Month: January 2026

Requiem For The Standard

I look at Mike Tomlin’s departure from the Pittsburgh Steelers after 19 years the same way I look at divorce. Not every story has a villain; not every divorce ends in cheating, abuse, or other dramatic acrimony. Sometimes people just grow apart; so too with football coaches, teams, and their fan bases.

I think in today’s “hot take” culture, it’s easy to fish for the extreme take: “Tomlin sucks; good riddance” vs. the scolding “be careful what you wish for, Steeler fans, you just got it”. But I think with the truth is somewhere in the middle — Tomlin was a decent coach, but I think it’s a fair criticism that complacency just set in, and at SOME point, something was going to have to change. Whether this off-season is the right or the wrong time to pull the pin on that grenade… I guess we’re going to find out.

The good is right up there in the record books: zero losing seasons in a 19-year career. Some people kinda brush that off, but yes, that is an achievement. 31 out of 32 teams end every season disappointed, but the Steelers never felt IRRELEVANT on his watch — some organizations can’t even say that. If Tomlin ought to be dinged for the years he underachieved with a 12 or 13-win team, he probably ought to earn some praise for the years the Steelers looked like a 5 or 6 win team on paper and he somehow navigated them to respectability. And dudes LOVED to play for him. I don’t think that makes a difference for STAR players, who just want to get paid as much as possible, but it when it came to signing veteran depth guys, it’s a competitive advantage I think we may come to miss. I’m not sure Pittsburgh is as much of a “destination” without Tomlin at the helm. (Especially not if you read those NFL player surveys that rank the Steelers toward the bottom of the league in terms of facilities and organizational culture.)

But the warts are also equally evident. The most obvious is the recent playoff record — it’s not just that we went 0-7 in recent playoff memory, but few of those games even felt competitive. Weird choices in game management — playcalling, clock management, and such — brushed off with some Tomlinism that didn’t really explain the thought process that went into it. The Steelers managed to play down to the level of at least one inferior opponent per season; so much so that the fanbase collectively seemed to fear the trap game against some 3-9 team more than playing the Ravens. Every opposing tight end in the league probably circled us on the calendar because we seemed to be incapable of covering one properly. (Though… I suppose that complaint even goes back to Cowher. ALFRED F’ING PUPUNU.)

And for a guy who brought the world “we do not live in our fears”, the Steelers sure feel like a team that’s been playing fearfully in recent years: playing NOT to lose, rather than to win. The pathological aversion to throwing to the middle of the field (BUBBLE SCREENS… BUBBLE SCREENS FOR EVERYONE!). Going too conservative, too early when we had a lead, letting teams claw their way back in it. The “keep the play in front of you, give up small chunks, and hope you can get a splash play or the offense makes a mistake before they string 12 plays together” defense. With the Cowher Steelers and even the EARLY Tomlin years, we didn’t play that way. We played to win; sometimes we even stepped on a team’s neck and ran it up on them. If this move is an acknowledgement that we need to get back to that mentality… I’m here for it.

Of course the elephant in the room is the ONE thing that can’t be solved by letting your coach walk: this is a quarterback-driven league, and we haven’t had a quarterback for a good chunk of that 0-7 run. The thing we don’t really know (because there’s not any Hard Knocks footage to dissect) is how to apportion the blame: how much is Tomlin’s fault for his choices of coordinators and coaching, and how much of that is the front office burying their head in the sand during Ben’s decline phase and not creating a more graceful transition?

(Hey, remember when Lamar Jackson was just sitting there and we took Terrell Edmunds instead? Pepperidge Farms remembers.)

So what comes next?

For the Steelers, if they stick with the recipe, it’s going to be a young defensive coordinator who’s never been a head coach before. I would argue that the game has changed and we need an offensive mind, but given that they’re 3-for-3 on coaching hires during my lifetime, I’m willing to trust the process. Though, I kinda like Brian Flores, so if they’re willing to be a little flexible on the “never coached before” check-box, I don’t think that’s a bad outcome.

I have heard a few people say “well, who would any coach want the Steelers’ job?” You mean the one job that if you get it right, you might get two decades of job security because it’s a old-school family-run organization that thinks coaching churn is embarrassing in some way? WHO INDEED? But I’d also say that the Steelers have some pieces in place to be a decent team… it’s just that they’re missing the ONE piece that’s most important. Yeah, the Ravens probably have an edge because Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry are pretty plug-and-play, and the Giants might be intriguing if you’re a coach who believes in Jaxson Dart… but I don’t think the Steelers represent some black hole like the Browns or Titans still largely are.

As for Tomlin? Does he want to do TV? Were they actually going to fire him, and “walking away” was a negotiated exit? Does he secretly want to coach again, but just wanted out of Pittsburgh? Is he going to lean into his resemblance to Omar Epps and do a reality show where they Freaky Friday each other’s lives, with Epps coaching a football team and Tomlin going to acting auditions?

It’s not that I don’t care; it’s more that Bill Cowher’s departure cured me of my interest in speculating too aggressively about guys’ reasons for stepping away. If you remember Cowher leaving, everyone was freaking out because How Could He Walk Away At The Height Of A Dynasty?(tm) And then we learned several years later it was probably to spend time with his wife, who it turned out was battling cancer, but he just kept that part of his life private. So if Tomlin says he wants to step away… HOWEVER that might have come about behind the scenes or what his future plans are… I guess that’s what the man’s doing. As a wise man once said, “we want volunteers, not hostages”, and that includes the head coach.

