CHICAGO --Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin says that he never thought about going for it on fourth-and-nine for his own 22 with just over two minutes left in the game. The team had three timeouts left and a poor punt by Corliss Waitman gave the Bears ball in prime position.
Even still, the Steelers defense got a stop and the offense has a chance to make something happen but failed. Tomlin says the decision process was sound, and it paid off when the team got the ball back, they simply failed to execute.
“I did not. I was holding all three timeouts and as you can see, we got the ball back,” Tomlin said.
The Steelers had gone for it on an earlier fourth-and-1 inside the Bears territory after they forced a D’Andre Swift fumble. Tomlin kept an aggressive mindset there, however, and said that would not detract him from doing that in the future.
“If you can not get one yard, you deserve to lose,” Tomlin said.
The Steelers have been one of the most risk averse teams the entire season. Tomlin is consistently one of the least aggressive head coaches in ‘go for it’ situations according to most analytics, so it is not much of a surprise he decided to punt it there.
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