Tim Benz: Whoever points at Arthur Smith for Cleveland loss should point at Mike Tomlin too
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CBS NFL insider Jason La Canfora appeared on 93.7 The Fan on Tuesday morning. He made the following statement about Pittsburgh Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith based on what unnamed people within the team’s headquarters are telling him.
“There’s people in that building looking at Arthur Smith, like, ‘Come on now, Hoss. If we’re going to use (Justin) Fields, let’s use him to run the ball in the red zone — not coming cold on third and long and throw(ing) it.’ Why is (Jaylen) Warren not yet the feature (back)?’” La Canfora said to Adam Crowley. “What’s got to happen to get Warren the ball more when it’s dictated? In that game, he was the better option in the pass game and in the run game. What’s up with his snap counts? Some of the personnel usage — not just that running back but inside the red zone. Like, ‘Why are we taking some big bodies off for smaller bodies?’”
La Canfora said what he is hearing from “inside that building” extends beyond last week’s loss to the Cleveland Browns.
“I think there’s a sense that they could be orchestrating that offense at a higher level than it is, and that’s not exonerating the quarterback play,” La Canfora said. “I think they feel like more could be done. ‘Let’s try to reassess what we’re doing in-game and how quickly maybe we’re ready to deviate from how we thought this was going to go.’ You know what I mean? Or, ‘What we thought the script was going to be to what’s actually going to work in this situation.’”
Based on what he said at his press conference, it sounds like Tomlin at least partially agrees with those anonymous assessments.
“We focused on ourselves in a couple of areas we feel like we need to shore up, particularly red-zone offense and red-zone defense,” Tomlin said of some self-scouting during the long weekend after the Thursday night game. “We treated the last several days as a mini-bye from a coach’s perspective and took a deep dive on some schematics in those areas and then turned our attention to Cincinnati and what they do in those areas, all in an effort to make the engineering of victory more fluid. We feel like there is more meat on that bone offensively and defensively.”
Regardless of who is doing the whispering, my bigger concern is: Are we doing this again? Already?
Less than a dozen games into Smith’s tenure as the Steelers’ offensive coordinator, are we already separating Tomlin from his OC in terms of the game plan and culpability for what’s going wrong with the offense?
Didn’t we just do this with Matt Canada? And Randy Fichtner? And Todd Haley?
And when I say “we,” I don’t just mean La Canfora. I mean, whoever it is that’s talking to La Canfora and any of us in the media who may be running with this story.
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Let’s avoid yet another repeat of putting the offensive coordinator on an island in terms of criticism for the game plan and divorcing Tomlin entirely from any sort of responsibility he may have for the personnel, its usage or game planning.
There’s no way that Fields was used in the manner he was without approval — tacit or direct — from Tomlin.
Before the game, on the Steelers Audio Network, Tomlin wholeheartedly stressed his desire to use Fields.
“We utilize him because we feel like we have two really capable quarterbacks,” Tomlin told Bob Labriola. “And I hate not utilizing talent, and particularly talent that is unique. His physical skill set is rare. And when given an opportunity to infuse that in games, we’re certainly going to do it.”
At his press conference Tuesday, Tomlin even defended Fields’ deep throw on that ill-fated third-down call late in the game in Cleveland.
“We felt good about it, to be quite honest with you. It was a weighty moment. It was third-and-medium,” Tomlin said. “They had 11 guys within five yards of the line of scrimmage. We had (George Pickens) matched up on a corner not named Denzel Ward (Martin Emerson Jr.). That feels like more than a 50-50 ball to me, and so we were comfortable with that decision.”
So even if Tomlin wasn’t directly responsible for the play call of Fields’ deep ball or the amount of his usage, he sure seems to have had the same mindset as Smith.
As a result, whoever is complaining about Smith, should be complaining about Tomlin too.
Unless it’s Tomlin himself complaining or someone on his behalf. That would surprise me, though, if for no other reason than that stuff from Tomlin usually comes from his buddy Jay Glazer of Fox in the form of direct quotes — not anonymous sourcing.
Whatever the case, in what had started off as a pleasant departure of a Steelers season, this suddenly feels like more of the same.
It is yet another year when, in one week, we are promoting Tomlin as a Coach of the Year candidate, and then the next week, we are placing all the blame for something that went wrong in a loss onto the shoulders of his handpicked offensive coordinator.
It’s an all too familiar routine and not one I’m interested in revisiting.
The loss to the Browns was bad. All around. Smith was certainly a part of that. But so was Tomlin, even if someone “in that building” wants to paint a different picture.