Tomlin's Ad Hoc Approach to QBs Has Worked as Well as It Could

If there has ever been a head coach faced with a can't win situation, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin may have faced it this August.

Even before Byron Leftwich suffered a knee injury, Pittsburgh columnists were ripping Tomlin for mishandling the Steelers' quarterback situation. Leftwich wasn't getting enough reps, Ben Roethlisberger was getting too many. Dennis Dixon wasn't ready.

But here's the thing: considering everything that has happened, Tomlin's plan is looking about as good as it could. Now obviously, losing Leftwich to a knee injury is bad. Losing Ben Roethlisberger to a four-game suspension is even worse. But if you consider those the unavoidable obstacles of the preseason, then what Tomlin did has given Pittsburgh about as good a chance to win the next four games as it could.

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Coming into the preseason, Tomlin was faced with the unprecedented and impossible task of readying a healthy franchise quarterback who wouldn't play for the first quarter of the season, a veteran backup who was returning to the team after a year away, a promising young quarterback who needed plenty of practice time and the cagey veteran who's been around forever.

There aren't enough receivers, footballs and preseason games to pull all of that off. Usually a team works on getting two quarterbacks some reps, the third gets enough playing time to show the team what they've got and the fourth just collects garbage time snaps. Pittsburgh had four quarterbacks with legitimate roles.

So Tomlin sat Roethlisberger for one game -- giving the presumed fill-in starter Leftwich time with the first-teamers. He then gave Roethlisberger enough time in the final three games that he can leave for his suspension feeling about as good as possible about the reps he got.

Then he took some of Leftwich's potential game time and gave it to Dixon. It was a gamble, but the thinking was that Dixon is still very raw, while Leftwich is a veteran who has a pretty good feel for what he was doing. Taking the gamble one step further, Tomlin left Charlie Batch to rot on the bench, figuring that if he wasn't released, the 13-year veteran's knowledge of the offense would make up for any lack of in-game reps.

Now you could argue that Tomlin's approach wouldn't have worked if Leftwich had stayed healthy. Maybe he would have been rusty in the season opener next week because of a lack of playing time with the starting unit. But we'll never know about that -- what ended up happening is Leftwich got hurt despite playing very limited snaps in the final two preseason games. And with Leftwich hurt, the most important thing Pittsburgh could have done during the preseason was to get Dixon as ready as possible to play.

Dixon may be ready, or he may not. But it is fair to say that he's about as ready as he could be. He got to work some with the first-team receivers and line. He got plenty of game action in each of the Steelers' four preseason games. And he got to make plenty of mistakes that (hopefully for Steelers' fans) he now won't make during the regular season. If many of those snaps had gone to Leftwich, Pittsburgh would have to be a whole lot less comfortable with Dixon getting onto the field.

It is possible that he won't be the starter -- Batch is a veteran who knows the offense as well as anyone this side of offensive coordinator Bruce Arians. But if Batch is going to be the starter (with Dixon coming in as a change-of-pace quarterback), a full week with the first team in practice should be all that Batch needs to get ready. After all, he's proven multiple times in the past that he's well-suited for the role of backup quarterback who goes from limited practice reps to game action at a moments notice.

The combination of Dixon and Batch may not be enough to keep Pittsburgh from a rough start to the season. But whatever happens, the Steelers can know that they've made the best of what was a truly unique preseason problem.

FanHouse TV's Dan Graziano believes the NFL made the right decision. Click below to watch: