I agree with this, but again that lends scrutiny to Tomlins role in the personnel process. There no two ways around the impact losing Shazier has had. Its been huge and obviously cant be laid at Tomlins feet. However, he's been pretty sketchy, especially for an ex DC that wants to rely on his D to win the "attrition" football style games his philosophy demands it to, at keeping this unit afloat.
Maybe its simply organizational, but they just havent been able to hit with any of their picks in the secondary for a while.
Id also suggest Tomlins road woes generally were simply highlighted this season. Road games are tough, but SB teams beat the teams they are supposed to even when they travel. The week 1 CLE tie, and the DEN and OAK losses were bad losses and in the context of both Tomlins past season road performance and the specifics of how they lost those games, they were symbolic of Tomlins repeated flaws.
Play down on the road, get your team a second half lead and then go conservative and force your D to win a close game, and make bad situational mistakes that often times appear as not being prepared.
There may be a lot of correlation vs causation with my sentiments. I get that. I see Tomlin lose the same type of games in the same type of ways over and over and I hang a chunk of the blame on him. I dont see anything changing there to think it wont be repeat performances in upcoming seasons either.