Over the years, the Pittsburgh Steelers have been the model in the NFL when it comes to stability. Of course, other teams have been stable and more successful, especially recently. For Pittsburgh, though, the franchise’s stability is hard to replicate.
Pittsburgh is a model organization in many ways. That stability has downsides, though. Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd spoke about the situation on The Herd on Tuesday. He thinks the Steelers are focusing too much on stability, making them stale.
“I think when you care about stability over ultimate success, you feel stale,” Cowherd said. “That’s Pittsburgh. Loyalty makes you blind to opportunity.”
‘Stale’ is a good word to describe the state of the franchise right now. Pittsburgh has had the recipe for a winning season year in and year out, but they’re easy to predict at this point. The Steelers pride themselves on their stability across the roster. Sometimes, that mindset can make you complacent, which is what Cowherd is arguing here. It’s fair to say the Steelers looked complacent during their final month of the 2024 season.
More specifically, Cowherd thinks Pittsburgh was too relaxed towards the end of Ben Roethlisberger’s career. He thinks the team could have done more to find a backup plan once the legendary quarterback retired.
“And when Big Ben was aging, they did not address quarterback,” Cowherd said. “They drafted one quarterback, third round, Mason Rudolph. Ben got upset, criticized them after the draft. And then they just pretended the future at quarterback didn’t matter.”
You could give Pittsburgh some leniency. You could argue that the Steelers are in a disadvantaged situation when it comes to selecting their next franchise quarterback since they always win too many games to have a high draft pick. That argument would be similar to the one Jim Rooney, brother of Steelers owner Art Rooney II, echoed last week, for which he received heavy criticism.
Now, the Steelers are in a tough situation. During Art Rooney’s press conference on Monday, he claimed that one of Justin Fields or Russell Wilson might be back next year. Each is good in his own way. Still, they’re far from the cream of the crop. On Sunday, Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurts, and Jayden Daniels all battled for a chance to go to the Super Bowl. The week before that, other talented quarterbacks like Lamar Jackson and Matthew Stafford were eliminated.
There’s a clear difference between those quarterbacks and the two Pittsburgh had this year. There’s also a big difference between the Steelers’ overall talent and the talent on the teams that were actually contending for a Super Bowl this year.
Is that because the Steelers have been too complacent in recent years? Maybe. What we do know is that for the Steelers to get out of this rut, their stability may need shaking up.
