NFL Week 2 reactions and overreactions

We talk about Mike Tomlin, how two AFC teams are ruining their franchise quarterbacks, Baker Mayfield, the Tush Push and more!!

We’re just going to make this a weekly feature as our weekly football post, so let’s get into it.

1. I am not going to ride the emotional week-to-week roller coaster of the Pittsburgh Steelers two weeks into the season. They have not looked impressive. There are valid and legitimate concerns.

But it’s also Week 2, and there is still a lot of noise two weeks into the season. It usually takes a few weeks before you really start to get a sense for what your team is, and right now my expectations are the same as they were after Week 1, which were the same as they were before the season.

That expectation is still 10 wins and another early playoff exit. In other words — the same as we have been seeing. If they go through this next stretch of five or six games where they face a few backup quarterbacks, a few bad quarterbacks and a few bad teams and only come out of it with a 2-5 or 3-4 record, and also keep getting dominated defensively, then my expectations will obviously begin to change. Until then … I’m not changing much.

I do, however, have a pretty significant big picture Steelers take centered around head coach Mike Tomlin.

I will preface this take by saying the coaching staff has done a VERY bad job through the first two weeks. The offensive game plan in Week 1 against the Jets was outstanding. It did not come together in Week 2. Defensively it has been a failure across the board from scheme and preparation (they got beat for a touchdown by the same play, from the same formation, from the same spot on the field, two weeks in a row!) to the players themselves.

It’s been bad. It’s ALL been bad.

But again, I think it’s fair to say “it’s been bad” while still not riding the roller coaster of emotions and wanting to let things settle in for the season. Things change rapidly in the NFL.

My biggest takeaway on Tomlin at this point is that from a big picture perspective I think he’s a pretty good football coach. Maybe even a really good football coach. At one point he was a great coach. There are going to be people that bring up clock management, timeout usage and the always popular “adjustments” but the bottom line is his team still wins a lot of football games. More than most NFL teams. Even recently. And it is always competitive no matter what the roster looks like.

The problem with Tomlin is that he’s become a bad — and borderline awful — talent evaluator.

He puts together a bad roster.

He picks bad players.

He’s not good at it.

And that, more than anything, is what is holding the Steelers back. Both in recent years and in the present day. And that is what is keeping them in the NFL’s no-man’s land where they are not a *bad* team, but are also not a serious Super Bowl contender.

I think I have a pretty compelling argument here. So let’s make it.

For the past, I don’t know, five years? There has been a yearly discussion at the start of the season as to how this might be the year the bottom falls out on the Pittsburgh Steelers and they have a truly bad season. This is going to be the year they won five or six games. We talk about how bad the roster is, how they don’t have enough good players, how they have major flaws and major issues, how they can’t find and develop a quarterback. Even when they start 1-4 or 2-6 the discussion reaches a boiling point. And then they still end up winning a lot of games, and either competing for a playoff spot or taking one.

I don’t need to hear about how they haven’t actually won any of those playoff games — I know. And it’s not good enough.

The point here is that all of those criticisms about the roster, and the quarterback play, and the continued flaws are all valid criticisms. They are all, for the most part, true. Disturbingly true. They are why the playoff wins are not coming.

And that is where Tomlin’s failure comes in.

It’s not what he does on Sunday’s September through January.

It’s what he does in March and April.

The Steelers have not had above average — let alone truly elite — quarterback play for YEARS. Even going back to the end of the Ben Roethlisberger era, his last couple of years were not great, he missed almost a full season in 2019, and since he retired they’ve been using a revolving door of washed up veterans and bad young players.

That alone lowers a team’s ceiling. If you don’t have the quarterback, you’re not a Super Bowl contender. Literally nothing else matters.

But it’s not just that.

The Steelers haven’t been a strong drafting team for even longer.

This team used to not only hit on all of its first-rounders, it would find stars in the middle and late rounds. Solid starters. Big-time contributors. That was the foundation on which championship level teams were always built here.

Even early in Tomlin’s tenure they were still finding those guys.

But over the past decade, and especially over the past five or six years, there has been a staggering and shocking drop-off in the types of players they have selected.

I know this is not a perfect formula or measuring stick, but I went over every NFL team’s draft between 2015 and 2024, a literal 10-year stretch, and looked at two things — how many Pro Bowl appearances did your draft picks make, and how many first-team All-Pros did they get. In other words: Are you drafting impact players and stars.

During that time the players the Steelers drafted have combined for only 14 Pro Bowl appearances … and the overwhelming majority of those belong to one guy (T.J. Watt).

They have just four first-team All-Pros in that group (and they ALL belong to Watt).

In 10 years they’ve basically drafted one, true difference-maker.

Not good enough.

Just for shits and giggles, their chief AFC North rival, the Baltimore Ravens, have had 36 Pro Bowl appearances and nine first-team All-Pros come out of those same draft classes.

Just for even more shits and giggles, the NFL average over that time period is 16 Pro Bowl appearances and four first-team All-Pros. So the Steelers have been an average, to slightly below average drafting team (at least in terms of finding star-level, impact players) for a decade now.

It’s a problem. And it’s only gotten worse.

If you go back to the start of the 2018 draft, the Steelers have had just two Pro Bowl appearances from their draft classes — Diontae Johnson and Najee Harris both had one each.

