This season, the Pittsburgh Steelers collapsed to end the year. Although they were on top of the AFC North, they lost their last four regular-season games, pushing them into second place. One of the main issues down the stretch was their defense seemingly not being on the same page. Multiple players expressed their frustration, and it seemed like that could have created a divide among them. However, Mike Tomlin doesn’t believe that’s true.
“I’ve never been around a prideful unit that doesn’t bicker when things aren’t going well,” Tomlin said Tuesday via the team’s YouTube channel. “Bickering is not always a negative thing. Bickering is a cleansing. Bickering is a gaining of understanding. But sometimes, particularly in today’s sport culture, it’s presented as a negative thing.
“It’s not. These guys play hard, they live hard, they love hard, they talk hard, they communicate hard. That’s the world we live in. So, what is viewed from the outside as potentially a negative isn’t always a negative from those that are involved. It’s very necessary in an effort to gain clarity or cleansing or an understanding sometimes.”
That echoes some of what Tomlin said when he touched on this subject earlier this year. From the outside, it did seem like a problem. After losing games, players were visibly frustrated about the way they were playing. No one seemed to be pointing fingers, but it felt like the defense was disjointed.
Tomlin isn’t wrong that bickering isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It shows that players care about how poorly they are playing.
For most of the year, the Steelers were one of the NFL’s best defenses. While the offense wasn’t ever really consistent, the Steelers knew they could count on their defense. Down the stretch, that was not the case. That unit became a liability at times. That doesn’t just include miscommunication either. Missed tackles and a lack of physicality plagued them too.
Based on the way the Steelers ended their season, it doesn’t seem like that bickering helped them clear up their defensive issues. The Steelers did seem to communicate better defensively in the playoffs, but the other issues were still present. The Baltimore Ravens rushed for basically 300 yards against them. That doesn’t happen on accident.
With their season over, we’ll have to wait until next year to see if the Steelers’ defense can put together a more complete season. That wasn’t the only reason they failed to win a playoff game, but it played a large part. Their defense is supposed to be their backbone. That unit can’t fall to pieces when the team needs it most.
