Opinion: From 0-3 to the playoffs? Mike Tomlin has Steelers back on track to make NFL history
PITTSBURGH – Minkah Fitzpatrick had packed his belongings, headed for the exit on Sunday night after yet another signature performance when Mike Tomlin popped out of the training room. The Steelers coach was beaming. And pointing from across the room. With both hands.
They had a brief exchange before Tomlin bolted to another corner of the locker room, leaving his emerging star safety with a parting message.
"Short week, baby!,” Tomlin said.
The game had been over for an hour, but Tomlin was hardly done working it.
"He’s a good coach, man,” Fitzpatrick told Paste BN Sports. “I like him a lot. He relates to players. He talks a lot. Communicates a lot.”
Fitzpatrick, who has sizzled since the Steelers obtained him from Miami in September, sounds a lot like many players over the years have in describing Tomlin. Sure, former linebacker James Harrison might serve up a dissenting view after feeling dissed by the coach during his final season in Pittsburgh. And there’s no telling what Antonio Brown thinks. But by and large, Tomlin has been the coach working the room – even during mid-week lunch breaks – to get a pulse on his team.
Maybe that’s why his teams don’t quit on him.
The other night, after his defense put the clamps on the Rams’ last-gasp efforts by shutting down two drives in the final three minutes of a 17-12 gut-check – Fitzpatrick’s interception off a Joe Haden deflection sealed it – Tomlin raved about his team’s will and grit.
"We all stayed in the fight,” he summed up.
He can surely apply that to himself. His resilient team (5-4) has scratched and clawed to save what once looked like a lost season – maybe Tomlin’s worst yet – with a remarkable turnaround. If the playoffs were tonight, when the Steelers face the Browns in an A-North clash in Cleveland, Pittsburgh would own the AFC’s final wild-card slot.
A month ago, that seemed preposterous.
Stay in the fight. Tomlin, in his 13th season, has never had a losing record. But despite winning a Super Bowl in his second year and getting back to the Super Bowl in his fourth campaign, it has been trendy for so many charged-up fans in the Steel City to call for his ouster. No, that’s not the Rooney way. Tomlin is one of just three Steelers coaches in 50 years, and with a .641 winning percentage through 216 games (including postseason) that is better the rates achieved by predecessors Bill Cowher (.619) and Hall of Famer Chuck Noll (.572).
Of course, Noll won four Super Bowls to set a different type of standard. Tomlin’s detractors typically maintain it’s been too long since his last Super Bowl appearance – nearly a decade since XLV following the 2010 season – or maybe that he’s too much of a “player’s coach” with teams lacking discipline.
Imagine what they were saying on the call-in radio shows and Internet message boards after the Steelers started 0-3, then 1-4.
Never mind. Look at them now. With Ben Roethlisberger’s season ended in Week 2 by an elbow injury that required surgery, with Brown’s eccentricities and production long gone, with Le’Veon Bell’s replacement, James Conner, battling through injuries, the Steelers are riding a four-game winning streak. Given the circumstances, it’s looking to be Tomlin’s best coaching job yet, at least to this point. And with each victory, Tomlin is bolstering a case for NFL Coach of the Year honors, edging into a lineup of candidates that includes Sean Payton (Saints) and Kyle Shanahan (49ers).
"I am most proud that we have won today,” Tomlin scoffed on Sunday, when someone asked what he is most proud of at this point of the season. “(We are) not big-picture people. We are not cumulative people. We played well today, we will evaluate it in the morning.”
In other words, now is not time to reflect on a journey that is still in the process. That’s the message and context that the Steelers need from the coach until it’s over.
But the evidence and patterns are revealing enough. The Steelers started the winning streak with a rookie quarterback, Devlin Hodges, pressed to play at the Chargers while Roethlisberger’s second-year replacement, Mason Rudolph, recovered from a concussion. They might not have won the past two games without touchdowns from Fitzpatrick, sorely needed because the offense has struggled. Beyond inexperience at the skill positions, injuries have wreaked havoc on the backfield, with fullback Roosevelt Nix and backup Benny Snell joining Conner (expected back tonight) on the injury list.
The defense has been amazing, ranking second in the league with 26 takeaways while posting the most sacks over the first nine games for a Steelers unit (33) since 2008. That’s how the slack is picked up for an offense that is a far cry from the unit that not too long ago was led by the Killer B’s and could put up 30 points on a bad day.
By necessity, the Steelers have had an identity makeover that reflects the job Tomlin has done to prevent a massive collapse.
"The only team that really smashed us up was the Patriots,” Haden told Paste BN Sports, referring a 33-3 setback at New England on opening night. “After that, we lost by 2, 4 and in overtime (by 3) to Baltimore. It wasn’t like we were getting smashed. We just had to get over that little hump, to make sure we get a play to fall our way and we can win. So, we were never really down on ourselves. We’ve just got to finish it. Now, we’re starting to close games.”
It has always seemed that the suggestion a team takes on the personality of a coach came with a lot of gray area. Yet the sentiment is not without some merit in this case.
"He’s real aggressive with his coaching style,” second-year wideout James Washington told Paste BN Sports.
In the fourth quarter on Sunday, after the Rams scored a safety to cut the margin to two points, Tomlin flirted with disaster. In fact, some would even call it crazy as he went for it on 4th-and-1 from Pittsburgh’s 34-yard line. Then Rudolph rolled right and floated a pass in the flat to Trey Edmunds for a 6-yard gain that kept alive a 14-play, 8-minute field goal drive that provided the final margin.
"When he digs down, he’s not scared,” Washington said. “On fourth-and-one or whatever, he’s confident. It helps us go out there like, ‘Oh, let’s get it!’ “
It could have cost the Steelers the game if the gamble backfired.
"We are just playing to win,” Tomlin said. “Sometimes you have to take calculated risks. Sometimes it works out like it did in that instance. I’m also the guy who called a play-action pass on the minus-6 (yard line) and got a sack for a safety. You win some, you lose some. When the guys are playing with that amount of energy and urgency, as coaches you have to support them and how we support them is being aggressive.”
As much as Tomlin talks a tough game and communicates with his players, it’s striking that he never said a word to Washington after the receiver carelessly fumbled at the end of a big catch-and-run late in the second quarter.
"He didn’t need say anything to me,” Washington said. “I was thinking exactly what he was going to say when it happened. It’s kind of one of those lessons learned.”
That’s some serious coaching, like telepathy. Guess the feel-the-pulse vibe works both ways.