Category: Football

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.

Noooooo Canada

After weeks of waiting, it’s finally here… Matt Canada Firing Day!

For those who don’t follow football, Matt Canada was, until today, the offensive coordinator for the Pittsburgh Steelers. His passing offense — if you can even call it that — has been one of the least imaginative, most conservative in the league. There are almost zero deep passes, and even most of the short passes are to the sidelines; it’s almost like he’s allergic to the middle of the field. If that’s not easy enough to gameplan against, he also runs a bunch of slow-developing plays — bubble screens, jet sweeps — that get broken up behind the line of scrimmage for a loss. To be fair, the bread-and-butter running game has been fairly competent, but in today’s NFL, if ALL you do is run the football, you don’t go very far. We’re light-years removed from the “three yards and a cloud of dust” game of years past.

If you want to put some stats to it: the Steelers were 28th in both points and total yards during Canada’s tenure, and NEVER had a 400-yard offensive performance. In 2023 in particular, they’ve been outgained offensively in EVERY game they played. (Yet, they’re somehow still 6-4… which is a bit of a minor miracle, honestly.)

In short, Canada has widely been viewed amongst Steeler Nation as sucking at his job, pretty much since the day he was hired. But he had thus far managed to escape much in the way of accountability. In 2021, it was “Ben Roethlisberger no longer has the arm to throw deep, so they have to manage the playbook to what he’s capable of”. In 2022, it was “Kenny Pickett is a rookie, they’re easing him into things”. But now, in 2023, there’s no more built-in excuses and the offense looks as bad as ever… maybe even worse. And so today, the axe finally fell.

Now, I’m not going to pretend Matt Canada was the ONLY problem with this team. Kenny Pickett, the aforementioned quarterback, has been maddeningly inconsistent since being handed the starting job. Enough so that there are doubts creeping in over whether he can really be the franchise QB they hoped they were drafting. Maybe it’s not a fair comparison, but C.J. Stroud managed to hit the ground running this year, and it’s not clear the Texans’ personnel at the other 10 offensive positions are any better than the Steelers’. Sometimes QB’s have the “it” factor; sometimes they don’t.

Speaking of those other positions, they’re not immune from criticism either. The offensive line has had its ups and downs as well: they had a lot of turnover of personnel over the last few years and the charitable explanation is they’re still meshing; the less-charitable explanation is they signed the wrong guys. They’ve also struggled to find good wide receivers ever since Antonio Brown’s departure. Diontae Johnson puts up superficially good numbers and is certainly a success for a 3rd-rounder, but seems to disappear in big moments; George Pickens is a physical freak, but has a tendency to sulk and check out if his number’s not getting called. Calvin Austin has intriguing speed and elusiveness in the slot, but he also lost his entire rookie year to injury, so he’s still in learning mode. Allen Robinson… exists. So some of this is a personnel issue as much as a coaching one.

(The sole bright spot has been the emergence of running back Jaylen Warren. He’s a 5’8″ undrafted free agent, his physical tools don’t really leap out, but when he gets running north-south, he’s like a cannonball out there. And his stiff-arms are becoming the stuff of legend.)

But it starts with an offense gameplan that has been both predictable and unimaginative. Every. Single. Week. You can’t run an NFL offense when the opposing team knows your entire offense runs within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage. When a fairly team-first guy like Najee Harris admits to a locker room full of reporters that opposing teams pretty much know what’s coming… a new coordinator is probably the first and easiest thing you can do to try and fix it.

Among other things, they had to do it for the sake of the defense. The Steelers’ defense is actually pretty good this year, and T.J. Watt is a generational talent that they just signed to a huge contract. Since a 30-7 loss to the Texans back in Week 4, they haven’t allowed more than 19 points to an opponent. That should be enough to win football games in today’s NFL… if you can couple them to an offense that doesn’t three-and-out almost every possession. The Steel Curtain Steelers of the 70s would’ve struggled if their offense could never get them off the field for a breather.

As tenuous as their position in the standings is, they also had to do it for the standings. They’re still at 6-4, and there’s a few traditionally good teams having down years — Buffalo just fired THEIR offensive coordinator; Cincinnati just lost quarterback Joe Burrow for the year. The playoffs aren’t unrealistic if they can get the offense to play slightly better. Super Bowl? OK, probably not. But you gotta try, right? “Any given Sunday?”

Lastly, I’d argue they had to do it to force an honest reckoning regarding Pickett. Right now there’s this debate over how much of the offensive struggles were Canada’s offense, and how much were just that Pickett isn’t that good. In fact, I think a lot of the fanbase WANTS it to be Canada’s fault so they don’t have to reckon with the possibility we have to go back to the drawing board at quarterback. Admittedly, that’s probably a deeper dive than I wanted to do here, but it’s a question that needs to be resolved. And next year is going to be a deep draft for quarterbacks, so there’s a bit of a feeling that if Pickett ISN’T the guy, 2024 would be a good time to draft some competition at the position. If pushing Canada out the airlock is what creates the conditions for really scrutinizing Pickett’s strengths and weaknesses, that’s probably a net positive as well.

