Ben Roethlisberger and Mike Tomlin enjoyed a fruitful 15-year partnership with the Steelers, but evidently that isn’t enough to shield the veteran coach from criticism from his former quarterback.
Roethlisberger spoke Monday about the Steelers’ disappointing loss to the Patriots in an episode of his “Footbahlin with Ben Roethlisberger.”
He noted many of Pittsburgh’s shortcomings in that upset loss and seemed to take aim at the team’s recent struggles, lack of discipline and overall attitude throughout the season.
“Maybe the tradition of the Pittsburgh Steelers is done,” Roethlisberger said.
This isn’t the first time that Roethlisberger has openly criticized his former team. He referred to some of the team’s players as “coddled” last season in comments that drew the ire of defensive lineman Cameron Heyward.
That said, this is one of the first times that Roethlisberger has called out Tomlin. These comments also come as Tomlin is facing pressure coming off back-to-back losses against 2-10 teams that have put Pittsburgh’s once solid-looking playoff chances in a precarious situation.
Roethlisberger didn’t call out Tomlin by name while dissecting the Steelers’ loss to the Patriots, but he was critical of the team’s coaching in the contest.
Notably, Roethlisberger took issue with the careless nature in which Tomlin and Co. burned their timeouts throughout the second half.
“You can’t afford in the second half of games to burn silly timeouts and to not have them late in the game,” Roethlisberger said. “To me, that’s bad coaching.”
The 41-year-old went on to explain why those burned timeouts mattered. Saving them for the final drive would have helped give Mitch Trubisky a much better chance to mount a potential game-tying drive.
“There’s some feel you have to have in those situations because timeouts can be so valuable, as we saw in this game,” he explained.
“If we have one more timeout there, we get a completion, we can work the middle of the field, and all you got to do is give Boz [Chris Boswell] a 60-yard [field-goal] chance.
Give him a chance, and he’ll tie the game. I like my chances in overtime because they scored all their points early, and the momentum had shifted.”
Roethlisberger has a point. The Steelers weren’t able to work the middle of the field as much on their penultimate drive with just two minutes remaining in regulation.
And at the end of the game, Trubisky was able to hit Diontae Johnson and Allen Robinson for consecutive big plays, but the Steelers ran out of time to try any sort of a Hail Mary or last-second field goal to send it to overtime.
Thus, it’s easy to understand why Roethlisberger is a bit frustrated. It’s uncharacteristic of the Steelers to make mistakes like that and cost themselves chances to win games, even if it is in an ugly fashion.
