On NFL Quick Hits: Mike Tomlin and Being Too Good
The Steelers, to the surprise of very few, lost yesterday 28–14 to the Ravens in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. There’s a lot of takeaways here but the main one for me is this: Mike Tomlin is too good of a coach to rebuild around.
Being Great At Your Job Isn’t Always Beneficial In The NFL
I’ve heard Steelers fans openly angry about the success of Tomlin. Some fanbases looking from the outside can’t understand it because uniformly and universally, it’s known that Mike Tomlin is a great coach. He has ways of keeping guys in check and motivated, year after year, that the vast majority of coaches and staffs can’t come close to. His teams are always prepared and tend to play above their means or expected averages…which is counterintuitive if you want to rebuild.
Let’s be clear: there is no one “right” way to build a team but there are some clear paths. One is to draft a QB (although it has to absolutely be the right QB) and utilize his price-locked contract to invest in the rest of the team. You pay the great players already on your team and trade or sign the other pieces. Nearly every team that’s had success over the past decade has utilized this strategy. The alternative is, if you already have a great QB, you have to draft perfectly or hope he is willing to push some money into the future. Historically quarterbacks wanted that massive pay day (which they have earned) but that can also hamstring the building process.
There are a few players like Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes that either pushed money or intentionally took more cap friendly contracts but that’s the exception, not the rules (nor should it be). It’s on the team to make that cap work, no matter what contracts are on the books.
Back to the Steelers, they’re a team that tends to have a few big contracts but believes heavily in their player development…for good reason. Generally speaking their scouting department does a great job finding late round talent and turning them into highly productive stars. They also do not historically sign big money free agency contracts for players past a certain age. Who knows how they come to their actual decision making processes but much like the Green Bay Packers, is just how they have done business.
The Problem With Being Good
In the NFL there are essentially four tiers of teams:
- Poorly managed and always rebuilding (think the Jets or Bears right now. Teams are not necessarily relegated to this forever but it’s typically more indicative of bad ownership with no patience OR understanding of what the problems even are when they are in their hiring process. I may write more about this soon.)
- Bad teams looking to rebuild: these teams are bad for a season or two but they’re clearly on the right track. They may intentionally do some tanking, however they at least feel like they’re on the right track. Something like the 2022 Lions would be a great example. It could take a few seasons but it’s clear there is a plan in place.
- Average teams: this can be the worst or best position to be in, relative to the team. Sometimes these teams overachieve or are great teams that under achieve. In the NFL being average can often be a death sentence. You aren’t good enough to get a viable draft pick but are also not quite good enough. Great coaching and development can often put teams in this position. They tend not to make big free agent splashes but also often have some glaring holes…usually at Quarterback but it could be across the roster. These teams typically make the playoffs but don’t realistically have the talent to go against the next tier without every break going their way.
- Great Teams: these are teams that are built to truly content for a Super Bowl. Historically they always have a great QB or an incredibly stacked roster. I don’t believe in the concept of ‘windows’ because the NFL has too much variability year to year (or even game to game) but there are only a few of these teams each year. The Chiefs and Ravens would be obviously examples the past 5 years. This is almost always as much about having a QB that can take over games as anything else.
Obviously this isn’t an exact science. Some teams are bad but get the right breaks as the season goes on, whether because of pure luck or injury (often teams that win a lot of one score games, something that is legitimately a toss up and is as much about the opponent and coaching as anything else). Other’s are rebuilding and bad (even intentionally) but over achieve, giving false hope for their future. We often see bad teams win their last 2–5 games of the season and then go all in. Instead of understanding the flukiness, teams think they’re ready to take a leap and they aren’t. This happens to the Bears every few years.
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The Steelers find themselves in tier 3, on the high end of the average teams every season. They almost always have a sound defense with enough pieces to play well. They’re also great at drafting certain offensive positions like wide receiver and running back. Except, they have been in a specific type of hell over the past ten years: they can’t find a Quarterback post Ben Roethlisberger. He played his last season in 2021 and the team has made attempts at finding a long term solution at QB, but each step failed, primarily because of their own stubbornness.
In 2022 they drafted Kenny Pickett, a player that seemed like a career back up, primarily because he was a hometown guy and they wanted the easy pick. They weren’t really looking for a player that was going to raise their offensive cap but one that would do enough not to lose games. Pickett and Mitch Trubisky “battled” to start that season in what might be the most below average quarterback controversy that’s ever occured in modern NFL history. Additionally, as a result of some kind of misplaced loyalty, they stuck with offensive coordinator Matt Canada long after it became clear he was not creative enough or skilled enough put the team ahead, especially not with those quarterbacks.
The Steelers are built like a team from the 1970’s: stars on defense that make plays and on offense controlling the the line of scrimmage and rushing. That outright does not work in the modern NFL. You can’t play a safe offense built around a ‘game manager’ type QB, because, at some point in the modern NFL against the great teams, you HAVE to score. Look at all of the great teams over the past decade. The Chiefs have had an underrated defense over the past six years but more importantly, they can almost always score a touchdown whenever they need to. You’re unlikely to win many games against elite teams kicking field goals and the Steelers have become a field goal team. At this point, you’d love to have an elite defense but the problem is, even if your defense is elite, there comes a point where the offense has to drive down the field and score. The Steelers can’t do that consistently and haven’t for years.
