Art Rooney II Believes in Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin Calling Plays
Steelers team president Art Rooney II believes in head coach Mike Tomlin’s play calling ability, and supports his head coach in choosing to call most of the team’s defensive plays. Rooney also believes that Tomlin will be able to figure out how often to use his play calling abilities with the hire of a new defensive coordinator after Keith Butler recently retired.
“You know, I think that Coach Tomlin inserts himself where he needs to, and I think that the role between him and his coordinators is something that they have to work out the best way for plays to be called and the most effective way,” Rooney said. “I think that’s really something that is mostly between Coach and his coordinators. As we change defensive coordinators now, there may be some changes in how Coach Tomlin handles that.”
Butler confirmed that he did not ever call the defensive plays while he was with the team in an interview on Monday, and said that head coach Mike Tomlin had been calling the plays since before he took over as defensive coordinator.
“As much as I’d like to dadgum be more involved in calling the defenses and stuff than I was, I still wanted to do what was best for our team, what was best for our defense, what was best for our guys,” Butler said to 93.7 The Fan on Monday.
“We had a lot to do with the game plan and stuff like that, but Mike is the head coach and Mike can do what he wants to and should be able to do what he wants to as the head coach. The last couple years of Dick LeBeau, Mike was calling the defenses, too. So it’s something that he had wanted to do. It’s something that he had done at Minnesota. So he wanted to do that here. He’s the head coach. He should be able to do what he wants to do. … He’s going to do what he thinks is best to win football games.”
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