NFL Week 13 reactions and overreactions

Talking some football. Specifically, some Mike Tomlin football.

The NFL Week 14 schedule might be starting today, but I still have some thoughts on this past week.

1. Well, that went about as I expected for the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday against the Buffalo Bills.

I said going into Sunday’s game that this is going to be a big stretch of games for Mike Tomlin and his future. The vibes have already been negative around this team, and this season things are starting to get even more aggressively negative. If they limp to the finish again, miss the playoffs, blow a three-game lead in the division, and continue to get called out by former players, all while visiting fans take over their home stadium that is all going to be really, really difficult for Art Rooney to overlook.

While the Buffalo fan takeover was not quite as bad as I was initially thinking it would be (there were still a lot), the vibes turned absolutely rancid in the second half.

Not only did the Steelers play a completely uncompetitive and unserious 30 minutes of football, the fans in attendance started to revolt.

The “Fire Tomlin” chants arrived.

Renegade was booed (as it should have been in that instance. I am not one of the people that thinks it should be retired, but there is a time and place for it and that was absolutely not the time or the place).

It just seemed like a miserable experience.

There has always been criticism of Tomlin from the Steelers fan base. Some of it valid. Some of it misplaced. I have been pro-Tomlin longer than most just because I think he has gotten a lot more out of this team given the quarterback situation than most other coaches would. I do not want to watch a bad team, and for the better part of the past decade I have firmly been of the belief that there was an overwhelmingly higher chance the next coach would be significantly worse. I still believe that was almost certainly the case.

But eventually things do run their course.

I started to swing to the side of “maybe it is time” toward the end of last season. It is hard to ignore what we are watching right now. Because this team’s struggles are not just about the lack of a quarterback. That would change an awful lot, but the decline of the defense and the poor talent evaluation that has become apparent at both the college and pro levels is a pretty big indictment of the whole operation.

2. The crazy thing is that for as bleak as things look right now the Steelers are still in a position where they are in control of their own path, and it starts Sunday in Baltimore against a Baltimore Ravens team that is similarly stale with its long-time head coach. The thing about the Ravens is they actually HAVE the quarterback, which should make their lack of playoff success and staleness even more damning.

We have already learned a lot about this Steelers team this season and what it is.

We are really going to learn a lot over the next five weeks, and especially in these two games against the Ravens.

If they let the Ravens run all over them, dominate them, and win easily then you can probably just pack it up on this season, perhaps the Tomlin era as a whole.

Art Rooney loves stability and loves being able to say he has only had three head coaches in 60-plus years, but he is not going to bury his head in the sand that much.

Former players are still speaking out (shit, Ben Roethlisberger said Tomlin should take the Penn State job …. what we are we even doing here), and now the fans in the stadium and season-ticket holders are making their voices heard.

The tides are shifting. This season really does feel different.

3. I can not even begin to tell you how much respect I have for the Buffalo Bills and the way they won that game on Sunday. I still am not sure how good that team actually is. In an AFC full of badly flawed teams with obvious holes and weaknesses, they are definitely one of them.

They do, however, have Josh Allen and James Cook. Allen is one of the best players in football and masks a lot.

Cook is just a monster when the Bills lean on him.

And man alive did they lean on him on Sunday.

Not only did they lean on him, they ran the same damn play 26 times at the Steelers who were unable to stop it.

I love that. Love it. LOVE IT. I can not say enough words about how much I respect that mindset.

Too many coaches in the NFL get too caught up in their scheme, and philosophy, and showing everybody how clever and creative they can be with their play design and play-calling. You do not need to go five-wide on third-and-one. You do not need to cook up a creative play design for short-yardage situations. Sometimes football still is about lining up and kicking the ass of the person across from you. If something is working, keep doing it until the other team shows it can stop you.

The Steelers never showed they could stop the Bills running game.

The Bills never stopped doing it.

Good for them.

4. If Aaron Rodgers can not hold the ball in his left hand and can not take a snap from under center he should not be playing. Those are severe limitations to what the offense can do and he is not good enough at this stage of his career to overcome that. Mason Rudolph is not a great option. Neither is a one-handed Rodgers.

Now, for some thoughts on the rest of the NFL including the Chicago Bears, the AFC South, I am not buying what anybody is selling about the Cincinnati Bengals’ chances and more.