Quarterbacks Don’t Grow on Trees…
Elite quarterbacks don’t grow on trees, let alone generational talent. It’s highly unlikely you will draft the next Patrick Mahomes, no matter their draft stock. Caleb Williams had some great plays this past season but was also sacked a tremendous amount. There were, on paper, plenty of offensive weapons on the Bears. The problem is, that if the team isn’t being coached well during the week and the coordinator has no concept of how to scheme players open, talent will not win out on a weekly basis. Physical talent at the NFL level is relatively equal. Everyone is there for a reason. You can’t just hope guys get open.
That’s how much of the Steelers offense has ran. This season under Arthur Smith was occasionally better, although at this point, it seems that without having Derrick Henry his offense is not particularly good. That’s not unusual per say. It’s great to want to run the ball but they didn’t even do that particularly well most of the season. They also tried to buy low on talent in Justin Fields and Russell Wilson.
In Fields you have a player that was not developed, at all, in Chicago. I have long believed Fields could be a viable NFL quarterback but the reality is, without the right coaching and system, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. He doesn’t seem like a player that is going to elevate your team but rather a player you will have to elevate. You can win some regular season games like that but as soon as it gets tight while the season goes along (or in the playoffs), you would have to play a perfect game to win consistently.
Wilson is cooked. Mid-season, when teams weren’t fully prepared for Wilson to start, especially when comparing the offense under Fields, he had a few good games. Last summer, Steelers fan especially, kept pointing at Wilson’s numbers in Denver in 2023 trying to convince themselves that he was significantly better than he was. With Wilson, the numbers aren’t the story. He doesn’t have a lot of turnovers and he’ll sometimes get 2 touchdowns a game and look super efficient. That’s a by product of him checking down constantly. If you need 4 yards, he’ll throw it 3 yards. If you need 10 yards, he’ll throw it 3 yards. A few times a game he’ll go for a deep bomb but if he’s getting hit enough, that will evaporate too. The Steelers didn’t lose their last 4 games of the regular season by accident.
This entire mindset is what has doomed the team the past few years. If you could just get a ‘game manager’ type and run the ball, the defense will carry you to wins. Again, it can work, especially during the regular season. Take a look at their records. In the playoffs though, there comes a point where everything tightens and if you have any holes, they will be exploited. There comes a point where you have to drive down the field to win the game and the Steelers can’t do that.
Mike Tomlin Is The Solution and The Problem
Back to Tomlin. I want to be clear here: he is a great coach who does a great job of developing players. The problem is, he’s too good at that. Because of how the team finishes every year, they’re generally picking mid-to-late in the first round. As a team, they also do not tend to trade up often, valuing their later picks. To get over the hump you need to draft, trade or sign someone capable of winning those games when it’s on the offense. You also need to hire a coordinator and staff that develops that mindset. Tomlin is 0–2 on both of those things. Under Roethlisberger they did have some strong offensive coaches like Bruce Arians, but since no one is clamoring to hire Steelers offensive coordinators for a reason.
There is a path forward, although it’s impossible to say organizationally whether or not the Steelers are capable of doing it (or if this is even the draft for it). Look at the Chiefs: they were a regular play off team that needed to make the leap. They traded up to get Patrick Mahomes. Again, you aren’t going to get one of those players every year. There have been multiple solid quarterbacks though, especially in last year’s draft, where you could have found someone in that middle range and trade up. The Steelers instead hung around at 20 and took an offensive lineman. You could certainly make the argument that they didn’t feel strongly about any of the 6 first round QB’s to move up to take one…but that must have been true for the last handful of years as well. Even when you had the clear swansong of Roethlisberger, the team could have made a move at any point since probably 2018/19. Instead they sat on their hands, taking Kenny Pickett at that same 20th (even though realistically it sounded like most teams didn’t think he was a first round pick) and before that Mason Rudolph in round 3. If they hadn’t had Roethlisberger as long as they had for some reason, it feels like they just aren’t capable of altering their organizational philosophy to move up. Both Pickett and Rudolph have had some ok games since they left the Steelers, which indicates to me not so much that they were massive busts or entirely untalented but that they were held back by the ancient way the Steelers develop quarterbacks and run their offense.
If the Steelers continue with Tomlin, in this same pattern, they’ll continue to have the same results. In the modern NFL you can’t win the games that matter like this. We saw the ceiling on the offense with Wilson. Realistically, with Arthur Smith and the way the Steelers call plays, we probably saw it on Fields as well. If rolling into next season with these same players at quarterback is what you want to do, it’s unlikely to bring a different result. They also don’t feel like a team ready to make a real change in how they operate to reach for a high risk, high reward type player. They’ll end up signing someone like Wilson again or maybe Cousins if he’s cut and hope it’s good enough. Great teams though, they don’t have offenses that they *hope* are good enough.
Mike Tomlin is both the problem and the solution. He can fix this if he’s willing to be honest about how and why the Steelers have failed the past few years…but with the way this keeps happening that seems unlikely. There was the rumor of some teams wanted to trade for him and I’m not sure I see it. Shipping Tomlin out won’t magically solve the real issue here: the Steelers need to fundamentally change how they draft and quarterbacks. They can do it under Tomlin, as long as he’s willing to finally take a risk to be better then good enough.
