Mike Tomlin is not concerned about the Steelers’ most recent appearances in the postseason, games in which his team gave up a combined 93 points in two embarrassing home defeats.
And he can’t worry his team was “smashed definitively” the last time they played the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium, which was just three weeks ago.
But he is concerned about getting his young team that has four rookie starters on offense exposed to playoff football and the increased level of intensity that awaits them.
“I’m not concerned about success,” Tomlin said Tuesday at his weekly news conference. “I am concerned about exposure, so people understand what the environment is like, the intensity of it. Experience is good whether it's positive or negative, the knowing. I'm less concerned about the lack of success. And I'm more concerned about those who haven't experienced it that play a significant role for us.”
The Steelers’ most recent playoff experiences under Tomlin have been every bit as ugly as their 36-10 loss to the Chiefs on Dec. 26. They were eliminated at home by the Jacksonville Jaguars (45-42) in a divisional round game in 2017 and the Cleveland Browns (48-37) in a wild-card game last season.
Their last playoff victory came five years ago at the very same site they will visit Sunday — 18-16 against the Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium, a game in which Chris Boswell accounted for all the points with six field goals. The Steelers have only six players on their roster who appeared in that game.
But after winning three of their final four games and facing playoff elimination in each of the past two, Tomlin likes to think the Steelers have been “hardened” by the season-ending process and have a sense of playoff-readiness when they face the No. 2 seeded Chiefs (12-5).
“I’m getting extremely comfortable just watching our guys smile in the face of adversity,” Tomlin said. “I think we’re collectively getting comfortable in many circumstances where we’re uncomfortable. I think we’ve been hardened by this process. It hasn’t been an easy journey for us, and I think we’re getting comfortable with being in that scenario.”
The Chiefs, of course, are the opposite. They have been to the Super Bowl each of the past two seasons and will enter the playoffs as maybe the hottest team in the NFL, winning nine of their past 10 games.
What’s more, they do something routinely that the Steelers have had trouble doing all season: score points.
The Chiefs have scored at least 31 points nine times this season. The Steelers have scored 19 or fewer points nine times. The only time they topped 30 points was when they scored 27 in the fourth quarter in a 41-37 loss to the Chargers.
“They handled us and handled us definitively,” Tomlin said, referring to Dec. 26 meeting in which the Chiefs jumped to a 23-0 halftime lead. “And so, we understand that. But at the same time, we're not paralyzed by that. We accept that we didn't play well enough last time. But that's last time and we're excited about the process of readiness this time.”
And that, Tomlin said, will be his job — to prepare his young players for what playoff football is like, how different it is from what they faced in the regular season.
“We understand the playoffs are a different level — at least those that have been a part of it understand that the playoffs are at a different level,” Tomlin said. “We’ve got just a number of young guys who have gained quality experience through the course of this journey. They are not rookies anymore, but they are new to playoff football and the level of intensity and competition. The component of playoff football will be new to them.”
Sleeping in
Unlike probably the entire city of Pittsburgh, Tomlin said he dozed off for the crazy ending of the Raiders-Chargers overtime game that nearly knocked the Steelers from the playoffs.
“I missed the end of it,” he said. “I knew I had a workday waiting on me — I assumed that I had a workday waiting on me. I think at one point, [Las Vegas] was up by 15 and that number made you somewhat comfortable. I'm probably better off not having watched it.”
