After a third-straight loss on Saturday to the Indianapolis Colts, the Pittsburgh Steelers are in a tough spot. The playoff road is extremely narrow at this point. Beyond that, the team is at risk of having its first losing record under head coach Mike Tomlin. At 7-7, the Steelers will need to win two games to keep the streak alive. and probably all three to have a shot at the playoffs. The Cincinnati Bengals are hot, the Seattle Seahawks are no slouch, and the Baltimore Ravens are contending for the top seed in the AFC. After losing to two teams at the bottom of the NFL standings and now the Colts without many of their star players, it is fair to wonder if the Steelers will win one more game, let alone three.
Former NFL players Shannon Sharpe and Chad Johnson discussed the state of the Steelers on their weekly YouTube show Nightcap after the game. To say Sharpe has seen enough, is putting it mildly.
“They bad. The Steelers are bad. Steelers need to overhaul,” said Sharpe. Johnson rebutted his point saying, “Slow down. The Steelers are having one bad season. I don’t know about no overhaul already…[Mike] Tomlin, the past 17 years, he’s been above .500 every single year.”
It’s a difficult situation to be in for the franchise. If the Steelers went the route of a complete overhaul, including Tomlin, another team would hire him in a matter of days. He has one of the all-time best records for a head coach and the problems go beyond just coaching. Most seasons, he ends up receiving praise for getting the most out of a talent-deficient roster and keeping the group focused through adversity. This year is painting a little outside those lines, but it is difficult to assign blame for the team’s performance when they don’t have a full complement of talent on the roster.
The talent level looked pretty good entering the season. A bunch of young players were expected to make a big leap and general manager Omar Khan brought in solid free-agent additions and draft picks to fill out the roster. While some of the young players didn’t make the leap that was expected, the bigger issue has been attrition on the roster. Cameron Heyward, Minkah Fitzpatrick, Kwon Alexander, Pat Freiermuth, Cole Holcomb, Kenny Pickett, Diontae Johnson, and others have all missed multiple games this season. This isn’t to absolve Tomlin of blame, but it does add context. You can’t look at the win-loss record in a vacuum.
All that being said, the standard in Pittsburgh is not just having winning records—the expectations are much higher.
“That’s not the standard for the Steelers,” Sharpe said. “The Steelers are about championships. We gotta stop rewarding, ‘Oh he above .500,’ that’s not why they pay you eight, nine million dollars to be above .500. They pay you for championships, and to get the team in the playoffs and make deep playoff runs. When was the last time the Steelers made a deep playoff run?”
In many ways, the Steelers are a team in transition. Ben Roethlisberger retired. Kevin Colbert retired. It’s a proper changing of the guard. It will be fascinating to see how the Steelers move forward this offseason given everything that has transpired here at the end of the regular season.
