No, I don't want to discuss race and other societal issues here, either. It's a sports site. And we do all we can here to keep it that way.
But life will intersect with sports, and it'll do so with greater visibility than ever in our cyber-connected culture. So avoiding it altogether is not only impossible but also irresponsible.
Mike Tomlin stepped up big-time Monday.
He didn't just defend Mason Rudolph's reputation. He put his own on the line, partly by trusting Rudolph, partly by trusting the other Steelers and Browns on the field that day in Cleveland, but in the most prominent sense by simply being an honorable man.
Stop and think about his tenure here for a moment: Thirteen years now in the fishbowl of being Western Pennsylvania's highest-profile football figure, and the closest anyone can come to a negative syllable about his off-the-field behavior is that ... what, he'll occasionally hang out with Joey Porter? Or conduct a curt press conference?
Really, I can't come up with a thing.
So that's the first step of the process that occurred Monday, even if it's ongoing. Because no one takes anyone seriously on the subject of honor if they aren't honorable themselves. This extraordinarily intelligent, introspective and charitable individual does that.
The next step is that he invests in his players. For better or worse, he'll work to get to know them. He makes it part of the job, but it's performed with passion. I've witnessed that far more in Latrobe and in practices than in game settings. He'll find out how to push the buttons of everyone from Ben Roethlisberger right down to the spare kicker brought in for no reason beyond pushing Chris Boswell, right down to the undrafted quarterback from Samford University. Sometimes it won't amount to anything. Other times, that player will be all that separates the Steelers from playoffs.
Same applies for their families, their friends. It isn't nosy, from the way it's been described to me over the years, and it often isn't direct. He'll ask his assistants or other team employees. But he eventually gets to know, to understand.
And if you're a good one, in his eyes, he'll trust.
Tomlin trusts Rudolph.
He's known Rudolph since he and Kevin Colbert met him before the NFL Draft -- which is yet another reason the head coach's participation is so valuable at that stage -- and he's gotten to know him that much more in Pittsburgh. And he watched that kid, a genuinely good one as far as I've been able to see myself, go through hell and back this past season. Physically. Emotionally. The pressure from the public. And it had Tomlin, as he put it Monday, "hacked off" to have Myles Garrett vomit it back up for ESPN over the weekend.
So he broke from all previous norms for offseason access and piped up beautifully.
The whole thing, if you still haven't seen it:
Ladies and gentlemen, the adult in the room.
To repeat yet again, that's founded in trust.
Tomlin trusted, as he spoke, the other people out there when Garrett's infantile helmet-swinging stirred everything up.
“I was on the field immediately after that altercation,” he told ESPN. “I've got a lot of personal relationships within that organization over there in Cleveland. At no point did anyone within that organization come forward and say ‘Mike, heads up, we got a situation here,’ or something of that nature that you would expect that comes with those types of allegations.”
But he also trusted, above all, Rudolph.
Know why?
He's a players' coach.
And yeah, you knew I was going there, right?
That term gets tossed around a little too lightly for my taste by some in the Nation. Makes me cringe each time. It's cited as a negative. As if he coddles. As if he's distant or aloof. Or worse, in the most insidious context -- again, by some and not all -- because he's an African-American head coach presiding over a roster that's predominantly African-American, and therefore they're all buddy-buddy or brothers or whatever.
Hence, you hear, 'That wouldn't have happened under Chuck Noll,' or 'That wouldn't have happened under Bill Cowher,' even though both of Tomlin's legendary predecessors very much had their own challenges in managing players of all races. Imagine if Tomlin had a player who shot at a police helicopter, as Ernie Holmes did under Noll. Or if he'd basically looked the other way when Santonio Holmes was charged with domestic violence, as Cowher did.
Or, for that matter, since Tomlin's culture is often compared to that of Bill Belichick, if he'd presided over a player who'd literally gotten away with murder.
My goodness, he'd be fried alive.
I try not to use the word hate, but I've hated that term 'players' coach.' Just hated it forever.
But not anymore. In fact, after this, I'm going to use it all the time. Because Tomlin is that. He is a players' coach. In the best sense of the term.
In my many years of covering the Steelers, in countless conversations with players on or off the record, including with some who were angry with Tomlin or flat-out didn't like him, there's never been the tiniest trace that the man even sees color, much less reacts to it. And in the current society, where race seems to be getting senselessly injected in a lot of settings it doesn't belong, that's the best sense of the term.
That's the ideal, actually. There aren't white men or black men or brown men in this scenario.
As a certain someone put it ...
Leader of Men https://t.co/ISSluAWepy
— Mason Rudolph (@Rudolph2Mason) February 17, 2020
• On the other hand, when Tomlin loses trust in a player ... no, Antonio Brown won't be back in Pittsburgh.
Full quote from Tomlin on AB: “I’ll say this: Once a Steeler, always a Steeler. We had great success over the course of nine-plus years with Antonio. We’re always going to be interested in his growth and development as a man, and we’ll be open to assisting him in that. But we have no current business interest at this time.”
