservative offensive philosophy, which has been consistent across coordinators up to and including Arthur Smith. “I have always stated the Steelers could bring in Sid Gillman as their offensive coordinator and they’d still win games 17-13 or 23-16”.
A quick history lesson on Sid Gillman. You may have heard the name before, but he is most famous for helping to modernize the game. His emphasis on the vertical passing game is a direct ancestor to the explosive offenses we see today. And like any offensive revelation, his teams racked up points before defenses could respond. He had a top-10 scoring offense for 15 consecutive seasons as a head coach, and almost always top five.
Obviously, Dulac is poking fun at Mike Tomlin for suggesting that his conservative approach could even neuter an aggressive Gillman offense, which Arthur Smith certainly does not employ. But the Steelers have ranked 21st or worse in scoring for the past four years.
Since taking over the Steelers job in 2007, Tomlin has only had five top-10 scoring offenses. Four of them came in the heart of the Killer Bs era, when he finally let his hair down. Ben Roethlisberger’s elbow injury in 2019 was the transformative moment into a more conservative approach.
Tomlin’s overarching priority, which he emphasizes with Smith, is ball security. Every team wants to protect the football, of course, but the Steelers limit risks more than most. At least, they have up to this point, but his most conservative period coincides with poor quarterback play.
Could he finally change course as he gains trust in Justin Fields to take calculated risks? Mike Tomlin once fired “no risk it, no biscuit” Bruce Arians. Everybody agreed that it was the right move at the time, but that’s mostly because the Steelers’ offensive line was awful.
Asked why Arthur Smith’s offense bears so many resemblances to those of previous Steelers coordinators, Dulac wrote, “Because Mike Tomlin is the head coach who sets the philosophy”. But really, should anybody be surprised? When you have a stable head coach who performs at a baseline of expectation annually, you’re not going to get many radical changes. You’re going to get variations on a theme, and Smith is one of them for Tomlin. He still has his own personality, but like any coordinator, he has to fit it into his head coach’s vision.
