Mike Tomlin's Achilles Heel

Every coach has one. You can point to it with even the most successful of coaches. Some coaches are great tacticians (usually on one side of the ball or the other), but aren't good with personnel. Some are great at preparing their team, but not so good in game situations. Some are terrible clock managers. The knock on some guys is that they simply can't win the big one. And those are the good coaches, bear in mind.

In the five years that I've watched Mike Tomlin, I wondered about his flaw and how it might manifest itself. After the Steelers shit the bed against a bad San Diego Chargers team at Heinz Field on Sunday, I realize what that flaw is -- his teams underperform against 'lesser' teams.

Call it an achilles heel or a blind spot, this seems to be an area where he struggles. Maybe he lacks a specific talent or an ability to see this as a problem. Whatever it is -- willfulness or simply a skill deficit -- this is more than a trend. It has become a very pronounced pattern.

Ravens 17, Steelers 14, Post-Mortem

Five photos that sum up the loss yesterday.

The Ravens O Line played great and despite the defense's efforts to get to Flacco, they always seemed to be a split second late. Flacco himself got rid of the ball quickly and efficiently. He has come under some heat in Baltimore, but yesterday should shut up those critics. At least for a while. On the last drive of the game, he was perfect and his touchdown pass to TJ Whoseyourmama is the kind that great quarterbacks build careers on.

Bruce Arians' insistence on calling slow developing, deep pass plays when a dink and dunk approach might have worked better, kept the Steelers defense off the field and, you know, picked up first downs.

11 penalties for 88 yards. Ed Hochuli and his crew had awfully quick trigger fingers with the yellow hankies, and I personally believe that Hochuli loves getting face time and showing off his amazing pythons on national tee vee. That said, 11 penalties are going to kill you. Every time.

These penalties deserve their own category. After an amazing defensive stop by the Steelers, just an awesome goal-line stand, Matt "a Draft Pick is a Terrible Thing to Waste" Spaeth and Chris Kemoeatu each jumped on the following series. Who knows? The Steelers may not have been able to pick up a victory ensuring first down there, but those penalties made sure they didn't. And why the hell was Spaeth even out there blocking? He's a terrible blocker. Well, he's pretty much terrible at everything, come to think of it. Off-sides? On home turf? In the waning moments of the game? Be serious.

Of course, dipshit pulled one kick right and then the second one left.


The guy has one job to do. Just one. Were this a new phenomena -- Skippy missing make-able kicks in tight games -- I might just chalk it up to a bad day. Everybody has bad days. I can live with that. But Reed started to deteriorate last year in Chicago and in Cincinnati. This year, he's back to that 2009 form, missing an easy game winner against the Falcons and then yesterday's execrable performance.
Does anybody remember how Reed got the job? Anybody? Bueller? Bueller?

Todd Peterson blew some very make-able kicks and Bill Cowher finally got fed up, brought in a bunch of kickers on rainy day and tried them all out. By the end of that week, Peterson was out of a job and Steelers fans had a new kicker. Food for thought, coach Tomlin, food for thought.