Bradley plots crash course on the basics
Tom Bradley never played or coached in the NFL, which was perfectly fine for Steelers coachMike Tomlin.
Despite having a number of former NFL players on his coaching staff, Tomlin was looking for a teacher, not necessarily a role model, for his youngsecondary.
And he foundt that person in Bradley, a longtime assistant coach at Penn State who alsocoached at West Virginia and UCLA. He has spent the better part of OTAs and minicampdoing what he does best —teaching and stressing fundamentals — and getting accustomed to a different way oflife in the NFL.
“When you’re a college guy, if you’ve been in college all those years, you have to start off sometimes with 17year-old old kids, so you have to start off with fundamentals,” Bradley said. “I’ve already had that problem here — I assume they know something just because they’ve been in the league a while. So we’ve gone back and done a lot of basic things. It’s a lot of fundamentalwork.”
The Steelers already had four defensive backs with two or fewer years in the league — cornerbacks Artie Burns, Cam Sutton and Brian Allen and safety Sean Davis. They added two more in the draft with safeties Terrell Edmunds in the first round and Marcus Allen in the fifth.
Bradley, 61, has been entrusted with their development, something he has been doing for four decades in college.
The good news is he has two defensive backs who have played a combined 16 years in the NFL — cornerback Joe Haden and safety Morgan Burnett, acquired in free agency from the Green BayPackers.
“I’m very excited what we have going with the guys back there,” Bradley said, wearing sunglasses underneath a Steelers cap and standing on the practice field at the UPMC Rooney Sports complex on the South Side. It was the first time since he was hired Feb. 8 that he has met with the Pittsburgh-area media. “The older guys have done a great job helping the younger guys get better. Even today, when I said to Terrell, how’s it going, he said, ‘It’s starting to slow down a little bit, Coach, it’s starting to slow down a little bit.’ I think we’re on track.”
Of course, Bradley has yet to have any of his players in pads, which has made it difficult for him to stress one of his other mandates — tackle the football. That has been a problem for the Steelers, who gave up a league-high 10 plays of at least 50 yards and 41 plays of at least 25 in 2017. The coaches believe some of those plays were the result of poor tackling, not just bad coverage.
Not that coverage wasn’t a problem in the second half of the season. After allowing an average of 167.7 yards passing in the first seven games, the Steelers gave up an average of 244.9 yards in the last nine. They allowed 13 pass plays of 40 yards or more, third most in the league, and two more in the playoff loss against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Bradley, who calls himself a stickler for tackling, said it will be a point of emphasis at trainingcamp in Latrobe.
“Yes, absolutely,” Bradley said. “Anytime you’re playing defense, there’s always things you want to eliminate. Eliminate big plays and missed tackles, you got a chanceto be pretty good.”
Bradleyis one of three new assistant coaches on Tomlin’s staff, joining defensive line coach Karl Dunbar and wide receivers coach Darryl Drake. But he is easily the most significant and wellknown because of the 37 yearshe spent as a player and assistant coach under Joe Paterno at Penn State, even stepping in as interim head coach for the final four games in 2011 after Paterno was fired in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal.
Bradley’s hiring was as surprising to him as it was sudden. General manager Kevin Colbert called to ask if he wanted to interview for the secondary coach position when Carnell Lake resigned to spend more time with his family. Bradley, who had spent the previous three years as defensive coordinator at UCLA, was reluctant to come in for the interview until Tomlin called and invited him to come in and just talk.
One day later, Bradley, whose brother, Jim, is the team’s orthopedic surgeon, was the new position coach. He already sees the advantage of coaching in the NFL.
“When you’re in college, you’re hesitant to make as many different calls and changes because you don’t have the time to work on it because they got school and a lot of other things going on,” Bradley said. “Here, when you have them all day, you can add to the repertoire of the things you’re doing.”