There is nothing to gain by being pessimistic when your team reaches the playoffs, though that’s never stopped Pittsburgh Steelers fans. After all, this year, they are a seventh seed, from which position no team has yet won a game, and starting their third-string quarterback because their first two quarterbacks weren’t good enough. They are also without their best player in OLB T.J. Watt.
Suffice it to say that it’s not unreasonable to imagine things going wrong this weekend. But if things go very wrong, they could exit this round with the NFL’s longest active postseason losing streak, a title I imagine they have never owned before.
Beginning with a 36-22 thumping in the 2016 AFC Championship Game against the New England Patriots, the Steelers have now lost their last four postseason games, the longest stretch in their history. If they extend it to five, there is a realistic chance it will be the longest active streak in the league.
A couple of things would have to go “right” for that to happen, though, starting with the Detroit Lions winning their first postseason game since 1991. The NFC’s third seed hosting the Los Angeles Rams, they are expected to win, which would be their first in 10 tries. Their nine consecutive postseason losses are substantially more than anybody else. But if they win, that record vanishes.
Two teams enter this season with active five-game postseason losing streaks. The Washington Commanders did not qualify, so they will remain at five. The Miami Dolphins, the sixth seed who will be playing the Kansas City Chiefs today, would need to win and end their five-game losing streak to prevent it from going to six, ahead of where Pittsburgh would be if they lose to the Buffalo Bills.
But the Chiefs have looked rather vulnerable of late. They are 5-5 in their past 10 games and have won only one game by more than one possession in their last six. And that was against the New England Patriots. They barely beat a Los Angeles Chargers team that fired its head coach, 13-12, in the season finale, and a listless Cincinnati Bengals team the week before that had its Joe Burrow-less fairy tale end when the Pittsburgh Steelers reminded Jake Browning that the Minnesota Vikings, indeed, should have fucking cut him.
So, the Detroit Lions win as expected, the Dolphins (who until very late in the season were in the running for the top seed) pull out a minor upset over the Chiefs, and the table is set for the Steelers to tie the Commanders for the NFL’s longest active postseason losing streak. A dubious honor if there ever was one. If they don’t pull out the upset over the Bills, head coach Mike Tomlin would fall to 8-10 in the postseason all-time.
The fact of the matter is their recent playoff history isn’t pretty at all. That they only lost to the Jacksonville Jaguars by three points in 2017, 45-42, is little more than a mirage, which included a last-second touchdown by the Steelers. They were never within more than seven points up to that point.
A couple of years later, it was a humiliating loss to the Cleveland Browns. That game saw the visiting team set an NFL record with 28 first-quarter points, starting with a touchdown off a botched snap by C Maurkice Pouncey on the first play of the game. One can say things escalated from there, and they lost 48-37 in a game that, again, was not as close as the scoreboard looked. Their 42-21 loss to the Chiefs in 2021 was closer to the real spirit of the game, which saw Kansas City score 35 unanswered after T.J. Watt recovered a fumble for a touchdown five minutes into the second quarter.
