Tomlin won't abandon principles of Steelers football

	Mike Tomlin ran a 4-3 defense in Minnesota, but in Pittsburgh he'll use a variation of the 4-3 and 3-4 the Steelers have used under Dick LeBeau. Michael Fabus/WireImage
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PITTSBURGH -- Sitting in new coach Mike Tomlin's office the other day, I got the impression he will be about as meat-and-potatoes as any other coach in football. On the wall of his office are three blown-up Steelers prints.

One is an artsy, tight line-of-scrimmage shot from the 2006 preseason, with Vikings helmets butting up against Steelers helmets. "Beautiful,'' Tomlin said.

Two: Guard Alan Faneca is pulling on an end sweep, with tight end Jerame Tuman sealing off another block. "Power football,'' Tomlin said. "That's beautiful.''

Three: A tight shot of Steelers Larry Foote, James Farrior, Bryant McFadden and Tyrone Carter surrounding Saints fullback Mike Karney and pile-driving him into the turf. I said to Tomlin, I can tell what kind of football you'll be playing in Pittsburgh. "You're the first one to notice that about these pictures,'' he said. "I wanted pictures of real football. That's the way I want this team to play.''

It's hard to come away from time with Tomlin and not think he's going to be a heck of a head coach. He's 35, and something about this job, in this city, with these nutty fans and these Super expectations should scare him. But nothing does. "Change is never comfortable,'' he says. "But short-term misery is sometime necessary to improve [things] long-term.''

• There's an auditorium here at the Steelers' training center, on Pittsburgh's South Side, just down the hall from Tomlin's office. And a few times last winter and this spring, people have walked by the auditorium and seen Tomlin and Dick LeBeau, the defensive coordinator, alone. Often LeBeau is diagramming plays at the greaseboard, with Tomlin taking notes at a desk, just like a player would.

One of the early storylines in Pittsburgh is the merging of LeBeau's classic 3-4 and its zone-blitz tendencies with Tomlin's 4-3, Tampa Two look. "You might say Dick and I don't have much in common,'' Tomlin said, "but we both love football, and that's all we need. I love finding new ways to teach and learn, and it's amazing how much you can learn when you shut up and listen.''

Brett Keisel, a Pittsburgh defensive end, told me last Friday that the Steelers, during the first two minicamps, were "still running coach LeBeau's defense, with a few new wrinkles. We're going to stick with what we do and what [LeBeau] has created, it looks like.''

I asked Tomlin if he had any trepidation, in his first shot as a head coach, in running a defense -- at least part of the time -- that he hasn't used before. "None whatsoever," he said. "For five years I was at the mecca of defense in Tampa [as secondary coach], first with Tony Dungy, then with Monte Kiffin when Tony got fired. Now I'm with the godfather of zone pressure. It doesn't get any better than this. I feel I've been exposed to the two most significant defensive schemes of the last 25 years. We'll figure out the best way to play defense with this team.''