Just a few weeks ago, after a miserable loss to the Cleveland Browns, veteran CB Patrick Peterson said good teams don’t lose back-to-back games. They backed that up with one of their best games of the year the following week against the Cincinnati Bengals. The tides seemed to be turning with the firing of Matt Canada and the offensive turnaround, but all that came crashing down as the Steelers dropped back-to-back games against two-win teams. This was a feat so bad that it made the NFL history books.
If avoiding back-to-back losses is the mark of a good team, the Steelers have not earned that title since 2017. That season, the team went 13-3 on their way to first-round bye in the playoffs. In fact, the frequency of these loss streaks has been on the rise as of late.
| Mike Tomlin’s Tenure | ||
| Season | # of Loss Streaks | Record |
| 2007 | 1 | 10-6 |
| 2008 | 0 | 12-4 |
| 2009 | 2 | 9-7 |
| 2010 | 0 | 12-4 |
| 2011 | 0 | 12-4 |
| 2012 | 2 | 8-8 |
| 2013 | 3 | 8-8 |
| 2014 | 0 | 11-5 |
| 2015 | 1 | 10-6 |
| 2016 | 1 | 11-5 |
| 2017 | 0 | 13-3 |
| 2018 | 1 | 9-6-1 |
| 2019 | 2 | 8-8 |
| 2020 | 1 | 12-4 |
| 2021 | 2 | 9-7-1 |
| 2022 | 2 | 9-8 |
| 2023 (to date) | 1 | 7-6 |
Over Mike Tomlin’s head coaching tenure, the Steelers have had five seasons where they avoided stacking losses. Unsurprisingly, those have been some of the Steelers’ strongest seasons including the last two Super Bowl appearances in the 2008 and 2010 seasons. Their average win total over those five seasons was 12, and they appeared in the playoffs each time.
With their back-to-back losses against the Arizona Cardinals and New England Patriots, the Steelers continue their streak of now six straight years with consecutive losses at some point in the season. The last time they had a streak that long was from 1980-1993 at the end of the Chuck Noll era and the beginning of the Bill Cowher era.
That streak was a transition period coming off the highly successful run of Terry Bradshaw at quarterback. The next decade would feature Mark Malone, Bubby Brister, and Neil O’Donnell as the starting quarterbacks and the Steelers could never quite put it together over that span.
The story is far from written on this era, but the current-day Steelers are also in the midst of a transition from 18-season starter Ben Roethlisberger. The quarterback situation into the future is still up in the air with the jury still out on Kenny Pickett. Right now, by Peterson’s definition of a good team, the Steelers are not one of them and they haven’t been for a number of years.
