Mike Tomlin Called Post-Christmas Meeting with One Major Purpose for ‘Bickering’ Steelers Defense
PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Steelers have spent the last three weeks on defense leaving opposing players, as strong safety DeShon Elliott so eloquently put it, “fucking wide open.”
The culprit has been largely blamed on miscommunication in the secondary, but that was always an over-simplification of what’s been happening. Players have been playing hero ball. Players have been trying to over-compensate for others. Players have been getting themselves out of position trying to make plays.
After a third straight loss, and after multiple players in the locker room following the Christmas Day loss to the Kansas City Chiefs talked about more than just miscommunications, but effort level and want-to, Tomlin called the team into the facility on Thursday, Dec. 26 to hash out their problems and figure out a way forward.
“Last Thursday, we came in after Christmas Day’s game and met and analyzed not only that performance versus Kansas City, but really looked at some trends in most recent performances, and specifically some things that we have been talking about in this setting, things that have been building blocks for engineering victory for us,” Tomlin said.
Tomlin laid out the plan for the team to correct the mistakes it had made on tape. The feelings within the locker room? He left those for the players to sort out.
“You know, I didn’t do much about it, man,” he said. “They bicker because they care, and we weren’t playing well. And oftentimes the solutions are born out of out of conflict and confrontation, particularly when you’re in the business that we’re in. And so we’re not going to let an issue like that be a big issue. It’s really not. Guys expressing truth and working to seek solutions, and sometimes emotions are involved in that. And so most of the time, when you get out of those circumstances, you’re able to move on as a collective and I feel like we certainly have done that.”
Despite Tomlin not delivering a specific message, it seems that the message he was hoping would get across, got across. There are no outside personalities left to bring into the locker room with one week left in the regular season. The Steelers themselves have to figure out what happened, why it happened, and how they’re going to move forward.
“The main thing is sticking together, knowing the guys the we have in this room, just sticking together, putting our heads down, and working,” linebacker Alex Highsmith said.
The Steelers defense will likely be better than it was the last three weeks moving forward. It’s been better than that — with most of the same players — for most of the season. They didn’t suddenly forget how to play football. They also played the three most difficult games of their entire 2024 schedule in an 11-day span, with two of them on the road. That takes a toll.
The Xs and Os fixes are part of the regular course of doing business as a football team.
But talk about effort, about want-to, about some players not pulling their weight or not everyone pulling in the same direction? That can sink a locker room. That can cause a team to play to worse than its talent level, and the Steelers certainly don’t have much room for error in that regard if they want to win in the postseason.
That’s why it was critical for the team to come together last week and bury their three-game losing streak.
“We can’t get engulfed by it,” Highsmith said. “We have to rally around each other in this locker room. We know the guys we have in this locker room and the talent we have. We’ve got the team to do it.”
It seems the non-message was communicated.
“It hit the team the right way,” Patrick Queen said on Monday. “We all care deeply about this game and the outcomes. When he breaks it down and is being transparent with us it makes us want to go out there and do our job. The meeting we had really opened things up.”
As the team got back together Monday after a mandated three-day break, Tomlin said he saw signs of progress in that regard.
“I feel really good about what I felt from them today,” he said. “We were very transparent about what needs to be done and our course of action in an effort to create it. But again, I think we show mentality with our urgency and how we work. And so, I’m excited about getting back on the grass tomorrow and starting the process, but some bright eyes man. Some rested faces. I felt real good about what we’re able to get done in a classroom-like setting this morning.”
Getting the locker room on the same page does not guarantee success, in this week or any other. The Cincinnati Bengals have been the hottest team in football since the clubs last met in November, and the Steelers have real problems to address on both sides of the ball.
“A lot of our issues or challenges are multi-layered and complex,” Tomlin said. “It’s just business in the NFL. It’s chess, not checkers. So, we’ve got to make some schematic adjustments. We’ve got to make some division of labor adjustments. But those are discussions that are ongoing week-in and week-out, even when you’re successful. And so, I’m not going to try to elevate that or mislead you like something is going on different. We’ve got to put together a good plan this week. We’ve got to do a really good job of presenting it to the guys. They’ve got to do a real good job of absorbing it and preparing individually and collectively, and then we’ll go into the stadium and play.”
Just because they’ve gotten the defense on the same page doesn’t guarantee success, but it is a pre-requisite. The communication must be better. The hero ball must stop. The lack of faith in one another’s ability to make plays must wane. That will determine whether or not Tomlin is able to pull his team and his defense out of yet another late-season slide.
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