Mike Tomlin has a lot to smile about these days
The Steelers tend to get strong as the season goes along. However, the team already sits in advantageous place within the AFC, sporting a 6-2 record.
This past week Steelers linebacker Vince Williams reaffirmed those thoughts, stating: “We’re a second-half team.”
I tend to agree with Mike Tomlin, as his yearly proclamation of “It’s December Football” start to take hold. As players decompressed by having fun and visiting their alma mater’s during the bye week, all I keep seeing is a big smile on Coach’s face. Usually, that smile doesn’t happen until we actually start hearing Christmas music. (Okay Starbucks does have a jump on that already!)
Going back to watch the first eight games of the season during the bye week, I noticed how the Steelers played. I noticed how they improved with each game, and where those flashes of getting to the postseason may come.
One of those flashes is the return of a physical Steelers defense. In addition, the team is relatively healthy, which is not what can be said about other teams around the league, with position players and quarterbacks dropping like flies. Heading into the bye week, that has to have our coaching staff grinning from ear-to-ear.
One that might not make Coach T smile as much (at least not publicly) are touchdown celebrations. But it sure is funny watching rookie phenom JuJu Smith-Schuester bringing the fun and “silliness” (Tomlinism) back to football.
However, what I should be talking about is the actual touchdowns, as in scoring. Not every win has been pretty, but they’ve been enough to bring Pittsburgh to a 6-2 start for the first time since 2011. That year the team went 12-4; they could be on pace to be even better this season.
I can see why Coach is smiling, but it’s more than just the wins. I think Tomlin is also having fun. He has not liked some of the off-field drama, but he has been more forthright with the media than he ever was before. You can see him wink at players with that knowing grin when those trick plays (think fake punt), or those record-breaking passes (Ben Roethlisberger to JuJu for 97-yards) actually work.
The main reason I believe Coach Tomlin is smiling a lot more these days?
The second half.
If the Steelers continue to win, especially against struggling teams, they could finish up the next eight games with a 7-1 record. They could even run the table and win all eight games. Twelve or thirteen wins would be enough to earn the first seed in the conference and a bye during the opening week of the playoffs. Though the Steelers control their destiny (with a large-looming game against the Patriots in December) one would think they should be no worse than the second seed.
In 2010 and 2008 when they were the number two seed, they made it to the Super Bowl both times.
It has been a long nine years since the last Steelers Super Bowl win, and they are currently favored to take it all by the odds-makers 4:1; only behind the Patriots of course.
But the Patriots are not the same team as they have been in previous years, with their best receiver out for the season, a struggling defense, and Tom Brady playing at 40 years old.
The Steelers must play with a sense of urgency in the second half, and by all accounts, they have some new additions that have already proven, unlike last season, that the stage is not too big for them.
They are embracing it.
That gives Mike Tomlin, and the rest of us, a lot to smile about.
