One of Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin’s widely praised qualities is his consistency. He doesn’t win the division every single year. He doesn’t even make the playoffs every year. But he’s always been at least on the cusp. He has coached one game in 17 years in which there was no chance of reaching the postseason at kickoff.
Indeed, only once before, in 2009, has he ever finished more than one spot out of the playoffs. It was a storyline in 2020 when the NFL added an additional wild-card spot to create a seventh seed, but Tomlin’s Steelers had only once before finished worse than seventh, and that was an eighth-place finish.
Since 2020, they have just missed and just made the cut. In 2021, thanks to a Las Vegas Raiders field goal at the end of overtime avoiding a tie with the Las Angeles Chargers, they made the postseason as the seventh seed over the Indianapolis Colts. Last year, they didn’t get the help they needed, including a loss by the Miami Dolphins, finishing just outside the playoff hunt as the eighth seed.
After defeating the Baltimore Ravens yesterday and not getting a tie in the game between the Houston Texans and the Indianapolis Colts that would have clinched a playoff berth, the Steelers find themselves playing the waiting game for the third year in a row.
Which way will things break this time? They can finish anywhere between sixth and eighth in the conference, and at least for the time being, eighth isn’t good enough. If either the Buffalo Bills lose to the Miami Dolphins or the Jacksonville Jaguars lose to the Tennessee Titans, they will be the seventh seed. If both lose, they would be the sixth.
To say this is familiar territory for Tomlin would be an understatement. Since taking over in 2007, he has placed seventh in the conference five times; unfortunately, the first four times came before the NFL added the seventh seed in the playoffs, the Steelers failing to advance to the postseason in 2012, 2013, 2018, and 2019. The end of the 2013 season was the only year in which they had no chance of making the playoffs entering their final game.
In the first year with seven seeds, the Steelers went 12-4 and ended up the third seed in the conference. The 2021 season was the year of the last-second Raiders field goal in overtime that boosted them to the postseason. Last year, of course, was the year that they finished eighth and just out of the postseason.
Now guaranteed to finish no worse than eighth once again this year, it’s little solace given that it doesn’t come with a postseason berth. You can say that Tomlin’s never finished outside the top half of the conference before, but really, who cares? It’s just another variation of “never had a losing season”.
And the reality is the Steelers didn’t do enough by the end of their final game of the season to know whether they have another game to play. You never want to be in that position. They certainly missed several opportunities. But they do still have a decent chance of stamping their playoff ticket, and you can’t win it if you’re not in it. We will see if they only get in because of the playoff expansion, however, or if they manage to secure the sixth seed. If they advance as the seventh seed, then that will be two out of three years in which Tomlin earns an additional playoff berth he wouldn’t have gotten prior to 2020.
