Not debatable…Mike Tomlin is a great HC. Mike Tomlin will one day be in the HoF for being a great HC. Mike Tomlin is currently the HC for the Steelers. 2024 will be a new season.
The 2017 Steeler defense may have been Top 10 on paper, but they could not stop the run to save their lives the entire season. The Bears rang up 222 rushing yards on the Steelers, and the Jags rang up 231 yards in their meetings earlier in the season. AND THEN the Steelers lost Shazier to injury making a defense already porous vs the run somehow even worse against the run. And then in the playoffs they ran into the worst possible matchup in the Jags, a team that could run the ball very well. So the irony is that at that point the Steelers defense matched up better vs. the Patriots than the Jags.
So is that arrogance on the part of Tomlin and the players or is that running into the worst possible playoff matchup, a team that can run the ball very well while your D can't stop the run and is missing one of its best players?
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Well, that's the debate, right? One poster's "excuses" are another poster's "valid reasons."
it’s arrogance when you look past your opponent. People bag on him but Sean Spence filled in admirably in the last 4 games of the regular season. They were heavily favored for a reason - they knew what the jags were going to do, they just were unprepared and got smashed in the mouth. They let Fournette repeatedly burn them to the right and sometimes up the middle but mostly to the right. Unprepared.
But that’s the unknowable issue. You and others saw it as unprepared. I saw it as incapable. The LB corps was just not able to accomplish their task. Then Mitchell and other safeties cheated to stop the run and got beat intermediate and deep.
Non Steelers example from the SB we just watched. On MVS touchdown by the Chiefs, the DB got pulled out of the middle and Greenlaw’s backup wasn’t able to sink deep enough to compress the passing window. You could see that he knew what to do, he just wasn’t the same level of athlete and he couldn’t get it done.
they cheated but not to the right, where Fournette did alot of his damage. I mean they saw these guys before in the regular season and got stomped but our coach and some of the players still mouthed off about looking past the jags. We didn't learn anything from that first game it seems. for a 13-3 team, just inexcusable, and you know its not an isolated incident. Yeah given the circumstances i do see it as lacking focus and lack of preparation more than being incapable.
The problem on defense in 2017 post Shazier was not just for the playoffs game....remember a below average offense that year(ravens)had scored 38 points vs us too but I understand the criticism for the game against the jags since some are deserved
So the fact that the Bears had rushed for 222 yards against them and the Jags previously rushed for 231 yards against them had nothing to do with the players on the field? Duck Hodges would have been a good QB for us if only we'd had the right coach?
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Wow, do I disagree with that. In the playoff game Sean Spence was a turnstile offering little more resistance that a wet paper bag. Tomlin was supposed to coach Sean Spence into James Farrior?
Wait. You’re saying a slightly undersized LB who was a below average NFL athlete by testing numbers and then suffered multiple significant injuries might’ve been a bit physically overmatched?
Nah. Coach more harder.
Are we talking Sean Spence? I thought that his leg injury almost ended up in nerve or vascular damage that could have left him unable to walk properly, if at all. That injury was just brutal. But if you watched him in college at Miami, he was a tackling machine that was always around the ball. Kind of like a Johathan Vilma type LB. If Spence and Shazier could have avoided injuries....