Ya know, I am starting to think Mike Tomlin isn’t very good at his job. That is, if the standard isn’t supposed to be stench. If the standard is stench, then Tomlin is a hall of fame coach.

Yes, I know it is only week two.

Yes, I know most of these guys didn’t play many preseason snaps.

Yes, I know there are a lot of new people on the team.

Yes, I know there were a lot of injuries.

I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. And I don’t care.

The Steelers have not had a great offensive line since Le’Veon Bell was the running back. The current group has two first round picks, a second round pick, and a guy who has played almost every snap for the past seven seasons and played in two Super Bowls. Either the organization can’t draft or —more likely— they can’t coach the players to success. Need an example of how poorly coached they are? Here you go courtesy of a former offensive lineman.

 

That is the theme of Mike Tomlin teams. Tomlin has no coaching tree. Literally. He has a litany of —to use Tomlin terms— below the line assistant coaches.

Nobody would hire Teryl Austin as their defensive coordinator. Mike Tomlin did, and he stands by him year after year. What makes this part worse is everyone knows Tomlin has a heavy say in the defense.

 Arthur Smith shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a play call sheet. He was a total failure as head coach in Atlanta in large part because his offense was terrible. So, of course, Tomlin hires the guy. Smith is the latest in a long line of awful offensive coordinators.

Sunday after the game, Aaron Rodgers was asked why they didn’t find success with crossing patterns like week one. His response was, “I don’t think we called any.” Exactly. The offense is simplistic, bland, predictable, and easily defended.

Dick Lebeau isn’t walking through that door. Neither is Ken Whisenhunt. Heck, I would love to have Todd Haley and Keith Butler back. Tomlin had a chance to keep Brian Flores as his defensive coordinator. That would have required Tomlin to not meddle.

Another staple of Mike Tomlin teams is they always appear to be unprepared, regardless of what Tomlin says. The Steelers put a rookie back to return kicks. A guy, for the record, not known for his blazing speed and elusiveness. Does it look like rookie Kaleb Johnson was prepared and was aware of the new kickoff rule?

 


Embarrassing, in a word. The special teams, minus the kickers, have been poor.

The defense is poor, as well. Not to worry, though, because the Steelers spent a small fortune to have an elite defense.

In week one the defense allowed 32 points and 394 total yards to the well below average New York Jets. In week two the Steelers gave up 31 points and 395 total yards. Hey, at least they are consistent. Consistently bad. Only two games? Nope. It seems to be the new standard.

 

Yikes. If I didn’t know better, I would think this defense is a ripoff.

The team caved this summer, not once but twice.

TJ Watt got the contract extension he was pushing for that makes him the highest paid non quarterback. TJ Watt has zero sacks in his last six games. He has become a very expensive non factor on the defense.

The team also caved when dealing with crybaby Cam Heyward, who is 36 years old. Heyward plays hard, but instead of giving him more money, the Steelers should have let him go. Heyward still plays hard, but he won’t give the team the value of his contract. They paid him to keep him happy, as if the first 100+ million dollars the team paid him wasn’t smile inducing enough.

Mike Tomlin loves veterans, so they spent money to sign and/or trade for Darius Slay(34) and Jalen Ramsey(31) to sure up the secondary. To acquire Ramsey the team traded away former Pro Bowl safety Minkah Fitzpatrick. Did Fitzpatrick suddenly lose interest or forget how to play football? Or does the scheme stink? Two games piggybacked on to last year’s playoff debacle versus Baltimore has this high priced “elite” defense getting gashed with the run. I don’t remember Dick Lebeau’s high priced defense getting gashed.

Players love playing for Mike Tomlin. They constantly defend the approach and the schemes. Aaron Rodgers did it Sunday with Arthur Smith. TJ Watt did it with Teryl Austin. I would think the players would be more interested in winning. Winning a Super Bowl is complete fantasy at this point, but don’t count Tomlin out of finding a way to 9 wins. It is like a really bad Houdini act.

As the years go by, Tomlin coaches more and more scared. He has plenty of fears these days. He realizes the weakness at quarterback since Ben retired.  At 41, Rodgers can’t move much but should offer Tomlin some peace of mind to let it loose a little bit. 

Despite having a Hall of Fame quarterback —albeit at age 41– the Steelers still run an elementary offense often consisting of idiotic play calls. They have one legitimate wide receiver because they are busy spending all their money on the defense.

