PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – Twice flagged for illegal formations, another for a false start, burning timeouts for pre-snap errors-how does this happen SIX months into the season? Steelers finished with nine penalties in all against Arizona and it’s not the physical penalties that kill, but the mental ones.
They aren’t mentally tough enough, and it’s not reporters or talk show hosts or fans saying it, it’s the Steelers players themselves.
“It’s very frustrating,” said tight end Pat Freiermuth. “We’ve had the same formations for three years now. Study the game-plan longer, communicate, line up where you are supposed to line up.”
“This late in the season, you can’t beat yourselves and expect to win games,” said receiver Allen Robinson.
“It’s little things, nothing that practice won’t fix,” said rookie Broderick Jones. “It’s nothing to do, everybody got to lock in and be on the same page.”
Diontae Johnson said there is nothing mystical about the mistakes they are making. He said there aren’t excuses, but then listed a number of them. Jones mentioned it in ‘everybody got to lock in’ and Freiermuth about lining up where you are supposed to line up.
Third-year offensive lineman Dan Moore hit on it.
“We lack execution and mental toughness in certain situations,” Moore said.
That’s on the players. Sure, it’s a new offensive coordinator and play-caller, but they’ve been with the team for a couple of years. No excuses there. Wasted time outs, illegal formations, false starts, not giving a player enough room to catch a punt-just stupid mistakes that fringe playoff teams can’t make, even against bad teams.
“Just sloppiness, lack of execution,” said quarterback Mitch Trubisky. “Shot ourselves in the foot a lot. The negative plays really killed us, the penalties, the formation mess-up, not having the right personnel in there. Just overall sloppy today and we hurt ourselves.”
Tomlin said there needs to be extreme urgency around the routine things. In his 17th year, Tomlin said he expects those mistakes to be zero. They weren’t, again.
What is he doing to change it?
“Certainly, we are open to turning the stones over,” Tomlin said. “This week’s prep is in its infancy, so I don’t know what that might be. Certainly not opposed to doing whatever is required to improve things that are controllables.”
I’m not even sure what any of what he said really means.
The reality of an NFL situation is you don’t have full two-deeps you can go to and punish those who struggle with dumb mistakes. Maybe you bench a Diontae Johnson for Calvin Austin. Will that make you better? You replace the only starter who’ve known over the last couple of years at center, but would that really help? Other positions, injuries have depleted your options.
It’s the clichés you often hear from players and coaches about guys looking in the mirror, pointing the thumb instead of the finger.
This team is not mentally tough across the board. They don’t have player here or player there who is dialed in on every down, and it only takes one, even though they don’t have the talent to overcome those shortcomings. Messages or punishments need to change to get their attention, but there is only one quick fix, and it wasn’t firing the offensive coordinator.
Can this guilty player making a mistake study more, communicate better, focus and be more mentally tough?
Tomlin will often say the tape doesn’t lie and the tape tells you they won’t.