Steelers' solution: Shut up, keep it up

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By Dejan Kovacevic

Oh, to have been a bug-equipped fly on the wall at the Steelers' South Side headquarters the past few days. To have heard Mike Tomlin peeling the paint off the place. To have heard the paid athletes lamenting the loss of pingpong privileges and whatever other frivolity might have stolen so much as a second from focusing on 0-4.

Then again, maybe we did hear it all.

Or at least its echo.

Because those same Steelers, the ones who finally competed anywhere close to their commensurate talent in checking down the Jets, 19-6, on Sunday at MetLife Stadium … those Steelers very clearly benefited from the coach's very big boot administered all through the bye week.

Which says a lot, both good and bad. The good was obvious. And I do mean obvious.

“Obviously,” Tomlin opened his postgame news conference, “that's a significant win for us.”

“It's good to get a win,” Ben Roethlisberger opened his news conference, “obviously.”

Obviously, then, the bad was just as glaringly obvious: This team was underachieving.

Don't talk about a lack of talent when Roethlisberger is 23 of 30 for 264 yards and a TD bomb, when Antonio Brown is freaking out the opponent with every touch, when Heath Miller is regaining full health, when Le'Veon Bell and Emmanuel Sanders are finding some daylight, when Lawrence Timmons is slamming bodies from sideline to sideline, when Jarvis Jones is sniffing out the QB on par with his promise, when LaMarr Woodley is back to collecting sacks, when Cam Heyward is coming of age or when Troy Polamalu is going aerial to launch some receiver into the next century. And that's to say nothing of Kelvin Beachum stepping up at left tackle to help the much-maligned O-line find it's first real solidity against, of all entities, the NFL's No 2-ranked defense. Ramon Foster was right to call it “our best, man, our best.”

These aren't the Jaguars. The Steelers never have been, as a dejected Roethlisberger labeled them in London, “the worst team in the NFL.” The performance stunk, but the talent's been there.

So has the coach, at least in essence.

The other negative exposed Sunday was that Tomlin needed to take all these extra measures — a fiery speech upon returning from London, the elimination of distractions and just the general bad-dude disposition that once was his trademark — a whole lot sooner.

When asked if his message post-London was more impassioned than usual, Tomlin retorted with a question of his own: “Do you think the circumstances dictated it?

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That's what I've been saying since week 1 and why I've remained optimistic ... the talent is there ... it's just a matter of getting things to click. We've seen signs of things clicking, even in the losses. Today, they were able to get things to click enough to pull out a much-needed win. But there's still a lot of work to do.