Hiring of new assistant is crucial
Drake’s death heart- wrenching, but life goes on even after tragedies
It is understandable Mike Tomlin wasn’t ready Tuesday to talk about Darryl Drake’s replacement as the Steelers wide receivers coach. Drake’s death Sunday morning still was fresh, painful, heart- wrenching. Tomlin lost more than a coach, he lost a close friend and mentor, a man he said he has known since 1997 when he was a young coach.
It never seems like quite the right time to talk about football after such a tragedy. The same thing was true after Ryan Shazier’s spinal- cord injury in Cincinnati in December 2017. The game just didn’t seem as important for a period of time. Who really cared about whom was going to replace Shazier? Everyone cared about the kid, wondering if he would walk again. But all of us know the harsh reality:
Life goes on even after tragedies.
So it is with the Steelers now.
The team was back on the practice field Tuesday for the first time since Drake’s death at 62. It had to be a relief for the other coaches and players to get back to a sense of normalcy after a brutal two days. Like Tomlin, they lost a member of the family. Many had been spending more time with Drake than with their wife and kids.
Ray Sherman, the Steelers offensive coordinator in 1998, worked with the receivers at Tuesday’s practice. He has been out of football since 2015 when he was receivers coach for the St. Louis Rams. Blaine Stewart, already on Tomlin’s staff as a coaching assistant, also worked with the receivers Tuesday. He is the son of late West Virginia coach Bill Stewart.
It’s unclear if Sherman and Stewart will be involved moving forward.
Soon, Tomlin will have to make Drake’s replacement official.
The timing couldn’t be worse.
This isn’t like the neartragedy involving another Steelers assistant — running backs coach Kirby Wilson — in January 2012. Wilson was burned over 50 percent of his body in a house fire just two days before the team traveled to Denver for an AFC playoff game. The game plan was in. Wilson had done an excellent job schooling top back Ike Redman, who ran for 121 yards against the Broncos. The Steelers still lost in overtime because they couldn’t keep mediocre quarterback Tim Tebow from having the game of his life. Wilson needed months to recover, returning for the 2013 season but losing any chance he had of being named the Steelers offensive coordinator, the position that went to Todd Haley. Wilson currently is running back coach for the Oakland Raiders.
The timing of Drake’s death is much worse for the Steelers. A new coach is going to have to jump on a moving train — to paraphrase Tomlin ’ s words — with the start of the regular season just a few weeks away. The problem is the top coaches have jobs, professionally or collegiately. They can’t just pick up and leave to come to the Steelers.
The first guy I thought of was Hines Ward, who is interning as a coach with the New York Jets. Ward worked with the Steelers receivers in 2017 and thought he was going to get the job that went to Drake after the 2017 season. Since then, Ward has been critical of Tomlin’s and Ben Roethlisberger’s leadership skills because of the Antonio Brown fiasco after last season. He and Roethlisberger had a sour relationship going back to the 2009 season when he went on national television and questioned why Roethlisberger wasn’t playing in a game against Baltimore because of a concussion.
Ward just doesn’t seem like a good fit.
A better choice would be former Steelers receiver Jerricho Cotchery, who is starting his third season as assistant receivers coach with the Carolina Panthers. I’m not at all sure if the Panthers — owned by Pittsburgh native and former Steelers minority owner David Tepper — would let Cotchery out of his contract at this late date, but the job with the Steelers would be a promotion. Roethlisberger certainly would welcome Cotchery with open arms. He always has said Cotchery was one of his favorite teammates after Heath Miller.
This is a critical hire for Tomlin, whether it’s Sherman, Cotchery or someone else. The Steelers have young wide receivers who must find a way to fill a significant portion of the production that left for Oakland with Brown. It’s important to find the right man to lead JuJu Smith- Schuster, Donte Moncrief, James Washington and the others. It’s not a stretch to say it would go a long way to determining the team’s success.