Tomlin Blows It Again

The black and gold fell to 6-5 on Sunday evening and the blame has to fall squarely on the shoulders of their inept head coach, Mike Tomlin.  Sure, the defense was a major problem in the loss, getting torched once again through the air and proving anyone who believes they have the ability to stop opposing offenses completely wrong. But I’ve preached about their inabilities for weeks now.

This time, the bulls eye is squarely on Tomlin. After being the league for nine seasons now, one would think the head coach would have improved his decision making, yet he continues to blow decision after decision and now he’s truly costing the team games. 

First off, with the team up 3-0 and actually in control of the game early in the 2^nd quarter, they were on the cusp of kicking a very makeable field goal and taking a 6-0 lead. Instead, Tomlin allows for a fake field goal in which the whole stadium saw it coming. With Landry Jones moving into the game as the holder, a position he never plays, the Steelers elected to throw a pass to offensive lineman Alejandro Villanueva, which was promptly picked off and brought back down the field deep into Steeler territory. A half dozen plays later, Seattle was up 7-3. This allowed the crowd to go from lazy to raucous. Kicking was the right decision, it wasn’t made.  At the very least, if the team was going to go for it on 4^th and 2, just line up and go for it instead of calling one of the dumbest plays in the history of the sport. Yeah, it was that stupid. Who calls a fake field goal which involves a pass to a lineman? Tomlin does.

Secondly, Tomlin actually succeeded when making a boneheaded decision. When the black and gold scored a touchdown to go up 16-14 in the 2^nd, he decided to go for 2, rather than kick and take the field goal lead. The decision paid off in the short term as they converted but it was the wrong call, again.

Most egregiously, with the team down 32-27 with slightly under 3 minutes to go in the game, having the ball on the Seattle four, with 4^th and goal to go, Tomlin decided to kick the field goal to go down by 2 instead of going for the touchdown.  He trusted his defense to get the ball back and then hoped to kick another field goal afterwards to win the game. Yeah, the same defense who couldn’t stop your grandmother from throwing the ball on them.  Well, the defense didn’t get the ball back; Seattle scored a quick touchdown and put the game out of reach.  Why, oh why, would he not go for the TD there? If he trusted the defense that much to get the ball back after the field goal, essentially knowing Seattle was going to start on their own 20 after the kickoff, if not a better spot on the field, then why wouldn’t the same logic prevail when going for the 4^th and goal?  If the team went for it and didn’t get it, wouldn’t Tomlin trust that same defense to get the ball back with Seattle pinned inside their own five yard line?!  His decisions and rationale are poor and certainly lack consistency. If he trusts the team to go for two so often, why not trust them in that spot. The offense is elite, the defense is inept, yet Tomlin didn’t trust the offense and trusted the defense!  It’s pure lunacy and lacks any kind of intelligence at all. It’s in fact quite infuriating.

Tomlin is not a good coach, in fact, he never has been. His teams have won in spite of him. He can’t manage the clock and he certainly can’t make a decision that will impact the team positively. He needs a time/decision making assistant because he flat out lacks the football intelligence to do it on his own.

At 6-5, the Steelers now find themselves in 8^th place in the AFC and needing to have other teams in front of them lose while simultaneously winning, in order to slip in as a wild card. With coach Tomlin leading the way, it’s hard to think he won’t blow another one of these final five games and keep his team out of the playoffs. He preaches over and over that ‘we won’t live in our fears’. Well Coach, you might not, but the rest of us will, we’ll live in constant fear of you botching several more games down the stretch.