Insinuations of a rift on Mike Tomlin’s squad between Steelers QB Russell Wilson and OC Arthur Smith have dominated attention this week. According to a report from Gerry Dulac, the offensive coordinator stripped Wilson of his ability to change plays. This allegedly occurred after the Bengals game in which Wilson had a career day, because the Steelers wanted to play to their scheme more. That game was an outlier, in more ways than one, from how they do things.
While the details of that report have already been disputed, and Dulac even seems to have ceded some ground on the matter, it has been the central focus for Steelers talk. How can they move ahead with Russell Wilson if he is incompatible with Arthur Smith? That is the thinking, but perhaps it’s missing the mark. And that mark is Mike Tomlin, according to Mark Kaboly.
“But to me, that has Mike Tomlin’s fingerprints all over it”, he said on 93.7 The Fan in responding to the report that Smith didn’t want Wilson deviating from his run-first gameplans. “That’s a gameplan thing at the beginning of the week, saying, ‘Arthur [Smith], it’s now your job to make sure this gameplan’s followed through’”.
But are we sure this isn’t nonsense? The Steelers attacked a banged-up Bengals secondary, throwing left and right to start the game. What Arthur Smith has always said is that he builds game plans around opponents. Sometimes that means running more, sometimes that means passing more. The circumstances of the Bengals game dictated Russell Wilson throwing more.
But why in the world would we call it Arthur Smith’s run-first gameplan when that’s what Mike Tomlin wants? Maybe they are in lockstep in their thinking, but coordinators serve at the behest of their head coach. And even if a head coach allows an offensive coordinator to execute his own philosophy, it falls on the head coach for making that decision. And let’s not forget Mike Tomlin hired Smith and pursued Wilson. He put this duo together.
“Every[one] I’ve talked to or known or dealt with Artie Smith or Russell Wilson, I don’t think either one of them—or at least Artie—is gonna go rogue and be upset about somebody being successful like that”, Kaboly said of the idea that Smith took away Wilson’s ability to audible as he did allegedly against the Bengals because it deviated from the gameplan. “I’m sure that’s coming down from above him of not following the process”. And the “above” would be Mike Tomlin.
Kaboly also conceded that there are practical reasons why the Steelers might not have built off of the gameplan as executed in that Bengals game. For one thing, they played tougher opponents with better, healthier secondaries, and did so on short weeks, often on the road. The weather increasingly grew colder, and, oh yeah, they didn’t have George Pickens. It’s almost as if there were valid reasons for Russell Wilson to throw less. Whether Arthur Smith or Mike Tomlin had to tell him that is kind of irrelevant. Maybe the conspiracy is that there really isn’t one, or at least not the one we’ve been led to believe.