So… thanks for 19 great years, Coach T. It’s been a fun ride, I hope you have a good… break, retirement, whatever this ends up being… and we’ll see you if and when you wish to be seen.

2026: The Year Of Intention

I continue to have a weird relationship with New Year’s, and with the concept of resolutions.

On one hand, I carry a certain amount of cynicism about the whole idea of making life changes because an arbitrarily-constructed calendar cycled around to the beginning of another tour around the sun. (Shouldn’t the new year start on the shortest day or something?) There’s also sense — maybe it’s a little judgmental — grounded in the idea that if something is worth doing, well, you’ve got 364 other days to do it… nobody’s forcing you to wait until January 1st to start.

On the other hand, just as a logistical thing, I tend to have a good amount of downtime around the new year. I work in the world of EDU, so I’m mercifully off work between Christmas and New Year’s. My family is a) small and b) mostly local, so I haven’t traditionally had big plans to travel or anything like that. So even if I tend to be cynical about the concept of resolutions, the big Pressing Of Pause at the new year does leave time for some introspection that often lands in a similar place.

And this year I stumbled upon a friend’s Facebook post that helped me think of things a little differently: rather than look at resolutions as a specific set of promises that I may or may not bother keeping, think of it more as setting an overall aspirational goal or theme for the year. That way, you’re not necessarily locking yourself into one narrowly-defined thing you’re going to feel bad if you don’t get around to doing.

So I started rolling that around my brain and the idea came to me — as the best ones do — while I was procrastinating. Specifically, in this case, about going to the gym. My normal routine is Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday, but I had halfway convinced myself that I didn’t need to go “because it’s a holiday”. And then I realized that’s not really a reason. Not a real one, anyway. So if I didn’t want to go to the gym, I needed to be honest with myself about the real reason was and decide if THAT was a valid reason to not go.

The immediate problem of the gym was soon resolved: the real reason I didn’t want to go is that I was comfortable playing with the dog, and… I decided she’ll be fine for an hour, so I made it to the gym. But it also provided me with the answer to my friend’s post and the larger guiding theme for the year…

Intention.

I am guilty in life of sometimes letting the currents carry me too much. Indecision. Procrastination. Doing what comes easiest. Sometimes just screwing around until options drift out of reach and I’m kinda stuck with what’s left because I didn’t REALLY choose to act. In doing so, I’ve been traditionally bad about recognizing that that indecision is, in itself, a choice and an action.

Yoda’s “do or do not, there is no try”? Historically, I’m really bad at that.

This applies to big AND little things. I can see it in claiming I want to travel more while not really setting aside the money to do it or planning an itinerary until it was too late. But I can also see it in coming home, turning on YouTube videos while I’m eating dinner, getting sucked in, and then deciding to just KEEP watching YouTube videos because “there isn’t enough time before bed to do much else”.

So I think the challenge this year will be one of approaching things with more intention. Certainly the part of the iceberg that sits above the water is converting inaction into action with more regularity. But the other part… perhaps the more meaningful part… will be to interrogate my inaction more than I have in the past… understand it… learn from it. Because I’m STILL not going to be able to do every single thing that pops into my head; but if I DON’T end up doing something I convinced myself I wanted to do, it’s going to be important to dig past the easy excuse of “Things Just Didn’t Work Out”(tm) and figure out why I REALLY didn’t move forward, even if it means confronting something awkward or uncomfortable.

Look at travel, which I mentioned above. I DO want to travel more. It kills me that I did the traveling consultant thing for over a decade (between two stints) and never REALLY saw most of the cities I went to. And in fact, in July, I went down to Florida for a week and visited my brother and another lifelong friend who lives down that way, and it was a blast. But then I also had plans to go see my son toward Thanksgiving, and that just kinda died on the vine. At the time I never really asked myself how that happened, but I probably should have. So why didn’t I follow through on that? Was I worried about money? Was it concern my job might somehow see me differently if I missed too much work? Was it worry that a Trump-run FAA might turn my trip into Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Regional Jets?

(That last one was definitely a factor when the air traffic controllers weren’t getting paid.)

And to bring it all full circle, that’s also why I’m kicking the dust off my blog once more.

For a long time, I managed to convince myself that answering questions on Quora was scratching the writing itch I’ve had ever since the days of the college paper. And in superficial ways, I suppose it was. But it’s missing the one essential piece of the equation — it’s really only existing in other people’s curiosity rather than indulging my own. And if this is going to be a year of intention, maybe I need to actually either Write-With-A-Capital-W or dig into why I’m REALLY not doing it.

(Though, OK, part of it is also that Quora has gone the way of lots of social media sites and is increasingly a tire fire of bot-driven conflict. But that’s a whole other conversation.)

Maybe it’s the time commitment… though if I took JUST the time and word-count that I put into Quora, that would probably be a shit-ton of content. Maybe I’ve grown too comfortable with the idea of having a pre-existing audience over there and am scared of really starting from scratch. And OK… there’s also this little fear I have of making something I enjoy too structured and turning it into a chore I hate doing. There’s a difference between doing something because you want to do it and doing something because it’s on your schedule to do it.

You know. Like a New Year’s Resolution.