Despite spending more on defense than any other team by a large margin, the Steelers are giving up scads of points and yardage. The star players making the most money often disappear for games at a time. The first two games this year should give fans little hope that this will change.

Special teams used to be a strength, but even the great Chris Boswell can’t mask the inept coverage units this year. The Steelers may be the only team that would be better off kicking into the end zone and allowing their opponent to start at the 35 yard line.

It may only be the second game of the season, but it is the eighth straight year of watching the same crap. The only person that doesn’t seem to mind is the owner. Art Rooney seems perfectly content being mediocre. Somewhere up there his dad, Dan, is shaking his head with disapproval. See, Mike Tomlin talks about the standard, but Dan Rooney set the standard. Slightly above .500 and getting embarrassed in the playoffs isn’t the standard Dan set.

Two games in to the 2025 season, and the Steelers look poorly coached and underprepared.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Tweet of the Week

I have been saying Joe Burrow would get killed this year. Now that Burrow will, indeed, miss much of the season others are on board with my thinking. This guy was just more eloquent than me.

 


The Weekly Shiny Penny

Brewers manager Pat Murphy with the perfect way to celebrate the Brewers making the playoffs and remembering the legend Bob Euker. 


A Penny For My Final Thought…

There is plenty to be discouraged about in college football. NIL, the portal, poor scheduling, and Big Noon Kickoff come to mind. When the games kick off, however, all of that goes out the window. It was a wild and wacky —shoutout to Marv Albert— week three.

Hurricane season has been thankfully quiet of late, so the firing season decided to step in and pick up the slack. September firings are rare, but we got the double play on Sunday.

First to go was UCLA’s Deshaun Foster. It is dereliction of duty for AD Martin Jarmond to think Foster was anywhere near ready to be a head coach. The disastrous experiment came to a head last Friday night.


That is the couple thousand fans that wandered into the Rose Bowl to watch the Bruins get absolutely smoked by Mountain West also ran New Mexico. It got worse on social media after the game.

 

Wow. Foster seemed like a good guy and definitely loved his alma mater. He just wasn’t close to ready to be a head coach.

The other coach to bite the dust early was Virginia Tech’s Brent Pry. Pry’s tenure at Virginia Tech began with a two point loss to Old Dominion and ended with an embarrassing blowout loss to Old Dominion. Pry may be another guy that wasn’t ready to run an entire program. Although, Virginia Tech is a tough gig. It is in the middle of nowhere and doesn’t have to big time money to compete in this era. It turns out Frank Beamer was a miracle worker.

Now both schools will have to deal with the fact players have a 30 day window to enter the portal. All will qualify for a redshirt year. Blacksburg and Westwood could get real ugly and real lonely in stadium.

Week three saw one streak end and another that may never end.

Georgia Tech —my sleeper in the ACC that I still picked against in this game— blasted a 55 yard field goal to win it at the buzzer after another superhuman effort from quarterback Hayes King.

 

Dabo continues his streak of leading the most overrated team in the country. You do you, Dabo.

Meanwhile, Tennessee botched the final 40 seconds of regulation but still had a 43 yard field goal to finally beat Georgia. Nah. Missed it by thaaaaaaaaaaaaat much. 

 

After that shank, Georgia went on to win in overtime. It is fair to suggest Tennessee may never beat Georgia again. Oh, and by the way, neither of these vaunted SEC teams looked scary.

All world quarterback Arch Manning went 11/25 and was booed by his own fans. Maybe that is why he gets police escorts.

The Backyard Brawl was going heavily in Pitt’s favor in the fourth quarter. Pat Narduzzi was having none of that nonsense.

 

We had a big man touchdown, a very, very big man touchdown. USC’s Jamal Jarrett found the ball landing in his hands and kicked his 365 pounds in to high gear. He didn’t stop rumbling until he reached the end zone.

 

Brian Kelly lectured reporters on asking “negative” questions after a win. Maybe he was in a bad mood from this happening earlier in the night.

 

That’s a shame.

The night ended with the conference dodging Fighting Irish trying to hold on to a slim lead to gain an important victory. Starting 0-2 could be a bridge too far.

 

That’s a shame.

Week three showed us a variety of reasons why we love college football, and it wasn’t even a great week of games. There sure are plenty of problems with college football, but it still succeeds in entertaining us far more than it fails.

Just my two cents…