Bob Smizik woke up
on wrong side of the bed
Unfortunately, Bob Smizik, one of our favorite Pittsburgh writers, has pushed the panic button.
Not just "pushed," either. He sounds like he took a sledgehammer to it.
The long and short of it -- he says Mendenhall's no good (yet), and Tomlin maybe really can't coach.
To the first point: Mendenhall absolutely must get a chance to start if this team is going anywhere. We freely admit he might not be any good. We don't know. This is what we do know: 1) Parker isn't taking this team anywhere. 2) Mendenhall is a highly regarded first-round draft choice.
Smizik calls Mendenhall "a player of immense potential but one who has failed to gain the coaching staff's confidence, as evidenced by the fact he had no rushing attempts in the past two games."
Smizik doesn't bother to note that Parker has already realized his potential and it's tapped out. There is no more Parker potential. He cannot move the chains on first down. This is why he was a role player on the road to Super Bowl XL. Look at his stats.
We think it's bizarre that a starting running back who gained a grand 20 yards in the last game, and 42 (on 23 carries) in last year's home game of otherwise utter domination against Smizik's feared Baltimore Ravens, is suddenly being hailed as the difference in the upcoming Monday Night game.
To the second point: Smizik says Tomlin is "looking more mortal these days, especially after his failure to solve the Eagles' defense, one with which he and his staff should have been intimately familiar."
So that's how it works. The offensive line is so lethargic -- a situation we've seen MANY times in the last three seasons, one of which was helmed by Bill Cowher -- that the quarterback is nearly getting tackled five yards in the backfield before he can hand off, let alone drop back for a pass, but the fault is with the coach for not "solving" a pretty good defense that he should somehow be "intimately familiar" even though the teams haven't played a real game against each other in four years. (And if Smizik means the preseason matchup, then shouldn't Jim Johnson and the Eagles be just as familiar with Tomlin's offense? So neither team could dominate the other just because they played in the preseason and are "intimately familiar" with each other?) Clearly, the only way a team gives up six sacks in a quarter is through coaching blunders, not because the players just stink.
Smizik goes on to say the "real job" of coaches is making adjustments and putting players in position to succeed, and Tomlin "and his staff haven't been so good at it lately." Really? They looked masterful against Houston and Cleveland. That was 10 whole days ago. By the way it's pretty much the same staff that made enough "adjustments" to win the Super Bowl. But now they've become incompetent because they started 2-1 instead of 3-0 and lost a road game by 9 points.
This is Smizik's clincher: "After opening his NFL career with seven wins in nine games and making the Rooneys look, as they did with Chuck Noll and Bill Cowher, like geniuses in evaluating coaches, Tomlin's career has taken a backward step. He's a mediocre 5-6 since his first nine games."
Bill Cowher opened his Steelers career at 6-3; Tomlin went 7-2. In Cowher's next 11 games, he went 6-5. So in their first 20 games, we have Tomlin 12-8, Cowher 12-8, each 0-1 in home playoff games. Yet Tomlin has somehow taken a "backward step" by starting 2-1 with a 9-point road loss instead of going 3-0.
The legit beef is with some of Tomlin's contract decisions. He's paying Max Starks about $89 million to stand on the sidelines and watch six sacks in a quarter. But Bill Cowher made blunders too. He went into a winnable Super Bowl with a guy (Neil O'Donnell) who preferred Tampa Bay and later the Jets to the Steelers.
The Steelers are not going to lose to Smizik's mighty Baltimore Ravens on Monday. Joe Flacco is going to have a long night. The Baltimore defense is going to quickly grow tired of being on the field. This game is a win for the Steelers.
Tomlin is a legit NFL leader. Players respond to him. He is still a bit raw in game day management. That will gradually improve. Hardly reason to sound alarm bells. Should they win every game? No, they probably shouldn't. Like every team that fails to win the Super Bowl, they need to GET BETTER PLAYERS. Tomlin is getting the most out of the ones he's got.
There's still more. We wrote how Smizik on Sept. 5 predicted the Steelers would go 9-7 (including a loss at Philly) because of schedule and a defense that is too old. He wrote: "The Steelers' defense will perform adequately and the offense exceptionally." He doesn't bother to point out that the defense has yielded one real touchdown in three games (we don't count garbage time vs. Houston) and 22 total meaningful points. The coach who has taken a "backward step" gets no credit for that. When it's great defense, it's because of the players, and when it's shoddy offense, it's the lack of coaching adjustments to blame. Smizik claimed last year's defense was overrated statistically. Now he ignores the obvious error in that column and instead pins the "blame" for a 2-1 start on subpar coaching.
Smizik's panic is an embarrassment.