After the Pittsburgh Steelers’ fourth straight one-and-done playoff appearance, Mike Tomlin is facing criticism from the media for not doing enough when it really matters. On Good Morning Football this morning, Kyle Brandt, one of Pittsburgh’s staunchest defenders this season, lit into Tomlin for his lack of playoff success.
“I’m the guy who always says never give up on the Steelers. They get to the playoffs and get their doors blown off. Just look at the history of Mike Tomlin as the Steelers head coach recently,” Brandt said. “0-5 over the last five playoff games, and they just get destroyed. And if you look into it, they just get destroyed early. It’s almost like they don’t show up for it.”
Brandt said that while a lot of teams would take the consistent playoff appearances, in Pittsburgh, it’s not good enough.
“So that right there, a lot of teams would kill for it. The Raiders, the Chargers, the Browns, ‘We’re in the playoffs every year.’ You can’t come to me as the Steelers head coach and say, ‘Well, we’re in the playoffs. I never [had] a losing season.’ That’s not enough. You’re the standard. You’re probably the number one standard for winning Super Bowls around the league and it’s not even close.
“I know there’s a lot of people in the media who don’t want to cross Tomlin or love Tomlin, and I have no problem with Tomlin, but the whole thing about ‘we never have a losing season’ is getting old. Because you don’t, and then you go in the wild-card round and get destroyed. It’s enough.”
Tomlin hasn’t won since it mattered in seven years. Pittsburgh hasn’t won a game in the playoffs since the 2016 divisional round. It’s completely unacceptable for a team that’s won six Lombardi Trophies and is one of the most storied franchises in the NFL. Tomlin is now 8-10 in the playoffs, and like Brandt said, in the Steelers’ last five playoff games they’ve gotten completely blown out, starting with the 2016 AFC Championship Game. During their current four-game streak of going one-and-done in the playoffs, they’ve allowed an average of 40.4 points per game. Tomlin’s teams are usually built on defense, and the defense completely falls apart in the playoffs.
Something has to change. The Steelers haven’t shown up and have been outcoached and outmatched far too often in their recent playoff appearances, and their current drought is frankly embarrassing. The Steelers have never been lacking talent, and yet they find themselves losing completely winnable games handily. To be fair about the non-losing season streak, it’s never something that Tomlin has brought up and is perpetuated by the media and not by anybody in-house, but Brandt’s right that all the talk about is old. It’s been tiresome for years given the Steelers’ lack of postseason success.
At this point, it feels like the Steelers can almost circle their first playoff game as the end of their season. Some issues against Buffalo weren’t entirely on Tomlin, like the two first-half turnovers that led to Buffalo touchdowns. On top of that, the Steelers were starting Mason Rudolph at quarterback and dealt with below-average quarterback play for most of the season, but they still found a way to rally to make the playoffs. But they also wouldn’t have had to rally if they had taken care of business at home against the Arizona Cardinals and New England Patriots, two games where they fell flat in the regular season against inferior opponents.
It just goes to show that far too often lately, the Steelers haven’t shown up under Tomlin, even in the regular season. He’s proven in the past that he can win in the postseason, but it just hasn’t happened recently. He’s going to remain Pittsburgh’s coach, but he has to find a way to change to get his teams to show up and win when it counts, especially if the Steelers don’t make a change at the quarterback position and roll with Kenny Pickett again next season. If Tomlin can’t change and win in the playoffs soon, the calls for his job are going to get a whole lot louder.
