January 13, 2015
Tuesday 12 Qs: Butler, Olli, Pedro, Jagr, Hall
BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC
Welcome to Tuesday 12 Qs, our chat that takes place each week at 2 p.m. and offers you a chance to carry the conversation. I’ll be up at Consol tonight to cover Penguins-Wild with a full column, but all topics are welcome, as always.
Use the comments section below to submit an entry. No more than one per person, please. Submit early if you prefer, and I’ll pick from that batch to get rolling, then monitor new entries once we go live.
UPDATE 2 p.m.: And off we go …
Wild Bill: Dejan, your News/Views entry today offers your view that Keith Butler will transition to the younger players. Does he, in your opinion, present any other likely forms of change to what the Steelers do on defense? Or will it be mostly the same scheme, but only slightly tweaked?
Until Butler speaks — and there will be no actual press conference, I was just told by a team official — there won’t be a hard answer to that. He’s never been a coordinator in the NFL, so it would be unfair to assume too much based on his work as a positional coach. That said, I find it unimaginable that either he or Mike Tomlin would alter the 3-4 scheme or, for that matter, the zone-blitz element on which it’s founded. Remember, this is Tomlin’s move. He’s getting the coordinator he wants and the defense he wants. If he didn’t want this base defense, he could have changed it long ago, even with Dick LeBeau is present. To think otherwise is naive.
