Fichtner knows new territory
Oh, Fichtner will learn about Instagram and Twitter and Snapchat soon enough this fall. Most Steelers fans are offensive coordinators, and they are not shy about letting the guy with the real title know it. Rarely has there been an offensive coordinator good enough.
The Steelers offensive coordinators don’t run the ball enough, they don’t throw the ball enough, they don’t call enough quarterback sneaks, they don’t score enough, they just don’t get it.
It started with Tom Moore, Chuck Noll’s first offensive coordinator, and continued loudly with Joe Walton and others way before there even was the phrase “social media.” Bruce Arians and Todd Haley ran some of the most prolific offenses in the NFL butwere hardly popular.
Now, it is Fichtner’s turn to step into that breach, and hesaid he understands all the amateur coordinators who will critique him.
“No doubt. I would say that, specifically here and I’ve always said this: You’re the true fan and you’ve been with us the whole time, from birth and all that and you buy a ticket to the stadium and you have never wavered, then you have the right.”
So, go ahead, take your swings. Fichtner, 54, is the Steelers’ new lightning rod.
“And I’ll be and you get put in that position, that’s what happens and that’s’ fine. In other places where I’ve been coordinator and you have to make calls, it’s no different.”
But this is not Memphis, where Fichtner ran a wideopen offense as coordinator for six years until Mike Tomlin hired him to join his first staff as receivers coach with the Steelers in 2007. And it’s not Arkansas State, where he ran the offense for four seasons before that, one of them with Tomlin as his receivers coach.
The Steelers have a tad larger fan base ready to pounce on any coordinator who does not call the plays they want.
“I get it,’’ Fichtner said. “When you take that position, that’s the role you have onyour shoulders.”
About those plays and his philosophy or his style. No one’s tipping his hand what to expect, least of all Fichtner.
“I don’t know if it’s changing. Offenses change just in general with people. The dynamics every year are different. I think that has yet to be determined.”
He has not decided whether to coach from the sideline or in the box, where he had been as the quarterbacks coach. Haley let him call some plays in the preseason so he could get the pro experience.
The playbook has not changed much, the plays have the same names, and even all the players are the same. That’s quite a difference from the day Haley walked into the job from the outside and changed everything in 2012.
Arians contract ran out, and he was not offered a new one. Haley took over, his contract ran out after the 2017 season, and he was not offered a new one.
So, Tomlin promoted Fichtner from within and with the full support of Ben Roethlisberger and virtually every other player and coach. The man who spent the first eight years in his profession as a graduate student with four different colleges and had seven collegiate stops before joining the Steelers would seemto be ready to do this job. Here’s a philosophy: “You may average 70 plays in a game,’’ Fichtner noted. “One week, you might throw it 40 times and you run it 30; one week, you might have to throw it 50 to try to win a game. It’s going to be about trying to win a game ... Whatever it takes.”
Like Arians, Fichtner is close with Roethlisberger.
“I’m going to be his friend for a long time, and that’s not going to change. We have a communications line, there’s respect there, and we’ll move forward with that.”
Like Haley, he might not let him run the quarterback sneak.
“We’ll have to find out that. I don’t want to see him get touched, to be honest with you.”
And here come the first disagreements.
“You’re the true fan and you’ve been with us the whole time, from birth and all that and you buy a ticket to the stadium and you have never wavered, then you have the right.” Randy Fitchtner