Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but the Pittsburgh Steelers haven’t won a playoff game since 2016. They haven’t even competed in a Super Bowl since 2010, and they haven’t won one since 2008. If they view Super Bowl trophies as their standard, then they have fallen short for quite some time.
Everybody is tired of it, from T.J. Watt to Mike Tomlin and up to Steelers owner Art Rooney II. But identifying the problem is only part of the battle, without a clear means of alleviating it. The solution is simple enough: win a playoff game.
But actually doing that is much harder, and even those on the outside have had it. Anyone who knows football and has for some time associates the Steelers with winning. Most experienced viewers, like Harry Douglas, are still not very used to watching them at home by mid-January. For all their efforts to improve this offseason, the former NFL wide receiver knows the bar has to be higher.
“I think they’re gonna be okay. But it’s not about being satisfied”, he said on ESPN’s First Take yesterday. “You know, ‘We haven’t had a losing record since Mike Tomlin’, you want to compete at the highest level. That’s for a Super Bowl. That’s the ultimate goal when you go into your respective team every single year. Let’s not just be happy and satisfied. ‘Hey, we didn’t have a losing season’. You want to contend, especially when you have a T.J. Watt, you have a Cam Heyward, all these type of guys who are older on your football team”.
We have mentioned Watt a couple of times now, and for good reason. He is probably already one of the best players in NFL history without a playoff win at this point in their career. The Steelers advanced to the conference finals the year before they drafted him but haven’t won since. And he knows how embarrassing it is to lack that on his resume.
Yes, Tomlin has never had a losing season, which is the favorite trivia point for Steelers fans. But his seasons with a playoff win are few and far between, which is far more notable. In 17 years as a head coach, the Steelers have won at least one playoff game only four times.
The Steelers had their 13th one-and-done postseason run in 2023, tied for the fifth-most in NFL history. Tomlin owns seven of those one-and-done runs all by himself. Winning playoff games isn’t easy, but coaching seven straight years without one and keeping your job is rare.
And are the Steelers really that much closer to a playoff win? You can argue that they improved the quarterback and offensive coordinator roles, but they have a harder schedule. They also benefited from some serious injuries that other teams suffered, most notably the Cincinnati Bengals.
