DK's 10 Takes

Kovacevic: Ben's been bad, but blame regression on Tomlin's passivity

By Dejan Kovacevic

Oct 4, 2021 • 5:05 am

12.3K

GREEN BAY, Wis. -- "Stop trying to make too many things happen."

That's what T.J. Watt put forth, minutes after he and the Steelers were put down by the Packers, 27-17, on this soggy Sunday at Lambeau Field, to his teammates in the locker room. "And it starts with me," he'd elaborate to a roomful of reporters. "We just have to continue to lean on each other and trust each other and watch the film and continue to get better. It’s still super-early in the season. We’re at home next week and, just like every week, it’s a gotta-have-it."

Brief pause, and then, "But this feeling definitely sucks."

He no doubt meant that. Because his team ... well, sucks. The record's 1-3, the offense remains rancid, the franchise quarterback's been as bad as anyone, the defense is regressing to those ranks and, hey, just so special teams aren't snubbed, Pressley Harvin III shanked a 20-yard punt and a blocked-kick touchdown by Minkah Fitzpatrick was transformed by a brutal offside call into a 10-point swing. So even the luck's been lousy.

Still, this is where I'll respectfully diverge from that sentiment T.J. shared in the room. Because this team, and specifically this head coach, isn't trying to make nearly enough things happen.

Take these two Matt Canada play calls that I actually liked:

" "

Tap play on those. Then repeat. They're vital.

Those have to be touchdowns. No one would dispute that and, to the credit of all concerned, no one did. Not even Mike Tomlin, who rarely singles out isolated plays right after a game, when he spoke, "We've got to have those."

The only dispute, predictably, was who'd be more conciliatory over it.

"I make those balls. I make them in practice," JuJu would say. "I fell short. I take full responsibility and blame. ... You just never know what the outcome would be. I just know that the momentum of playing here would’ve changed for offense, defense, special teams."

“I just missed the throws. I’ll take it," Ben would say. "You kind of get caught between putting air on it and letting him run under it and taking some air off because you don’t want him to get hit. Either way, that’s on me. I’ll take those. Those are big plays that we need.”

Go nuts in dissecting, and debate who's at fault. The only perspective I'll offer is the live one I had from the press box seven stories up -- which can both distort and enhance -- and affirm Ben's stance that he didn't use much arc while also agreeing with JuJu that he could've done more to catch both. Watch the alligator arms. Watch the sluggish, sideways final steps.

Most compelling, note the specificity of the explanation he gave when I asked him to break down the second one:

" "

That's a tough read, I know. Bottom line: No one gets that precise for the purpose of bailing anyone out.

I'll repeat: Even though these two failed connections might've cost the Steelers the game, I liked them. If only because each one represented at least an attempt at imposing their will on an opponent, rather than the relentless opposite.

For all the talk about about whatever these Steelers' identity might be, I've already got it: They live in their fears.

And that begins, of course, with the man at the helm.

Now, Tomlin's not the only person to blame, any more than Ben is, any more than JuJu is, any more than anyone is, up to and including the individuals on the offensive line. It's a team sport. It's a 53-man roster. It's almost always juvenile to pinpoint one person to blame.

But this team demonstrated, even in the opening win over the Bills, that it'd have a ton of building to do. And some of that building, as any football coach at any level will attest, can't happen in practices. It can only happen in games. Because that building isn't just about educating and executing ... it's about creating a heightened confidence. An attitude.

I'll be damned if I'm seeing any of that from this head coach this season.

When the Steelers face a fourth down they hope to convert, they throw the ball short of the sticks. Did it again twice here. If I didn't see both, I wouldn't believe that either occurred. It's so passive, so pathetic, so ... afraid. They see the stacked box in front of them and, ever since John Harbaugh ruined everything about this offense last season at Heinz Field, they back off. They steer clear.

It's fear.

Behold:

" "

Replace the Green Bay uniforms with Cincinnati uniforms, and it's a sequel. Two wide receivers never went past the sticks, and another tripped and fell.

" "

Count the receivers on the wrong side of the sticks. Quarterbacks don't draw up route trees. Coaches do. That's the scheme.

Asked about these latest fourth-down flubs falling literally short, Tomlin's entire reply was, "Obviously, when we go for it on fourth, it’s our intention to get the line to gain. We weren’t able to do that on several occasions.”

Obviously.

According to ESPN Stats and Info, Ben's now the NFL's first quarterback to lose yardage on multiple fourth-down completions in the same season. Which is wild, but at the same time, he's not the one drawing this up. Canada is. Nor authorizing it. Tomlin is. And the reason Canada's doing this, and Tomlin via extension, is that they're petrified. They plot for the worst in every setting, and that goes quadruple on fourth down.

