Yes, there’s still four games left. Yes, the Pittsburgh Steelers aren’t out of the playoffs. And it would be peak Pittsburgh to lose to the 2-10 Arizona Cardinals and New England Patriots in a four-day span and then rattle off three wins down the stretch to get themselves back into the playoffs.
But until the Steelers prove us all wrong, they deserve every ounce of criticism they receive. This team is failing. In spectacular and miserable fashion.
Unacceptable. That’s the word I keep coming back to off their 21-18 loss to the Patriots. This was must-win. There was no hiding from that, and Pittsburgh didn’t really try. Mike Tomlin laid it out in the open during his Monday press conference. This was a chance for redemption. Instead, it was a repeat. An offense making the same mistakes. Turnovers, empty possessions, missed opportunities. A third illegal formation for not lining up correctly in relationship to the tackle. Last week, not covering him. This week, covering him up. How does that happen? How is that allowed? Eddie Faulkner claimed it was fixed, that players were held accountable. Whatever he did, it didn’t work. And if it’s truly on the players, then the only way to hold them accountable is to stop playing them. Maybe then the message sinks in.
The play calling? What a mess. A 4th-and-2 deep ball to WR Diontae Johnson with the game, and the Steelers’ season, essentially on the line. Not running on 3rd and 2 ahead of the two-minute warning, the most logical of calls in a situation like that. Even if the Steelers didn’t convert, they would’ve had the warning to come together on the sideline and come up with their best fourth-down play.
Of course, that assumes they even have one. Pittsburgh faced 4th and 2 twice in this game. In most “weighty” situations like this, where coaches are counted on to have plays designed to get this type of yardage (it’s not like they’re working in an impossible 4th-and-11 situation), this is what the Steelers called.
What even is this? These are your calls in critical moments of not just the game but Pittsburgh’s 2023 season. Nothing designed for the moment. Just regular drop-back concepts. One looked to be targeting TE Pat Freiermuth on a curl/over the ball route at the sticks, the other vertical patterns with a potential option route by WR Allen Robinson II. The results? Trubisky hurriedly tossing the ball to RB Jaylen Warren, who had no chance, and a deep ball to Johnson, a hopeless prayer looking for a flag that didn’t come. Nor was it deserved.
These are the criticisms Matt Canada came under fire for. Not meeting the moment with a winning play call. Pittsburgh can make the excuses all it wants: backup quarterback, short week, none of it holds up. They needed to make the plays. They didn’t.
Defensively, the first half was a wreck. The Patriots marched downfield on their opening possession, QB Bailey Zappe chewing them up on throw after throw until RB Ezekiel Elliott put the ball in the end zone. It was the first time New England scored on an opening drive all season and its first points four days removed from being shut out by the lowly Los Angeles Chargers’ defense. By halftime, the Pats had racked up 21 points after combining for 13 in their previous three games.
New England did what any offense would do. Attack the Steelers beat up inside linebackers. Miraculously, Elandon Roberts suited up for this one, fighting through a groin injury, and he played a solid game. He’s been excellent since stepping up after Cole Holcomb and Kwon Alexander’s season-ending injuries. But Mykal Walker had the target on his back, attacked again and again in key situations. Including on two of the team’s three touchdowns, the first to Elliott and the second to Hunter Henry over the middle. Pittsburgh didn’t seem to make many, or any, adjustments. All four inside linebackers played to some degree, including Mark Robinson and Blake Martinez, but Walker was out there often. The Patriots went after him every chance they got. They know how to exploit an opponent’s weakness.
But in many ways, the particulars don’t matter. The results do. That’s the business. Win or lose, that’s what you’re judged by. And Pittsburgh dropped two games it absolutely shouldn’t have. It sets off larger alarm bells than any one play or one player.
What is the culture of this team? How strong is the coaching staff? What is the Steelers’ identity, their vision, their plan to win? There aren’t clear or good answers to any of those. As much strength as Mike Tomlin and the Steelers like to project, this shining beacon of “the Steelers way” and a steady and strong organization, they have to ask themselves hard questions. What they’re doing isn’t working. It hasn’t been working. No playoff wins since 2016, the team’s longest drought in post-merger history, and one that’s likely to be extended at least another year with no idea of when that’ll change. The defense will continue to age, the quarterback situation is uncertain, the division and conference are tough and will stay that way for years to come.
All of which reflects on Tomlin. He doesn’t escape this. It’s the opposite. He is central. I’m *not* going to sit here today and call for him to be fired, especially with the emotions of yesterday’s loss still running through me, but it’s harder and harder to make the case to defend him. What evidence is there? Not having losing seasons? That’s not Pittsburgh’s standard. And if it is, that speaks to a much larger problem of the bar being lowered and lowered. This is how it’s gone.
1. Win the Super Bowl
2. Win the AFC North
3. Win a playoff game
4. Don’t have a losing season
And now? It’ll be a good day just to beat a team with a cruddy record.
The Steelers are going backward in play and in the standard they set. They are the frog in a pot of slowly boiling water, hardly noticing the change because of how gradual it is. Until it kills them.
It’s more than fair to question the last seven years. What does Pittsburgh have to show for it? Two division titles, zero playoff wins, nothing close to a Super Bowl run. Now, they’re an AFC afterthought, no longer the contender they were for years on end. How long does that get to continue?
Today, all the Steelers are is talk. We gotta execute, we gotta play better, we own it. And I understand, it’s a press conference, there’s no winning answer, nothing that’s going to make the fan base happy except for emerging victorious on the field. But Pittsburgh is a person walking and falling off the cliff and as they’re screaming down to their death they’re saying “we just gotta stay on our feet, just gotta stay on the cliff.” Newsflash, you’re off it. Fixing and correcting things should’ve happened well before this point.
Something Tomlin said during his presser did stick out. It came after a reporter asked what gives Tomlin the confidence the Steelers will bounce back after these two crushing losses.
“Because this is what we do,” he replied. “This is who we are.”
In one sense, Tomlin’s right. This is who the Steelers are. They’re an aimless ship with no direction and no plan to get back on course. They’re a team whose standards have fallen. They’re a team trying to do just enough to get by. They’re not who they want or are supposed to be.
This is who they are.
That’s the problem.
