The great former head coach Bill Parcells once said “If I’m going to be asked to cook the meal, I’d like to be able to pick the groceries.”
Right now in Pittsburgh, Kevin Colbert is the guy that does the shopping and Mike Tomlin is the guy who does the cooking. It is apparent that this combination is no longer working like it once did. There were seasons where it seemed the two were coming up with exotic dishes that appealed to nearly all palates.
But now Colbert and Tomlin are struggling to come up with a recipe for toast. The Steelers may be 3-3 on the season but they are in total disarray following the 31-10 loss to the rival Browns. This team lacks leadership. It lacks fire and emotion. It lacks just about everything a consistent winner needs to have and that comes back to the general manager and to the head coach.
The free agent signings of this past offseason are a microcosm of the problems Kevin Colbert has had recently in terms of evaluating talent. Defensive lineman Cam Thomas has been awful grading out as one of the worst defensive linemen in the NFL. Safety Mike Mitchell was supposed to replace Ryan Clark who wore out his welcome in the Steel City.
Mitchell has unfortunately become nothing more than a slightly faster version of Clark who misses tackles and his often caught out of position in the passing game. Then of course there is Lance Moore who I openly lobbied for to get more playing time. Despite catching a touchdown today in garbage time, Moore was otherwise awful as he dropped passes and ran poor routes.
The draft picks of this past spring have not exactly panned out either. Ryan Shazier missed his third straight game today with an injury while second round pick Stephon Tuitt has seen his play time limited much more than I thought possible at the beginning of the season. Dri Archer is a work in progress that appears to be going nowhere while Martavis Bryant hasn’t been activated for a single game yet.
Lineman Wesley Johnson was cut this week to make way for Ross Ventrone while Jordan Zumwalt and Rob Blanchflower are unlikely to see an actual NFL field anytime soon.
This type of draft has become more of the rule for Colbert and Tomlin than an exception. The lack of depth has caught up to the Steelers on both offense and on defense and they are no longer able to use the “next man up” mantra the way they once did.
Both Dick LeBeau and Todd Haley are struggling to find answers right now and there appears to be very little hope in sight. To say the Steelers are a roller coaster of team right now would be an understatement. The league in general is as up and down as it’s ever been but that doesn’t excuse the problems in Pittsburgh.
Both Colbert and Tomlin will live to see the end of this season and it’s likely one or both survive into the next but one way or another significant changes are needed.
Marc Uhlmann writes for and co-owns www.steelcityblitz.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteelDad and the website @SCBlitz. Check us out on Facebook at facebook.com/steelcityblitz and on Fancred.com. You can hear him weekly during the season on game day on the Trib-Live Radio Steelers Pre-Game
8 comments
What, you mean opting to keep Josh Victorian over Brian Hoyer wasn’t a good move?
Touche my man, touche….
Here’s what i see in the immediate future. The Steelers will rally, win some and lose some and even make a playoff run[sound familiar]. Then you’ll start to here the what if these guys weren’t injured thing and so on. And the fact that this roster as it sits is average at best will go overlook . My recommendation would be this retool the o–line by replacing Foster , Beacham , Adam and Gilbert. This is where our shortcomings on draft day started, we attempted to build a strong o-line but failed. Bring in a O/C that will works best with our current personnel,This one’s going to hurt but it’s the truth 2 top quality safeties would turn this defense around really quick. By no means can this happen this or next season but the planning needs to begin now. A good example would be Dallas they fixed there o-line problems and it resonates through the entire team.
Ya know Bob? I can’t blame you for that line of thinking. It was done last year and we’ve seen this type of thing from them in years before. The reason I think this thing doesn’t go in that direction is simply because there ARE SO MANY ISSUES with this team. The offense is struggling… the defense is struggling… the special teams are struggling.
As far as the OL comments remember how long it took to get to this point so we can’t expect things to change a lot over the course of one year. It will take time to replace that many guys.
The Steelers simply do not employ the right approach offensively or defensively to win consistently games in today’s NFL. I don’t know enough about the Steelers front office to know who make hires, dictates team philosophy and approaches, but if the GM is drafting college players and signing free agents to fit ineffective systems then there is the issue. Who hired Haley? Who evaluates Lebeau and the other coordinators? If its just Tomlin (and I don’t think it is) then he must share in the blame.
Thanks for commenting Malcolm. The GM Kevin Colbert is the guy in charge of player drafting and free agency. He has failed miserably in recent years and now those failures are rearing their ugly heads. There are significant issues in all three phases of this team so no one is safe right now but let’s let the season play out.
Just one heads up While we were busy getting better, younger and faster and all that stuff. We let Larry foote go again, the point being i was watching a Cardinals game and he was playing like a man amongst boys.Our talent evaluation is off the boards stupid yes he may be 34 but he is a top of the line MLB right now and could have solidified this defense. Just another example of wrong move over and over again.
Sure you can say that but everybody around Pittsburgh felt that it was time to get younger which meant guys like Farrior, Foote and others had to go. We don’t know what the coaches are saying to the young guys we think we know but we don’t. ART II is doing this to show that you must win by running and not passing which is stupid. Let Ben win or lose the game but ART won’t do that because of the Milledgeville situation. ART won’t let that go and is punishing Ben because of that. I know we all want Haley gone but do you honestly think that for 1 second ART would fire Haley and admit his mistake? He won’t. The D is still to far away from being good again and you can’t rush it no matter who is running the D. The league is set up in which getting to the QB is almost being done away with. That statement was said by 1 Andrew Fillipponi of 93.7 the Fan. He said those words on the post game show. In this passing league of the NFL let your QB run the whole damn show. Play to the strengths of your talent and stop playing pansies ball.