The Pittsburgh Steelers had yet another ugly playoff loss on Saturday against the Baltimore Ravens, and while the Steelers have gotten off to slow starts in the playoffs (and, really, throughout this season) before, their game plan was particularly poor against the Ravens. Pittsburgh was shut out in the first half, and on Get Up! this morning, ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky said that first half was as bad as he’s ever seen from the Steelers.
“We can say that Mike Tomlin is a really good coach. That was not a well-prepared football team for that game. That tape in the first half is disgusting,” he said. “It’s as bad as I’ve seen a Steelers tape. The offensive line goes the wrong way on a consistent basis, one guy here, one guy there. They’re very rarely on the same page, the quarterback is limited, the defensive communication is poor. All you have to do is run motion against them and they’ll get out of gaps.
“So does that fall on coaching? Absolutely it does. Do I think that some of the changes need to be made with how Mike Tomlin sees the big picture of the staff and says, ‘Ok, how do we adjust things that maybe we get a little detail-oriented and detail-centric’ and yeah, they need to address the quarterback position because he enters every game with one hand tied behind his back when it comes central to that. I do not think that moving on from Mike Tomlin is the answer. But I do think after watching this weekend, they need to have a very long, hard talk about how do they make changes to improve when it matters most.”
As Orlovsky said, there were far too many mistakes, like linemen pulling the wrong way on run plays, for the Steelers to have had any success early against Baltimore. And with the Steelers likely to keep Tomlin, there has to be coaching changes or personnel changes elsewhere. The Steelers’ defense wilted down the stretch, their passing attack got considerably worse as the season went on (although Russell Wilson did salvage the game against the Ravens will his deep-ball success), and the Steelers just didn’t have a lot of fight. They lost five in a row to end the season, and defensively Patrick Queen said they took their foot off the pedal.
That’s simply inexcusable, and bringing in real leadership that prevents that from happening whether on the player or the coaching side is important. The two coaching changes that seem plausible could be getting rid of offensive line coach Pat Meyer and defensive coordinator Teryl Austin, and if those moves happen, they’d likely come within the next few days. But the Steelers seemed to be unprepared and just played poorly down the stretch, so there has to be some sort of philosophical change within the ranks of the people playing and the people making the decisions and coaching.
It’s setting up to be another active offseason for the Steelers, but it needs to start with finding answers as to what went wrong late and changing and improving the coaching wherever Tomlin sees fit. His track record of hiring coordinators hasn’t been great, but if the Steelers do wind up letting go of Austin, there are some intriguing names, including former Steelers CB Deshea Townsend, who could be candidates.
We’ll see what winds up happening, but if the Steelers stay the course with their entire coaching staff with how the season fell apart, it’ll be a total organizational failure.
