The Pittsburgh Steelers are broken. They’re not a team. They’re a collection of people playing football. Poorly, I might add. And they don’t know the answer.
After each game, win or lose, there’s always three people who take the podium. Head coach Mike Tomlin, the quarterback, and a defensive player, usually either a captain like Cam Heyward or T.J. Watt or sometimes a defensive standout that day.
Following Saturday’s 30-13 loss to the Indianapolis Colts, Tomlin and Watt didn’t know what to say when asked how to find the winning formula again.
“I don’t necessarily have the answers as we sit here today,” Tomlin said via the team website. “If I had the answers, we would’ve played differently today. But I will acknowledge, man, things won’t continue the way that they are.”
At the beginning of the month, Pittsburgh sat at 7-4 with hopes of competing with the Baltimore Ravens down the stretch for the AFC North crown. Two calendar weeks and three games later, the Steelers’ playoff hopes have nearly evaporated. Three straight losses to the Arizona Cardinals, New England Patriots, and Indianapolis Colts. Pittsburgh couldn’t reach the 20-point mark against any of them and has been held under that number for five-straight games, something that hasn’t happened over the course of a single season since 1969, Chuck Noll’s first season on the job.
The Steelers are a mess across the board. They can’t score. Their defense has regressed. Injuries have chewed them up, they play unsound football, and special teams haven’t been an asset.
No longer controlling its own destiny, Pittsburgh tumbled for the sixth to the eleventh seed with Saturday’s loss. Realistically, the Steelers’ only path to hopefully make the playoffs will be winning out, beating the Cincinnati Bengals, Seattle Seahawks, and Baltimore Ravens to close out the year, the latter two on the road. And those odds sure don’t seem very appealing right now.
While the offense has struggled all year, the defense is limping toward the end. It allowed 30 unanswered points to the Colts, a top-10 scoring unit on the season but one that played most of this game without starting RB Zack Moss — he had already replacing the injured Jonathan Taylor — and WR Michael Pittman. Instead, it was the likes of Trey Sermon, Tyler Goodson, D.J. Montgomery, and Mo-Alie Cox who made plays throughout the night. I’ll give you a moment to look them all up.
In front of the media, Watt didn’t know where to begin.
“That’s a good question,” he said, also via the team website. “If I had that answer I would be able to tell you right now. But I think it’s a combination of a lot of things and that’s what we need to figure out and solve as quick as possible moving forward. Because we have a game in a week.”
The problems are clear. Just about everything is going wrong. The list of positive things for this team is small. Their…kick returns were decent? They’re tackling…ok, I guess. That’s about it. Fixing things in this downward spiral with three weeks to go will be difficult. Likely, they’ll need the entire offseason to make progress, one that should require plenty of changes.
