Most Problems Begin at the Top and the Steelers Are No Exception

I'm not the kind of guy who is so invested in a team that its fortunes in any way impact my mood. I don't pay much attention to college football. I know it's out there. I live in South Carolina for crying out loud. After people here ask which church you attend, they ask whether you are a Clemson or South Carolina fan. “Uh, n-n-neither,” I stutter. I then receive a look as though I had brought a cat box to the pot-luck supper.

Now, I must admit, if I were someone at least somewhat interested in college football, I would have watched the championship bowl game between Clemson and Alabama. I don't care about either team, really, but I'm a bit sorry I missed the smirk being knocked off Nick Saban's face. I lived in South Florida when, as coach of the Miami Dolphins, he fiercely denied he was leaving to coach at Alabama and two weeks later wound up in a press conference in Tuscaloosa being presented as Alabama's new football coach. I have no feelings one way or the other about Alabama, but I have a strong dislike for Saban. What a cockroach.

But I digress....

If I were someone who got all lathered up over a sports team's fortunes, I'd be positively inconsolable regarding the Steelers missing the playoffs this year. For the second year in a row, this highly talented team won't be in the championship game. This year it even managed to miss getting into the playoffs. With more than half the season behind it, it looked to have its division sewn up.

What in the wide, wide world of sports went wrong? Oh, let me count the ways.

Actually I won't bore you with my armchair analysis other than to say, at its core, it's gotta be a coaching issue. I am a big supporter and fan of Mike Tomlin and always have been. But there is something basically wrong in Pittsburgh.

Week after week, game after game, this team only played to the level of its opponent. Only three games were decided by more than one score – win or lose. The trend was set with the first game's 21-21 tie with the Browns...THE BROWNS! From there, for the next 15 games only four were decided by more than one score – several by a field goal.

There were only two real bright spots in the season: The 52-21 win over the Panthers and the 17-10 win over the Patriots. The Panthers win because it was the only game where the Steelers were firing on all cylinders on both sides of the ball, and the Patriots because, well, it was the Patriots.

After four games, the Steelers record was 1-2-1. At that point, I thought Tomlin might be coaching his first losing season. I didn't miss it by much. It wound up being 9-6-1, with the 1 being the tie with the Browns that had the deflating impact of a loss. Of the actual loses, three were by a field goal. How is it that one of the most explosive offenses in the NFL can't muster at least three more points against teams like Oakland and Cleveland?

There are those who argue the real issue was the turnover ratio: The Steelers lost the turnover battle in a very big way. I agree, but I argue, that really boils down to a coaching issue. Now it looks as though the Steelers will be coming back in 2019 without Bell and Brown. That's a front-office/coaching issue, too.

It's the coaching, stupid.

Can't Get into the Groove

I'm not the kind of guy who lounges around contemplating his navel. I may well be a slacker, but my strong sense of self-preservation is a constant angel on my shoulder whispering, “Get off your ass and do something to make some money.”

December is always a slow month for assignments and revenue. I don't embrace this forced vacation with a happy heart. We all have a finite number of productive days in us. The difference for me is that I'm closing in on the end of mine. I hate wasting nearly a month of those days each year sitting on my dumper.

I've ranted about this before on these pages. Nothing new here. But other fallout from my annual December sabbatical is trying to get myself back in gear. Although assignments aren't exactly flowing to me – it's more of a trickle – I do have some work to do; but motivating myself to do it is proving a real challenge this year. As I write this, it's January 6, and I have two assignments partially written. I can't seem to screw up the motivation to finish either. Both deadline in less than a week.

The issue is I have work to be completed, but not enough to put me in the groove. I'm sure it's some law of physics that once an object is in motion, it takes less energy to keep it in motion. That's why car transmissions have a first gear. When there isn't a flow to assignments, I have to gear back up for each separately as they trickle in.

I am currently slogging through the trickle. Psyching up oneself to meet the challenge of the occasional assignment is tougher for a slacker. It requires drawing on energy that, by nature, simply isn't there. Attempting to generate that energy after a 30-day shutdown is a monumental task. It's probably similar to a climber gazing up at the peak of Mount Everest before grasping that first handhold. It seems almost insurmountable.

Today is Sunday. It's my beer-drinking day. (You may be surprised that I have a designated beer-drinking day. In fact, unless I'm out of town with the opportunity to visit an unfamiliar brewery or shooting a brewery segment for BEER2WHISKEY, I rarely drink beer other than on Sunday.) Because it's Sunday, I don't have to face my demons and try to coax myself into finishing one of the soon-to-be-due assignments. I get to put that off until tomorrow.

But tomorrow will come. And then what.....?