Tomlin: Steelers Can’t Let Referees Determine Outcomes

PITTSBURGH — Objectively, the officiating was not good in Sunday’s game at Acrisure Stadium between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Jacksonville Jaguars, as new referee Alan Eck and his crew made a mess of things multiple times.

The Steelers were also not good enough.

While the discussion about the officiating certainly loomed large after the game, both inside and outside of the Steelers locker room, head coach Mike Tomlin said his focus on the latter, and not the former, moving forward.

“It is our desire to win definitively, where potentially controversial calls are less significant,” Tomlin said. “That’s what good teams do. That’s what elite teams do. It’s our desire to be a good and elite team so that we’re not as flimsy and become a component of some debatable calls and things of that nature. I acknowledge there was some of that in the game, but it’s some of that in most games, to be quite honest with you, things that are capable of being reviewed or assessed in that way. 

Tomlin said that he didn’t specifically hear the comments that were made by wide receiver Diontae Johnson after the game. Johnson said the officials cost the Steelers the game. Others made similar comments or disagreed with individual calls made against them or the team.

But it’s clear that the message Tomlin is sending is that the officials are not the reason the Steelers lost the game.

“I like to focus my energies on the things that are within our control, the quality of our execution, and I think when you do that definitively, it makes those discussions less relevant,” he said. “I think that’s the point that I want to make to our football team moving forward. You’ve just simply got to make those things, those discussions less significant by the quality of your play, by winning and winning definitively. Obviously, we didn’t play well enough for that to transpire.”

In terms of his position as an NFL head coach and a member of the competition committee, Tomlin certainly has resources available to him to get an explanation or even an apology for a call that he disagrees with. But he said that he’s choosing to keep the spotlight on what happened on the field.

“I’m going to keep those comments to myself,” he said.