It's fear.

Also, hey, how about that punt early in the fourth quarter?

With 14:24 remaining to collect 17 points while keeping Aaron Rodgers at bay and with Vince Lombardi presumably watching from above, Tomlin punted from the Green Bay 42.

The. Green. Bay. Forty. Two.

Why?

Well, on the fourth-and-4 just beforehand, Diontae Johnson committed a false start, so the ball was marched back 5 yards.

To. The. Green. Bay. Forty. Two.

It's fear.

Midway through the same quarter, the Steelers spliced together their second touchdown drive -- eight plays, 60 yards, all no-huddle and shotgun, maybe no coincidence -- and the deficit was now 27-17 with 4:10 left. But there'd be no onside kick.

No. Onside. Kick.

It's fear.

Fear of what, exactly, I can't even guess. Maybe just a general fear of not being able to pull it off, which, by the way, can occur when one's consumed by, you know, fear.

I don't mean to focus on the offense, as the defense isn't immune to this flaw, either. Rodgers is who he is, and it's wise to plan accordingly. But the plan Tomlin and Keith Butler put together -- and they're known to do everything together -- was as vanilla as it gets. Despite having one healthy player on their entire front, Cam Heyward, they opted religiously for a four-man rush. Which worked against the Bills because T.J. and Alex Highsmith weren't hobbled by groin injuries. And which didn't work here.

Our Dale Lolley asked Tomlin if he had accepted the risk that the Packers would run through it -- AJ Dillon and Aaron Jones combined for 131 yards on the ground -- he appeared to take small exception to the question.

“Although they did have a quote/unquote successful run day, I don’t think that was difference in the game," Tomlin replied. "When you’re playing against someone who has that kind of talent in the backfield, at quarterback, on the perimeter, you’ve got to make some choices. And we understand that. We knew they would be capable of running the ball some, based on our plan. But I didn’t think it would determine the outcome, and I still don’t.”

Fair enough, but it might've helped had Rodgers, an all-time great in large part because of what's in his helmet, had been forced to think a little. Or if the Packers' offensive line, which had been struggling almost at the Steelers' level, had been forced to make a few hard calls.

Afterward, Rodgers was asked how his line had fared, and he replied, "We had a good plan. We weren’t going to just let T.J. and Melvin Ingram just kind of get going, so we thumped them and just kind of had some body presence. But there were a lot of one-on-ones, and we held up really good.”

Translation: Thanks, Steelers, for all those one-on-ones at the line!

My list runs a lot longer than this, believe it or not, but the totality of my point doesn't: This team won't get better by fleeing from every challenge. It won't create that confidence, that attitude.

Oh, the ultra-conservative approach might steal a Sunday here or there, as it did in Orchard Park. And it absolutely worked more often than not when Tomlin's rosters were overflowing with experience and moxie. But this isn't that. Or anything close to that. This situation requires a push into some serious unknown.

Give the players a chance to show what they've got, for better or worse. Even if the odds lean toward the latter. Try to make more things happen, not less.

It's not like the result would be a whole lot worse than 1-3.

GETTY

The Packers' Rashan Gary sacks Ben Roethlisberger Sunday in Green Bay, Wis.

• Joe Haden wasn't offside.

I can't imagine that's even an opinion after one consumes this endless loop:

Look at the snap by Green Bay's Hunter Bradley. Look where the ball is. Look how Haden, Fitzpatrick, then T.J. and Joe Schobert all break in perfect harmony as the ball's visibly out.

I'm never one to bash officiating. Imagine how hard that job must be, just on what's seen above.

But I'll bash the NFL and its bizarre application of rules from here to Milwaukee, and this is another such instance. There's no reason this shouldn't have been reviewable. None whatsoever. The logic applied is twofold: One, that offsides can't be reviewed -- can't review everything, which I'll buy -- and, two, that it can't be considered a scoring play since there's no change of possession since the block wouldn't have counted under the offside rule.

That's bunk. This is one continuous play. One act leads to the next. And no official halted this play. No whistle. No waving of arms. Nothing other than Minkah sprinting 75 yards to give the Steelers an apparent 17-14 lead and a world of momentum heading into halftime. Instead, the incorrect call gave Green Bay's Mason Crosby a second crack at a chip-shot field goal, and it's the Packers who were up, 17-10.

I mean, the final margin on the scoreboard was 10 points, exactly what was decided here.

Tomlin's on the Competition Committee. Here's hoping it comes up this winter.

• Back to the Ben stuff for a minute, because it drives me nuts.

Set aside emotion, file away that I've already observed he was as bad as anyone, and consider his statistical output: 26 of 40 for 232 yards, a touchdown, a pick on the final possession, two sacks, a lost fumble, five throws of 20-plus yards in the air, double that amount at 10-plus yards.

