PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – From the most fundamental job on a football field to early game struggles to the potential return of a leading tackler. Other topics covered by Mike Tomlin during his weekly news conference beyond Justin Fields and Russell Wilson and injuries.
Center/QB
We saw it in the preseason and it’s continued into the season. It hasn’t just been a typical under center or shotgun issues, just too many fumbles between the quarterback and center. It’s fundamental from the very beginning of playing football.
“It has our attention,” Tomlin said. “It has had our attention, and hopefully I'll continue working that area, will make those issues subside. That's my mentality about it.”
Early in the game Fields was stepped on by center Zach Frazier as he was back-peddling for a handoff while under center. The play in the final series is one that was unique. A snap off the helmet of Fields that created a 12-yard loss and doomed the Steelers final opportunity to win the game.
Fields explained it well after the game, that he signaled for the snap with his leg kick. When Frazier made a last-second call to the line creating a pause, he surveyed the secondary and while his eyes were there, the snap came. Fields took blame for it, as he should have. As he said, he needs to be ready after giving a sign.
Tomlin said it’s the beginning of relationships between not only Fields and Frazier, but they’ve had three different left guards since the preseason. He believed communication was strained, especially on the road. Tomlin said the fix is to stick with what they are teaching and continue to work on it and these issues will go away.
Refs were wrong
Steelers safety Minkah Fitzpatrick said he was just playing football as he protested the 15-yard penalty against him which directly led to a fourth-quarter touchdown. DeShon Elliott also questioned the call in very direct terms. Tomlin said he talked to the league office in New York and they agreed with him that the call was wrong.
In such a key play in the game, what does Tomlin say to his team when something like that happens.
“You're going to get wronged from time to time, just like the opponent's going to make a play from time to time,” Tomlin said. “It's how we respond to it. We still had a lot of opportunity to win that game after that call in particular.”
“We’d better be mentally tough, and we better move on to the next snap and just understand at times that's a component of the game. The officials aren't perfect. None of us are. We make mistakes in game that we have to overcome, and if they make a mistake in game, we better be prepared to overcome that as well.”
Early struggles
One of the worst teams in the league scoring in the first half with only three points on Sunday, what does Tomlin say they are doing to correct that?
“We're just going to keep practicing,” Tomlin explained. “I imagine we're not the only ones who have issues with that, particularly if three out of your first four games have been in hostile environments. And so, we're not going to change our approach.”
Tomlin then said there probably needs to be more urgency with the work leading up to games.
Holcomb back in LB mix?
A few new faces in the Steelers linebacker corps this year (Patrick Queen and Payton Wilson) and while tackle numbers are fairly good, there have also been missed plays.
“I think it's been solid,” Tomlin said of the linebackers. “I like the division of labor in particular as we infuse new guys in, figuring out what their skill set is, how
they communicate what they do well in specific to the two guys that you mentioned. But I'm comfortable with the way things are trending from that positional group.”
They have played so far without Cole Holcomb, the linebacker suffered a major knee injury in the Tennessee game in Week 8 coming off his first double-figure tackle game with the Steelers the week before. He was averaging 7.4 tackles per game in 2023.
Tomlin allowed for the chance Holcomb could start his practice window to attempt to come off the Physically Unable to Perform list on Wednesday. He said that wouldn’t mean there are too many bodies, rather it’s only going to help them with Holcomb in the mix.