They have had zero first team All-Pros.

Recent draft classes have also produced less-than-inspiring results in general.

Broderick Jones looks like a massive bust at this point. The jury is still out on Troy Fautanu. Zach Frazier seems like he might be more of “just a guy” rather than somebody to continue their legacy of great centers. Roman Wilson can not even see the field or have the ball thrown in his direction. A rookie in this year’s class botched a kickoff in unspeakable ways. They traded up for Devin Bush and he turned out to be a huge bum. Chase Claypool was their first pick in 2020 and he was also a total bum.

They draft a lot of bums.

They’ve picked some GOOD players. Joey Porter Jr. is pretty good. Pat Freiermuth is pretty good. Alex Highsmith is pretty good. Calvin Austin is pretty good. But none of them are stars or elite players. And they also haven’t picked enough of those guys that are just … good.

The good are far outnumbered by the bad and the bums.

I know Tomlin doesn’t have the title of general manager, but he’s been here the entire time and he has a clear hand in the drafting process. He’s not getting players he doesn’t want.

And I don’t think it’s necessarily a matter of them not coaching these guys up well, because none of these guys have gone elsewhere and excelled.

The only player they’ve drafted in recent years that went on to be a player elsewhere is Kevin Dotson. You can include Javon Hargrave if you want, but he was also good here and somebody they probably should have paid to keep (I said that at the time).

Devin Bush, Chase Claypool, Diontae Johnson, Kenny Pickett, Kendrick Green, James Washington and right on down the list, these guys were and are still bums in their next stops under different coaches. JuJu Smith-Schuster talked about learning more about offense in Kansas City than he ever learned in Pittsburgh, and a lot of people used that as a big gotcha moment for Tomlin. Maybe he did learn more. Maybe it was an indictment of the Steelers. But guess what — he was a significantly better player in Pittsburgh. SIGNIFICANTLY better. He was actually good here.

Hell, Najee Harris can not even see the field in Los Angeles so far.

Their first-round picks in 2019 (Bush), 2021 (Harris) and 2022 (Pickett) are all currently backups on other teams. They had no first-round pick in 2020, but their first pick that year (Claypool) has caught 22 passes since leaving Pittsburgh and has not appeared in an NFL game since 2023.

I mean … holy shit. You can not win a championship that way. You can’t. You just can’t.

Just as another comparison: For the 10-year stretch between 2002 and 2011 (which was five years of Bill Cowher and five years of Tomlin) the Steelers draft classes produced 40 Pro Bowl appearances and 14 first-team All-Pro appearances. It’s not a coincidence that time period coincided with three Super Bowl appearances and two Super Bowl wins. Then they followed that up in the next few draft classes by taking All-Pros like David Decastro, Le’Veon Bell and pro-bowlers like Ryan Shazier. They were still hitting on big picks.

It is a night-and-day difference now.

But here’s where I really get into my Tomlin take: Despite a decade of bad drafting they’ve still won 101 games between 2015 and now. That’s the second-most in the NFL over that stretch. Drafting that many bad players and having inconsistent to bad quarterback play should not result in that many wins unless you’re doing something else right.

Even going back to the start of the 2019 season, it’s the same story. I already told you how bad the draft classes have been during that stretch, but do you realize how bad their quarterback play has been over that time? It’s not just bad. It’s not just that they don’t have a long-term answer. It’s been wretched. Their collective passer rating since the start of the 2019 season has been a brutal 85.7. That is 26th in the NFL over that time, and that INCLUDES two years with Ben Roethlisberger still playing. Teams with quarterback play that bad typically lose a lot of games. In fact, every team that ranks 20th or worse in passer rating during that time has a losing record — except for the Steelers.

The other teams in that group have a combined winning percentage of .386 over that time period … that averages out to six wins per 17 games.

The Steelers winning percentage over that time is .585. That averages out to 10 wins per 17 games. That’s eighth-best in the NFL over that stretch.

Since Ben Roethlisberger retired, and since they’ve been using Mitch Trubisky, Kenny Pickett, Mason Rudolph, Justin Fields and washed up veterans like Russell Wilson and Aaron Rodgers, they are still 29-22 overall. That’s the 10th best winning percentage in the NFL over that stretch. They have zero right to be in that spot.

They are an anomaly. Especially when you factor in the consistently sub-par drafting.

I would love to hear an explanation for why a team with such consistently bad quarterback play, and such consistently poor drafting, continues to win so many games when every other team under the same circumstances loses so many games. It’s not just luck. Teams don’t get lucky in the NFL over multiple years.

If you give Tomlin a six-win roster, he’ll get you eight wins. Give him an eight-win roster, he’ll give you 10 wins. His biggest strength is getting the most out of mediocre to bad players and mediocre to bad rosters. It might not be pretty. It might not be perfect. But they find a way. There is something to be said for that. A lot, actually.

Unfortunately for him, he is the one largely responsible for the mediocre to bad rosters he has been dealt.

That, more than anything, is what will be his downfall with the Steelers.

He is not picking the right players.

That is on him. It has to be.

Now let’s get into the rest of the Week 2 NFL reactions and overreactions including how the Cincinnati Bengals and Houston Texans have failed their quarterbacks, Baker Mayfield, and more.