I see your point, but the season's story has yet to be written.
I don't agree with Smith's overall philosophy, but you cannot argue he's a credentialed OC who know what he wants to do and can execute it.
It's only been a few games, but I'm seeing baby signs they are building to something greater. Believe we haven't even seen a sliver of Smith's playbook. I'm encouraged for the first time in about 15 years
Smith had Ridder in the top 10 for intended air yards per pass. The philosophy we're currently seeing has marked differences to Smith's philosophy in past stops... but not so many from Tomlin's.
I mostly trust Smith's execution but I think we're seeing Tomlin continue to dictate the offence's grand strategy and it's tough to be optimistic about that.
You don’t take deep shots just to take deep shots though. For the Chargers game, my questions would be :
1.) Did the Chargers play to prevent the deep ball, knowing that’s something Fields does well? Was the whole plan basically if he beats us throwing those intermediate then so be it? If so, I look at it the same way I looked at week 1 when there was concern that they didn’t use the middle. Why do what the other team wants you to do?
2.) Were deep shots called and Fields decided not to throw/receiver didn’t get open/something else? I’d imagine yes.
As far as Tomlin, yeah I won’t argue that he tends to be conservative. But his sample size without elite Ben also comes with OCs that didn’t belong at the NFL level in Fichtner and Canada (which is a whole different discussion that I have no interest in getting into).
There's two answers to the first part of that.
The first is I've seen this offence continue to run into defences that are praying for it so often, and I've seen OCs scheme open things for their best guys' strengths often enough, that I think this is a matter of desire rather than taking what is offered. They could find deep shots vs the Broncos when they knew the refs threw lots of PI calls, they could have found them here. Maybe I'd feel different for an All 22 breakdown but just looking at the highlights, I see a lot of the Chargers lining up in 2 deep but immediately going to 1 deep. I think if they wanted to, or needed to, Smith could have found ways to exploit that... but they didn't.
The second is I remember during the SB, the commentators saying that Shanahan has the 49ers deliberately attack stacked boxes in part to get used to doing it because they'll have to do it when it really matters. Well, that's where I am on throwing the deep ball here. The Steelers should be doing it for the sake of doing it, because the games will come where they have to - and against teams that know it's coming - and I'd like them to have done it regularly. A proper growth mentality for this offence involves them doing the hard and risky stuff so they can get in reps.
And I'd rather the team lose a couple of games now trying to get better rather than have the same old story once they meet a team that forces them into a track meet and they've no idea. If people want to say the Chargers weren't that team? Fair enough. But the Colts, minus their best DL, when the team is 3-0 and their confidence is cresting? If not then, when?
Finally, re the OCs - I will simply make the point that since the Steelers with Tomlin hired those guys, either he disagreed with you about them belonging so that shouldn't be the why of the conservatism, or there's something really rotten in the Steelers.
