No matter how you phrase it, the Steelers are in a tough spot. Purgatory, no man’s land, they all mean the same thing. Mike Tomlin doesn’t want to admit it, but the Steelers are stuck spinning their tires, running in place. There has been no progress for years, and no obvious indications of progress to come.
And there isn’t even much the Steelers can do about it, Mark Kaboly argues. Speaking with Chris Mack, the veteran reporter argues the Steelers’ options are limited in terms of how much they can actually improve their lot for the 2025 season.
“There’s only so much you can change. What are you going to change defensively to make this team better?”, he said of the Steelers’ plight. “Unless you go really crazy and you’re talking guys who are All-Pros. But there’s just not a lot to change here defensively. You have to go to the offensive line–there’s not even much to change [there]. You just need some more skill players [and a quarterback]”.
Even the matter of the quarterback is a rough one, because there simply aren’t any enticing options. This is not regarded as a foundational draft class, and the Steelers won’t even sniff one of the top names in it. Or if they do, they will probably want to pass as they should have on Kenny Pickett.
The free agency class is hardly any more inspiring, especially after Sam Darnold’s last two games. The reality is the Steelers have two of the more notable names on their own roster in Russell Wilson and Justin Fields. And it’s not clear that either of them is a particularly attractive option.
But what about the rest of the roster? The Steelers need another defensive lineman, quite possibly another outside cornerback. And a slot cornerback, to boot. Offensively, they need potentially multiple wide receivers, potentially multiple running backs. They might be set at tight end, but they can keep their eyes open—on the offensive line, too.
Sitting here in mid-January, I think it’s easy to be cynical about the Steelers’ immediate prospects. What can they do realistically this offseason that will change their fortunes much? These are the same questions we have been asking for years, yet it seems even more hopeless now.
A lot of that probably has to do with just the weak options at quarterback. Even Wilson and Fields arguably seemed more appealing a year ago than they do now, and they were actually worse before they got here. But the Steelers couldn’t magically turn them into “the answer”, so why retread?
Because there aren’t really any other alternatives, unfortunately. The biggest thing, in my opinion, that the Steelers could hope for is great internal improvement from their offensive line. If they can develop a top-five, even top-10 unit, then we might have some offensive stability.
