After losing to the Ravens, HC Mike Tomlin has to prepare the Steelers for the Chiefs on Wednesday. Fear not, though, because he already started working on his plan for Kansas City yesterday morning. What’s that, you say? The Steelers hadn’t even played the Ravens by that point, and the Ravens blew them out?
While that is technically true, one could hardly conclude that Tomlin’s early preparation for the Chiefs contributed to the Steelers’ loss to the Ravens. The Steelers lost because of poor execution this time; this one didn’t really have to do with coaching. Missed tackles galore, blown coverages, an inability to get open, backbreaking turnovers. That will lose you games.
And it’s not like Tomlin kept it a secret because surely he knows anything he tells Jay Glazer is broadcast ready. Tomlin and Glazer are friends, and Glazer frequently reveals little Tomlin “nuggets”. This was his latest, coming in the wake of the Steelers’ loss to the Ravens.
“Mike Tomlin told me this morning, because they have the Chiefs in four days, [he] started at six o’clock this morning before they even play the Ravens”, Glazer reported on NFL on FOX postgame about his scouting work. “And I just got off the phone with Andy Reid. He went right from the Texans-Chiefs game into his office right now to start preparing for Pittsburgh”.
Both the Chiefs and Steelers played yesterday, the Chiefs in the early window. They knocked off the Houston Texans and are now very close to securing a first-round bye. But Glazer didn’t say Reid was preparing for the Steelers before the game like Tomlin.
Honestly, I don’t know who is going to make a big deal about this or not. Maybe one of the radio show hosts will read this and ask one or more beat writer about it. Is it a big deal that Mike Tomlin was preparing for the Chiefs before the Steelers even played the Ravens?
Well, the fact that the Steelers lost leaves Tomlin open to criticism on those grounds. By no means did the Ravens win because of this, but it’s not a good look after a loss. And Tomlin has been accused of having a team looking ahead before.
Perhaps by evening on Christmas Day we’ll be calling Mike Tomlin smart for putting together a brilliant strategy to get a shorthanded Steelers team past a one-loss Chiefs team that has won the past two Super Bowls and is looking to make history as a three-peat champion.
Or perhaps by then we’ll be wondering what he was thinking for letting himself get distracted from the next game. After all, Mike Tomlin is the one who always preaches the one-game-at-a-time philosophy.
But that’s more for the players than the coaches, quite frankly, and we know Tomlin doesn’t always say explicitly what he means. Teams are doing constant research and surveillance. Your focus every week is on your next opponent, but that doesn’t mean you ignore the rest of the season.
