Speaking of Tomlin, he made a demeaning comment toward Will Howard the other day.
John Rhys Plumlee is back on the furthest fringes of the Steelers, brought in to play the role of Caleb Williams this week as the team prepares to face the Bears. Plumlee will never get a chance to play quarterback in the NFL, much less wide receiver or running back despite his superb athleticism. If he was black he would have in the worst case been drafted late as a developmental prospect. But he proves useful to the Steelers in imitating a quarterback who can pass and run even though he'll never get that opportunity himself.
From the article linked below:
Anyone who has watched Williams this season knows he’s adept at shaking off would-be tacklers and avoiding sacks with the best of them.
So much so that Tomlin gave a bit of a brutal assessment of his sixth-round pick this year to prop up Williams.
“Just really impressed with his physical talents,” he said of Williams. “His ability to throw the football, his accuracy, his arm strength, his ability to extend, his ability to see the full field while doing so, minimizing negativity; the creativity associated with his escapability and play extension is really challenging. It's not only challenging in-stadium, but to be quite honest with you, it's challenging to duplicate in the process of prep.
I doubt Will Howard is going to give us a quality look at some of that stuff I've been looking at on tape, for example.” [end of snippet from the article]
It's pretty clear that Howard will get no more of a chance to start in the NFL than has Mason Rudolph, thought by many to be a first round talent heading into the league but stymied from the beginning by Tomlin. Tomlin's clueless when it comes to developing QBs, just as he has no "coaching tree" after 19 years, nada, not even the tiniest sprout coming out of the ground. His "legendary" reputation was made for the most part by benefitting from the Hall of Fame talent of Big Ben, who came into the league three years before Tomlin's reign for life started in 2007.
Plumlee is quoted as saying, accurately, of Howard in the article: “Will’s freaking ginormous, and he moves extremely well, too. He got in there and did some of the same.”
Plumlee also plays the good (White) solider, saying in aw shucks fashion instead of plugging his own talent, “Just trying to give our guys a good look of covering an extra tick, then also guys gotta pursue an extra tick,” Plumlee said. “I said, ‘Shoot, I’m your guy.’ Any way I can help, that’s what I want to do.”
It’s a particularly busy week for Steelers quarterbacks. You know Rodgers and Rudolph, but Dasher and Dancer have a place in preparation for the...
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