Like you, I’ve had some time to settle down from the Steelers’ loss to Baltimore on Saturday night and I know if I were to do this in the hours after the game, grades would look a lot different.
Therefore, I’ve had some time to cool down and give the type of fair and honest grades I intended to so here I go with the head honcho.
I started off this season wondering how I could defend Mike Tomlin any longer after losing to Baltimore in week two. Things just didn’t look better than they had in recent seasons. Later, I wondered aloud if he actually listens to what he says during press conferences because the answers are always the same as are the cliches.
But what I learned about Mike Tomlin this season is that while he will always have deficiencies like clock management and losing to lesser teams, he can flat-out coach. I don’t mean to dismiss those things so quickly because they do weigh him down, but overall this year I saw some improvement.
This teams was headed for another 8-8 season midway through this season and while that loss to New Orleans stands out, the rest of the way the Steelers got things done. They won games in Cincinnati and Atlanta and then beat the Bengals at home to secure the division title.
That proved to me that Tomlin had his hand on the pulse of this team and they reacted well. There are better in-game coaches and coaches who prepare better than Tomlin but he clearly gets his players as well as any coach in the NFL.
Very few of us will know what the real relationship Tomlin has with assistants Todd Haley and Dick LeBeau is and there will always be speculation. I think he still has a ‘hands-off’ approach with LeBeau but has added more of himself on the defensive side in recent years.
As for Haley, I don’t have the first clue about how these two get along. I assume it’s an OK relationship but based on some gameplans I have to wonder.
There is significant room for improvement but I thought Mike Tomlin progressed well as the season wore on. The team faced many challenges in terms of injuries to guys like Brett Keisel, Jarvis Jones, Ike Taylor and Troy Polamalu and Tomlin and his staff held things together to earn the division crown.
I cannot turn a blind eye however to the playoff loss. Tomlin has now dropped his playoff record to 5-4 and has also lost six of his last nine against the Ravens. Unfortunately this is a “results-based” business that demands constant success and now Tomlin must build on it in 2015.
Overall Grade B-
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
3 comments
I also would give Tomlin a B- , overall but i believe he is lacking as a talent evaluator. Not seeing that Bryant was a far Superior player to Justin Brown,the amount of time it took him to see that Beacham was a far better player than Adams, there was a reason we got better when Allen and Taylor went down and it wasn’t coaching the fact is we had better talent behind them. Yes Tomlin is loyal to his starters but is it to a point where it hurts the team? As far as a game planner goes no one fears Mike Tomlin. And he does have his good points he’s a great motivator, fierce competitor and a good leader. The Steelers are faced with a tough schedule and will need to upgrade there roster and truly infuse some young/ new talent in.Let us hope that i’m wrong about him being a poor talent evaluator. In closing i would like to say that only carrying Bell as our only true RB was foolish and a point of note our running game did improve but maybe not as much as people think. We finished in the middle of the league in rushing yards.
I didn’t put anything in there as far as talent evaluation because I honestly don’t know how much of it he does. Obviously he has input, but how much? Word on Bryant was that he wasn’t picking up the reads from his position which is why he didn’t see the field. The team desperately needs to upgrade in several areas and certainly RB depth is among them.
[…] This is Part Two of our series reviewing the 2014 Pittsburgh Steelers. Part One was Head Coach Mike Tomlin. […]