The Steelers went to halftime on Sunday night with a nine-point lead. In the second half of their showdown with the Packers, it all fell apart.
After the game, Steelers defensive lineman Cam Heyward said that the players don’t handle adversity well. That they start feeling sorry for themselves, and that it avalanches.
On Tuesday, coach Mike Tomlin was asked by reporters whether he agrees with that assessment.
“I certainly agree with that,” Tomlin said. “As I mentioned, I don’t think I like how we responded to the explosion plays, field-flipping plays, drive-producing, conversion third downs that happened in the third quarter. I didn’t think our offense responded very well to the non-call on the first third down of the half, and, you know, you don’t always have control over what happens to your endgame. Rest assured some things are gonna happen. There’s ebb and flow over the course of 60 minutes, but in that instance, as a collective, we feel like we didn’t respond in the appropriate or the desired way. We didn’t smile in the face of it. We didn’t produce the type of plays that counteract those things and get the balance back in our favor. And so we’ll certainly being critical of ourselves and we’re utilizing that as fuel as we prepare for our next opportunity.”
So how do they fix it?
“The first component of fixing it is acknowledging it,” Tomlin said. “You really don’t get an opportunity to fix it until you face those circumstances again. And so we spent some time acknowledging it. We’re gonna get back to work. We certainly believe that we work in the right spirit, we do the right things, environmentally. We’re gonna get back to work, man, and wait for our opportunity to rectify it. You can spend a lot of time talking about your ills, but the true fixes come in stadiums. And so that’s why sometimes I’m somewhat hesitant to respond to the ‘how do you fix it’ question. There’s certainly procedurally things that you go about doing that fixes it, but the fix happens in stadium, and the rest of it is just talk.”
Tomlin then was reminded that he has a mature group of players. Should they be able to handle adversity better than they did on Sunday?
“Sure,” Tomlin said. “Our kids should do what we tell them to do, but they often don’t.”
One thing that won’t happen, as the Steelers try to fix a defense that is allowing 386 yards per game, is a removal of defensive coordinator Teryl Austin’s authority to call the defensive plays.
“No, that’s not on the table as we sit here today,” Tomlin said. “We just got to keep doing what we’re doing and do it better.”
Saying it’s not on the table today suggests it could be on the table after Sunday’s visit from the Colts — who currently are averaging 385.3 yards per game of offense, the best in the league.
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