Nope. AB turns 32 in July. His game's rooted in speed and quickness. If the Steelers don't have 'business interest' now, they'll never have it.
Nothing to see here.
• Way more significant, Tomlin became the latest to state confidently that Ben Roethlisberger will be ready for the Steelers' opener: “I have no hesitation.”
If those were the only four words he'd uttered in the interview, that'd have been just fine.
• ESPN's initial report, the one that prompted Tomlin to connect, was a brutal brand of journalism, accepting Garrett's word as the default mode while never once stating that the NFL completed a thorough investigation of the matter that found not a solitary slice of substance to Garrett's accusations. In fact, the league itself reemerged over the weekend to make Garrett look like the liar he is all over again.
In that spirit, much fun as it was to see Tomlin to take the fight right to Bristol soil, it's also stomach-turning that the network doubly benefits in having caused all the ruckus, then getting the big exclusive on the response.
Trust me, nothing's been learned there. No one's happier about all this than ESPN execs.
• Sue Garrett. Sue him like crazy. That'll be the only response that resonates in that direction.
Bob Nutting watches the Pirates' first full-squad workout Monday in Bradenton, Fla. - AP• Bob Nutting's always on hand for the Pirates' first full-squad workout in Bradenton, and he was again Monday. He'll do his interview sessions down there in March, we're told, so that'll have to wait.
Don't expect much in the way of revelations when it does happen. He, Travis Williams and Ben Cherington are of a single mind that payroll will increase when contention's clear. That's all anyone will hear. And when a timetable's brought up, that'll be met with a quick counter that it could be any time, even this summer, depending on what the team demonstrates on the field.
I can't state this enough: The priority is to get younger talent into the system. Not necessarily of the same age. Not even necessarily old enough to be part of the current group. Just plain-and-simple younger talent. Whatever comes available by whatever means possible.
In the interim, the bona fide belief of Cherington, as least as much as I can discern from our talk in Bradenton this past week, is that the current roster will have some players who are part of that contender.
How he arrived at that, I don't know.
But the fact that he did buttresses that this isn't some standard, old-school rebuild. It just isn't.
• Anyone else realize that, for the first time in recent memory, the Pirates probably won't have an authentic rotation battle?
Not even the omnipresent fifth-starter duel?
Oh, Derek Shelton won't portray it that way -- he's been reluctant to project much of anything to this early point -- but I've got Trevor Williams, Joe Musgrove and Chris Archer as complete locks, Steven Brault as a virtual lock after the second half he enjoyed in 2019, and I can't imagine any team trying to build with young players that wouldn't have Mitch Keller round it out.
Which raises this question: When's the last time any team had a fairly certain rotation and was anywhere near the disaster so many are forecasting?
• Biggest concern No. 1 for me in 2020: Bottom of the order. That's why the Jarrod Dyson signing was such a bummer. Because now, center field, third base, catcher and pitcher make four of nine dead spots in the lineup. Can't hide that many soft bats.
• Biggest concern No. 2: We don't/can't know how much falloff there'll be at closer from Felipe Vazquez to Keone Kela. That's not a shot. That's not a criticism. But it's very much a concern. Vazquez wound up being a reprehensible human, but he was one hell of a pitcher.
• Commissioners aren't easily toppled. Roger Goodell somehow survived Ray Rice. And Gary Bettman somehow survived three work stoppages. And Bud Selig somehow survived steroids.
But I'll be damned if Rob Manfred survives the Astros if something sizable doesn't shift soon in his stance.
Never in a lifetime of covering sports have I seen players so universal in their derision for a commissioner. At Goodell's lowest point, he'd only have a few players -- mostly on one especially noisy team, if you'll recall -- barking at him. Same with Bettman. But what Manfred's hearing is now coming from across the continent, and this within a baseball culture that never, ever speaks up.
Listen to the Dodgers' Justin Turner talking to reporters Monday:
Justin Turner was honest in his response to Comissioner Manfred’s statements about the Commissioner’s Trophy pic.twitter.com/3leAZKGOoG
— Nikki Kay (@NikkiKaySN1) February 17, 2020
That's magnificent. And painfully accurate.
For anyone who doesn't know, Turner's referring to Manfred's insanely tone-deaf remark Sunday in North Port, Fla., that he let the Astros keep their 2017 World Series trophy because "asking for a piece of metal back seems like a futile idea.”
Our Alex Stumpf was there covering it, and I'm surprised he didn't pass out.
• Manfred and Frank Coonelly, best friends, longtime coworkers under Selig in the commissioner's office ... I don't even need to complete the sentence.
• Been writing a lot of hockey. Writing some more Tuesday night with the Leafs in town, so I'll leave the pucks in the bucket for this one.
Thanks for reading. I don't express that enough. It's never taken for granted.
