Unbelievable.
How many times have you said that since you woke up, realizing that, yes it’s true, the Steelers did lose to the Browns? The “hadn’t been to the playoffs in 18 years” Browns, the “hadn’t really practiced in 2 weeks” Browns, the “Head Coach home with Covid” Browns, the “little brother” Browns.
But like a lot of little brothers over the years, the Browns finally got theirs, taking advantage of nearly every Pittsburgh mistake (and goodness knows there were plenty of those), punching their cocky big brothers in the mouth, 48-37, and it wasn’t even that close.
Unbelievable.
But was it really?
This season, they imploded down the stretch. Just as they had the season before and the season before that.
At least the last time they made the playoffs they only gave up 45 points.
You saw the first play of the game. As Maurkice Pouncey airmailed the shotgun over the 6-5 QB and the Browns fell on it for a touchdown, I’ll bet you said it - “Unbelievable.”
Cris Collinsworth kind of did on NBC - “you never see that happen.” But, of course, we have seen that happen more than a few times in recent years so it wasn’t unbelievable.
Then that ugly Ben Roethlisberger floater on the next series? Unbelievable! But, no, we’ve seen a few of those in recent weeks.
Robert Spillane and Vince Williams trying to cover Jarvis Landry? Unbelievable? Nope. Opposing teams have taken advantage of that WR/LB mismatch with some regularity.
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Other things that might normally fall into the “unbelievable” category – punting from the opposing 38-yard line when trailing 28-0, punting on 4th-and-1 near midfield and down 12 at the start of the fourth quarter, and going for an unnecessary 2-point PAT then kicking when they should have gone for 2 – totally believable because we’d seen those flawed strategies before.
The Steelers have clearly established a late-season pattern of not just coming up short but failing and - in the cases of 2017, 2018 and now 2020 – failing miserably when it’s mattered most.
When I asked Mike Tomlin after the game how he should be held accountable I got Tomlin at his “stock answer” best. “It is what it is,” he answered. “Our record is our record. Our performances are our performances.
Don't run away from that.” (You know, like Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt did from his defense.)
What actually would be unbelievable is if Tomlin gets fired. That’s not going to happen but clearly a staff shake-up is in order.
It’s so cliché to go after the coordinators but this might be the right time to move on from Randy Fichtner and Keith Butler, both long-time Tomlin associates.
Matt Canada and Teryl Austin are in place and have coordinator experience but would either bring fresh ideas and real change or would it be more of the same, especially on defense where Tomlin may have been calling many of the shots, anyway.
Steelers management – i.e. Chairman Art Rooney II – will not overreact and he shouldn’t. But even after he takes a step back, the pattern is painfully obvious. It’s as painful as Ben Roethlisberger’s $41 million cap hit in 2021, which still isn’t as painful as watching Ben his last 5 games (the final 20 minutes against the Colts notwithstanding).
Roethlisberger has said if he feels he can’t help the team win any longer he’ll step away but how would he react if the Steelers told him that’s how they feel? Taking a 19 million dollar cap hit is preferable to paying over twice as much for below-the-line performance.
If Ben goes, think Jacksonville (with tons of cap space) might like a veteran Pro Bowl center to help break in Trevor Lawrence? Maurkice Pouncey is from Florida, after all, and if his QB is gone, he might go for it.
That would offset a decent amount of the cap space they’d be using at QB.
We knew the end of an era was creeping up on us but, based on the last 6 weeks (and actually a few before that), that end is a whole lot closer than we imagined. In fact, looks like it’s already here.
Believe it.