As bad as anyone. But nowhere near as bad as seems to be getting portrayed in every direction I turn. And positively not the source of the broader badness.

If I share that Rodgers' stats were strikingly similar -- 20 of 36 for 248 yards, two touchdowns, three sacks -- that probably won't cut it, so I'll try harder: Like that the Steelers' average possessions began at their 26-yard line. Like that the Packers ran up a 72-58 edge in offensive snaps, mostly because of that Green Bay running game Tomlin didn't think was too important. Like that, of Ben's 14 incompletions, I counted five that were outright bad passes. Like that, of the dozen targets that didn't result in catches, a half-dozen were toward JuJu, who'd wind up 2 for 8 in that category. Like that ... oh, just watch Trai Turner. He's No. 51 on ice skates:

" "

On what plane of reality does someone exist to objectively watch that sequence up there and think that Mason Rudolph and/or Dwayne Haskins would be the solution?

This is Pittsburgh, not some NFL expansion city. Let's not act like we're unaware of the sport's intricacies.

• I put in a request with the team to interview Turner after this game. It wasn't fulfilled. That's their -- or his -- prerogative, but I'm sharing so that no one thinks I'm just asking questions of the biggest names. Also and related, coincidence or not, offensive linemen haven't been made available after any of the four games to date.

• Check out Ben's beautiful 45-yard dime to Diontae that marked the Steelers' first opening-possession touchdown since Ernie Holmes was shaving an arrow onto his scalp:

It was really a 13-game streak without one, but the 'Fats' reference was more fun.

Anyway, I'm done with the Ben subject and instead diagramming this because of Joe Haeg's contribution. He's the right tackle taking the place of Chuks Okorafor, who's out with a concussion. Haeg doesn't have half of Chuks' bulk or strength, but he knows what he's doing. The Packers' Gary bounces offside, and Haeg still shows the quick footwork and high punch to ensure the pocket's clean long enough for Ben's bomb.

Remarkable how that works.

• Vince Williams, taking this in from his couch somewhere, I'm presuming, tweeted at me during the game to say he felt JuJu should've caught that first pass up there. When someone else took issue with that, Vinny had quite the counter, initially asking if Antonio Brown or DeAndre Hopkins would've caught it, then adding:

If you say you wanna be a number 1 and that you want 20,000,000 a year (I wrote it that way on purpose) then yes it’s a fair standard. https://t.co/r2U2SqJ1Qd
— Vince Williams (@VinnyVidiVici98) October 3, 2021

Owwwwwwwwww.

• The exertion involved in Najee Harris' 91 all-purpose yards -- 62 on 15 runs, 29 on six catches -- was close to criminal. This kid's a bulldog and a half. If he can ever get a line and a downfield passing game to buy him more space, look out.

I asked Ben about the task of stressing both those things, and he replied, “I thought we started to get the run game going. We had some decent plays. I think there’s still more out there. I keep telling Najee to keep getting physical. You’re big. Be big. Play big. Run through tackles. Don’t avoid contact—make contact. Be scary. Remember, I got to play with Jerome Bettis. Jerome created contact, and it was a game-changer when he ran people over. ... At the same time, you’re right, we have to take shots. Right now, we’re just a little bit off. I’ll look in the mirror and start by pointing the thumb at me. I’ll figure out how to make it better.”

• What's Benny Snell done to get a helmet on Sundays, much less snaps?

Seriously, he should be released by the time anyone makes it to the end of this sentence.

• I'm not optimistic about the 2021 season. It's irrational to be.

I'm also not fatalistic about it.

Next up are two games at Heinz Field, Broncos and Seahawks, and the first of those might send Drew Lock out into the huddle, given Teddy Bridgewater's concussion yesterday in Denver, where the Ravens prevailed, 23-7. The Seahawks are better, but hardly unbeatable.

After that, it's an early bye week that I'm betting the Steelers will now embrace, with all these injuries. A chance to heal up and hit reset.

Then, it's off to Cleveland. And then, it's Bears and Lions, also at Heinz Field.

Once more, I'm not optimistic. But it'd be absurd burying any team embarking on that scenario.

• Nice turnout for the Nation at Lambeau. Wasn't expecting that way up here. Might've comprised a quarter of the crowd. Very cool. And I'm sure it helped the Packers pack 78,281 into a place that holds only a couple thousand more than that.

Now, if only all those non-Pittsburgh season-ticket holders who sit on their tickets for Heinz Field would give them up, we'd see a lot less yellow back home, as well. Use it or lose it, I say. Call any number with a 412 or 724 area code, and whoever answers would happily take them through the turnstiles.

Thanks for reading, everyone! Sun's still due to make its daily appearance!