The only problem with all of this is that it’s pretty hard to make sweeping changes mid-season, especially when you’re mostly doing it with the same personnel that are already in place. Maybe they can go get a splashy outside hire in the offseason, but for now the Steelers already announced that running backs coach Eddie Faulkner will be the interim OC with QB coach Mike Sullivan as the play-caller. So maybe those two are sitting on a treasure-trove of plays they’re just dying to call (in my head-canon, I’ve already decided it’s a vintage Trapper Keeper labeled PLAYS MATT CANADA WOULDN’T LET ME RUN), but chances are it will look more like incremental tweaks to what already exists.

But all of that is for down the road. Today, the fans got what they wanted. Even if there’s a little undercurrent of “be careful what you wish for, you just might get it”.

Prime And Punishment

It’s been a busy week in the world of Coach Prime, though if we’re being honest, a) when has it not? and b) isn’t that somewhat by design anyway?

This week’s excitement came in the aftermath of Colorado’s 28-16 loss to UCLA, a game where QB Shedeur Sanders (yes, his son, if you haven’t been following this closely) was sacked 7 times and hit enough other times he had to get an injection of painkillers at halftime. Asked about the state of the offensive line in the post-game press conference, and what he would do to address it, Sanders pere‘s typically colorful response was:

“The big picture, you go get new linemen. That’s the picture, and I’m gonna paint it perfectly.“

This has set off the latest round of “Coach Prime Is Telling It Like It Is And Holding People Accountable” vs. “Coach Prime Is A Disgrace To College Football” on social media. Everyone’s staking out their positions, but there’s an awful lot of posturing and fairly little clarity.

So let’s start with the facts.

First, the line play was bad. “Defense will stipulate”, as the cop shows say. In fact, it’s been bad for most of the season. One of my first-draft points was “how can he run down his line publicly without looking at the game tape first?” but this isn’t the first time this has been an issue, only the most dramatic example. So we’ll let that one slide on by.

There has been some confusion on how many of the players were new transfers vs. how many were holdovers from the previous 1-11 2022 team. I’ve seen detractors dunking on Sanders’ inability to recruit linemen AND supporters claiming that the entire line were holdovers from the previous regime, and the truth is in the middle. Just for factual clarity, it appears there are two returning starters — center Van Wells and left tackle Gerad Christian-Lichtenhan — and the other three starters are part of Deion’s “luggage”. (As are almost all of the reserves.)

So with the facts somewhat established, let’s wander into the forbidden forest of hot takes and opinions. As with a lot of what Sanders has done in his Colorado tenure, I think it’s not so much the message being conveyed as much as it is how he chose to convey it.

First, it’s simply a question of internal vs. external… keep that shit in-house. If you want to tell your players they should be looking for new gigs next year, save it for practice when the cameras are gone. I guarantee Sanders won’t be the first or last coach to have threatened a kid’s spot on the team; but he’s the first I can remember to threaten about 10 of them to a room full of reporters. When you’re sitting in front of a room full of hot mics, a leader protects his people. YES, you can say the line didn’t play well — no sense denying an apparent truth — but you don’t offer up the kids on the o-line as red meat to protect your bruised ego. Feed ’em some platitudes about looking at the film and seeing where we can improve, and get onto the next question.

And OK, I feel like the perception of nepotism has to chafe a little, when mere sentences before, he praised his son Shedeur as “the best quarterback in the country”. And when there was no talk of getting new defensive backs in regard to his other son Shilo getting ejected for targeting after putting his helmet into the chin of a UCLA receiver. At some point it’s gotta get old being told you’re one of 73 Ringos backing up John and Paul.

(OK… maybe Shedeur and Travis Hunter are Lennon-McCartney and Shilo is George Harrison in this analogy. We’ll keep workshopping it.)

But there’s a bigger and arguably more more worrisome issue underlying his comments. It feels like on some level Sanders is abdicating the responsibility to actually COACH the players under his charge. The man has created this image of “Coach Prime”, but apparently, if you don’t protect his kid and make him look good, he’ll just get rid of you and go out and get a new batch of mercenaries to take your place. Which… lest we forget… was the same message he delivered to the players already in the program when he took over, so it’s not like this is a departure for him. Meanwhile, the line’s been bad for weeks; what has Coach Prime done about it other than threaten to kick them out of the program? Maybe he should rebrand as “GM Prime”: he recruits and assembles the roster, and then someone else does the actual work of making his players better.

And this gets into the larger question that goes well beyond Deion Sanders… it’s NIL, it’s the portal, it’s conference realignment…. Where is the ever-shifting balance between “this has become an ‘amateur’ league in name only, and results are all that matter” and “this is still ultimately a developmental league where helping the players improve their skills is still part of what’s being offered”. If this is just NFL Lite, then OK, bring in a new class of free agents and try again, but at that point let’s stop pretending that the NCAA offers anything a professional minor league couldn’t offer equally well if funded adequately. If we’re going to keep propping up the cause of student athletics as the NCAA’s raison d’etre, than I think coaches should have an obligation to stick with the guys they bring in and try to make them better, rather than better-deal them the second adversity — or the UCLA front seven — hits.