This year, the AFC North is featured for in-season Hard Knocks, but through two weeks, it’s been more Steelers Hard Knocks with a little tiny sprinkling of everyone else. Yesterday, Mike Tomlin said he was “fundamentally against” appearing on Hard Knocks because it gives away a lot of what he does as a leader. That’s also potentially putting the Steelers at a competitive disadvantage, with opponents being able to see what goes on behind closed doors each week. With the Philadelphia Eagles set to play the Steelers on Sunday, head coach Nick Sirianni was asked about the Steelers’ ability to force turnovers and as hard of his answer he referenced Hard Knocks.
“You can tell that it’s part of their culture. You can tell Coach Tomlin talks about it a lot. I guess you get to see it a little in the episodes of Hard Knocks when he talks about it. It’s an advantage, you get to see some of those things,” Sirianni said during his Friday press conference via the Eagles’ Twitter account.
There’s a reason why the Steelers have never been eager to appear on the show, but with the entire division getting featured for the 2024 in-season addition, they had little choice. While most of Pittsburgh’s games during the regular season while the show airs are against fellow AFC North teams, creating the same sort of “advantage” for each side, when the Steelers play non-divisional opponents, they get a peek behind the curtain of Pittsburgh’s operation that the Steelers simply don’t get.
Hard Knocks isn’t spilling company secrets, as it’s been a lot of clips of focus points and motivation from team meetings, but seeing how much Tomlin and his coaching staff harp on certain aspects of the game can give their opponents an idea of what the Steelers want to do and things to potentially game plan against and for.
With that being said, it’s not any secret that the Steelers’ defense takes a lot of pride in forcing turnovers, and you really don’t need to watch Hard Knocks to know that. It’s been talked about all season in press conferences from the coaching staff down to the players, so it shouldn’t be any big revelation to Sirianni and the Eagles that Pittsburgh really takes pride in that facet of its game. But it’s still interesting to hear another coach outright call it an advantage to see an opponent on Hard Knocks, and it confirms some of Pittsburgh and Tomlin’s fears.
