The Steelers are now in their offseason after failing to reach the playoffs in 2022, coming up just a game short of sneaking in as the seventh seed. They needed help in week 18 and only got some of it, so instead they sat home and watched the playoffs with the rest of us.
On tap is figuring out how to be on the field in January and February instead of being a spectator. They started out 2-6, digging a hole that proved too deep to dig out of even if they managed to go 7-2 in the second half of the year.
Starting from the end of the regular season and leading all the way up to the beginning of the 2023 season, there are plenty of questions that need answered, starting with who will be the offensive coordinator. Which free agents will be kept? Who might be let go due to their salary? How might they tackle free agency with this new front office? We’ll try to frame the conversation in relevant ways as long as you stick with us throughout this offseason, as we have for many years.
Question: Do the Steelers need to ‘get with the times’?
The Steelers are often spoken of as somehow apart from the rest of the NFL in the way they do things. Few franchises can lay claim to the consistent stewardship the organization has had since its inception, now on the third generation of the Rooney family as chief owner. They have had only three head coaches in half a century and then some. The list goes on.
But is this pattern too regressive in its processes, unintentionally resistant to capitalizing on successful pathways that have emerged in more recent years? Colin Cowherd is far from the first to call this into question and to suggest that the Steelers, for lack of a better term, need to “get with the times”.
When this discussion comes up, it chiefly concerns the emphasis on the passing game, since that’s what everybody sees at the modern NFL at this point—not without good reason. Pittsburgh has actively spoken of its goal of promoting a physical team on both sides of the ball with a vested interest in the running game.
We should, however, ask whether this is a product of a worldview or of their current circumstances. It’s not as though they have ignored the passing game. They drafted a quarterback in the first round and drafted a wide receiver on Day Two of the draft in five out of six years. They added to the position via trade this offseason.
The question we have to ask is what this Steelers team would look like philosophically if they were more confident in the passing game being able to be their foundation right now. After all, they had no qualms about turning their fate over to Ben Roethlisberger not so long ago. He averaged over 35 pass attempts per game every year since 2013 with the exception of his injury-plagued 2019 season.
