Steelers Made 1 Massive Mistake In Preseason Week 3 Win: "I Blame [Mike] Tomlin"

The Pittsburgh Steelers gave their fans some concerns during their Preseason Week 3 win against the Carolina Panthers. Outside of a handful of players, the first-team offense and defense played throughout the first quarter, and they did not impress. Penalties were getting racked up, the defense could not tackle consistently, and the offense could not get any traction going. That is not something you want to see the first time the big names take the field, even if it is a meaningless exhibition game. 

Steelers insider Mark Kaboly put an article out on X recently about his thoughts regarding the preseason, and he gave his reasons as to why the game was so bad for the starters on Thursday.

"Just by what I saw, a lot of the Steelers regulars (not all of them) appeared as if they weren’t too interested in playing for the first time this preseason in the last game, on the road, and against a lot of players that will hit the free agency market in a couple of days," Kaboly said. "Go back and look at Trevor Etienne’s 28-yard run midway through the first quarter and tell me there weren’t some business decisions made at the end of that run."

It seemed like the Steelers' starters had no interest in actually playing in that game, which gives fuel to the NFL's idea that preseason is meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Nobody truly looked like they wanted to make contact. That is why some fans were upset that rookie Derrick Harmon was in the game. He suffered a knee sprain and could possibly start the season on Injured Reserve (IR). 

Kaboly continued on with his assessment, and he refused to blame the players for the "business decisions" that they made during the game.

"'The tackling was shaky at best,'" Kaboly quoted Head Coach Mike Tomlin. "'I think they had 100 yards rushing at halftime, and that’s just kind of indicative of how poor the tackling was at times.'" And, you know what, I don’t blame them for not wanting to play, if that was the case. Not one bit at all if their heart wasn’t in it, and it seemed to me they weren’t fully invested in this game. I blame Tomlin."

Mike Tomlin is one of the few head coaches in the league that still values the preseason in terms of letting his starters knock off the rust, so it was very unlike him to sit some players, including new quarterback Aaron Rodgers. However, after this performance, he might join the mob in not letting key players play at all during this part of the year. 

If the starters refuse to give any actual effort, it becomes hard to justify playing them and risking injury. The argument for playing them is that they knock the rust off, get the mistakes out of the way, build chemistry with the newcomers, and go through the experience of gameday. However, that all goes out the window if everyone decides to just not do any of that at all, and that's seemingly what happened here.

Steelers Will Soon See If Tomlin Made The Right Choice

The Steelers will have a little bit of practice time left before they travel to New Jersey to face off against the New York Jets, who have been playing their starters in preseason. The Jets have been taking these exhibition games seriously. There is a realistic scenario where they are far less rusty and more prepared for the real games than the Black and Gold. If Tomlin and his team lose in Week 1, there will be a lot of questions asked about how the previous month was handled.

What do you think about the Steelers' lack of effort in the preseason? Let us know in the comments or on X at @Steelers_ChrisB.

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