The Steelers may slap “co-general supervisor” to the top of Mike Tomlin’s title and nothing can be amiss. As a lot as maybe any head coach within the NFL, he performs a basic function within the Steelers’ roster-building course of. If a participant is on the 53-man roster, you could be fairly assured Tomlin needs to have him there. Even former Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger mentioned as a lot.
It won’t at all times work out completely, and maybe at occasions he relents and lets himself be outweighed by different powers that be. However, on the entire, when the Steelers take the sphere, they’re fielding a group of Tomlin-approved gamers. Which, to Brooke Pryor, makes the annual reward of his capacity to do extra with much less so fascinating.
Showing on Dave Dameshek’s Shek Present to debate the state of the Steelers, ESPN’s beat author for the group didn’t pull punches in diagnosing what ails the group. Pryor mentioned that Tomlin is simply too comfy, as is the group as a complete. And she or he in contrast Tomlin to a contestant on the cooking present Chopped, full with thriller components.
“He does an ideal job. The factor is, it’s not a thriller basket. He’s the one which’s going grocery purchasing”, she argued. “It seems like that is Mike Tomlin’s present. In a number of methods, he creates the issue after which he solves it after which he will get credit score for fixing it with out a number of acknowledgement that, ‘Properly, you’re on this drawback since you had a hand in it’”.
The Steelers go on file nearly yearly to debate how their decision-making course of works. Even former Steelers HC Invoice Cowher talked about it over a decade in the past. Mike Tomlin is as instrumentally concerned within the personnel choices as are president Artwork Rooney II and GM Omar Khan. Typically talking, they work to type a consensus on gamers, however it may well’t at all times work so completely. But is a group that has mainly given Tomlin a lifetime appointment going to attempt to make him coach gamers he doesn’t need?
Pryor argued that Tomlin’s “nearly what seems like unchecked energy” is on the root of lots of the Steelers’ points. She continued in saying that his energy feels much more unchecked since former GM Kevin Colbert retired. Present GM Omar Khan doesn’t have almost the personnel background, although they did add assistant GM Andy Weidl.
One factor the Steelers definitely don’t do is put collectively a roster with no thought as to what Mike Tomlin needs. In spite of everything, you’d be hard-pressed to discover a participant they signal who doesn’t have a private Tomlin story. Tomlin is among the principal attracts for gamers to come back right here, and he’s additionally the one who believes he can get the perfect out of everyone.
However, typically, he can’t. So in the case of praising Mike Tomlin for doing extra with much less, bear in mind who gave himself much less. He has as a lot to do with the Steelers’ roster weaknesses as anyone else does. If he lacks a roster with which to win division titles and playoff video games, that’s as a result of he made evaluating errors.
