One of the most unusual aspects of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ defense is the mystery and ambiguity about who is actually running the show. While it has been well established that head coach Mike Tomlin was more involved – arguably radically more involved – with the day-to-day details of the unit, since they left Dick LeBeau as a defensive coordinator, it was never really established in a concrete way through source reports, that Tomlin was really running the defense of Keith Butler, who took over from LeBeau as coordinator.
According to Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, however, during Sunday’s loss to the Cleveland Browns, Tomlin was, in fact, calling “all defensive signals” against the Cleveland Browns. He also claims that this has been the case “for most of the season, if not more”.
There are many top coaches in the league who maintain game responsibilities for the offensive or defensive unit, even though they nominally have a coordinator for that role, although sometimes there is not even a coordinator. The Browns, for example, have Alex Van Pelt as their offensive coordinator, but Kevin Stefanski plays the cards. Mike Vrabel commands the defense of the Titans of Tennessee.
The Steelers, however, have long had a dedicated offensive and defensive coordinator and entrust them with the responsibility of navigating the minutiae of the game involved in executing the game plan that was collectively put together over the week.
Of course, it is the prerogative of every head coach to intervene here and there and make it clear that they will be running this or that play, and Tomlin certainly did. He, like all top coaches, routinely makes executive decisions – and, of course, is frequently questioned in the process.
Whatever it is worth, I reviewed the transmission of the Steelers’ defensive plays in the first half, and although I did not observe any dead dice, I saw Tomlin with a sheet in his hands and him looking down once or twice when he was visible . I also saw Butler with his hands in his pockets.
According to Aditi Kinkhabwala, “the contracts for almost the entire defense team are up,” she wrote in a tweet yesterday. She also claims that Tomlin called the defense “since the end of Dick LeBeau’s term,” but that seems to be a rather suspicious statement, and there were certainly times when it was obvious that Butler was calling the shots.
# Thieves there are many free agent players as well as coaches. The contracts for almost the entire defense team are up. (Don’t forget: this is Mike Tomlin’s defense. It’s his project and he’s been calling it since the end of Dick LeBeau’s term.)
– Aditi Kinkhabwala (@AKinkhabwala) January 11, 2021
I have never fully believed the claims that Tomlin has been calling the defense as the chief coordinator for years on end, because all of these reports came without any evidence. And the images transmitted indicated the opposite (for example, that Butler was communicating moves from a call sheet to the defense). I found no immediately obvious evidence in a brief review that Butler was doing this on Sunday, however.