The Pittsburgh Steelers don’t make a lot of mistakes.
That’s why they’ve won as much as they have over the last 43 seasons after struggling through decades of ineptitude before Chuck Noll arrived as head coach in 1969.
But you had to really, truly scratch your head over the way they gently – or, as it were, not-so-gently – pushed, shoved, kicked Dick LeBeau out the door last offseason after he had spent years with the Steelers as one of the greatest defensive coordinators in the history of the game.
They couched it as if LeBeau was retiring. But he made it crystal clear from the get-go that he was definitely not retiring.
All in all, it was a messy public relations situation that the Steelers public relations staff, whose prowess – or lack thereof — over the years has not come close to matching that of the team overall, awkwardly tried to sneak past everyone as if they somehow thought no one would notice.
Really?
LeBeau is a coaching legend. You can’t do to a person of his stature what the Steelers did to LeBeau. You just can’t.
Perhaps the Steelers made the switch, handing the job to one of their longtime assistants and a former Browns linebackers coach in Keith Butler, because they thought LeBeau was too old. After all, he turned 78 years young just over a week ago, on Sept. 8.
Perhaps it was because the Steelers have not performed well at all defensively in recent years, which is not because of anything LeBeau did or didn’t do, but rather because they have drafted poorly on that side of the ball for some time now and as such have not been able to replace aging stars.
Or perhaps it was because of some kind of internal strife between head coach Mike Tomlin and LeBeau.
Whatever the case, LeBeau, who grew up in London, Ohio, played as a two-way back on Ohio State’s 1957 national championship team and was taken in the fifth round by the Browns in the 1959 NFL Draft before going on to a Pro Football Hall of Fame career as a cornerback with the Detroit Lions, is in his first season as associate head coach in charge of the defense with the Tennessee Titans, who come to FirstEnergy Stadium on Sunday to face the Browns in their home opener.
With the Titans, he has been reunited with defensive coordinator Ray Horton, formerly his assistant defensive coordinator in Pittsburgh who also served as defensive coordinator of the Browns in 2013, and head coach Ken Whisenhunt, who was an assistant coach with him in Pittsburgh as well and was the Browns special teams coordinator in their expansion season of 1999.
While the Titans were rolling past the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 42-14 in the opener last weekend, Pittsburgh’s defense was struggling – yet again – in a 28-21 loss to the New England Patriots that wasn’t nearly as close as the final score might seem to indicate.
A sign of things to come for both teams’ defenses this season? Perhaps. Or perhaps not.
Yes, of course, the Buccaneers are light years behind the defending Super Bowl champion Patriots, thus making any kind of judgment off a comparison of the Week 1 results an iffy proposition at best. But it will be interesting to see how the defenses of both the Titans and Steelers, and their teams overall, perform over the rest of the season.
And if Tennessee makes dramatic improvement defensively while the Pittsburgh defense continues to get lit up and continues to be the team’s Achilles heel, holding back a prolific offense, Steelers fans will be asking some very tough questions of Tomlin, who, oit certainly appears, was the one behind the move to oust LeBeau.
As for LeBeau, you can bet he has a fire burning in his competitive belly in trying to prove he’s not over the hill and that Pittsburgh made a big mistake by sending him out to pasture.
And LeBeau, from his many years of facing the Browns in the AFC North and, before that, the AFC Central, has no doubt had plenty of helpful advice this week for Horton and the Tennessee defense in preparation for Sunday’s game.
