The Pittsburgh Steelers have a particular philosophy about winning football—Mike Tomlin’s philosophy. That is the prerogative of any head coach, of course, who is responsible for everything on the field. It seems to Ray Fittipaldo, however, that Tomlin’s philosophy doesn’t meet with universal favor among his players.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette beat writer appeared on 93.7 The Fan yesterday, talking in part about a recent comment he made. Elaborating further, he explained that he gets a sense in the locker room that the offensive players want to do more and be a bigger contributor to the Steelers’ success.
“The skill position players want the ball in their hands more, and it’s not happening”, he said. “Maybe [their] pleas are falling on deaf ears. Maybe in the playoffs they’re gonna spring something on us and they’ll break some of their tendencies and they will start throwing the ball more. But I know people in that locker room want more responsibility on their shoulders. They think the passing game can help, and right now they’re still trying to play smashmouth football. As you guys can see, it hasn’t been working for the last month or so”.
Over their last four games, the Steelers have topped out at 17 points. Twice in that span, they have been held to under 200 yards of offense and have turned the ball over. Of their 17 giveaways on the season, six came in that final stretch, more than a third of the total. It’s no surprise that they couldn’t find a way to win any of those games.
Of course, the Steelers also had to do without WR George Pickens for two of those games. They were also playing some of the best teams in the league. But what they weren’t playing was winning football.
Russell Wilson went 76-of-123 over the final four games, throwing for 698 yards. He threw four touchdown passes, but also two interceptions. Of his three fumbles, the Steelers lost two.
Listening to Fittipaldo, you might think that they were running all over the place. However, they only recorded 25 or more rushing attempts in one of those four games. That’s largely because the Steelers spent so much of the time trailing, though.
In fact, the Steelers haven’t held a lead since Week 14 when they beat the Browns. They haven’t even been tied for a half an hour over their last 240 minutes of game time.
What fans would really like to know, of course, is what spurs these comments from Fittipaldo. What is he seeing or hearing from players that lead him to believe they are frustrated? What are the Steelers not doing that they want to see? How long has this been going on, and how big of an issue is it?
