Despite a four-game losing streak to end the regular season, the Pittsburgh Steelers are in the playoffs. That’s something more than half the teams in the league can’t say. And they did it in a season where many expected them to fail.
But that final stretch of the season certainly paints an ugly picture. The defense struggled during that stretch, which was a sobering problem for the team. But it’s the Steelers’ offense that made FOX Sports’ list of the six most-flawed units among playoff teams.
“Quarterback Russell Wilson and Pittsburgh’s offense went into a downward spiral over the last month of the season, and it’s hard to see how that suddenly changes for the playoffs,” Ben Baldwin wrote. “The Steelers scored fewer than 20 points in each of their four straight losses to end the regular season, a span in which they had six turnovers. Wilson’s passer rating fell in each of those games too. Outside of receiver George Pickens, the Steelers don’t have a true threat on the outside (their pass game struggled when Pickens was sidelined with a hamstring injury for three games in the regular season). Pittsburgh is 11th in rushing offense (127.4 rushing yards per game), but they’re not very efficient on the ground, tying for 20th in rushing yards per attempt and 25th in rushing EPA per play, per Next Gen Stats.”
Head coach Mike Tomlin and the Steelers pivoted to Wilson as the starter in Week 7. They made that decision in an attempt to kick-start a largely inconsistent offense under QB Justin Fields. And at first, it did. The Steelers jumped up to a top-10 scoring offense.
But as Baldwin highlighted, that all fell apart during the final four-game stretch of the season. The Steelers simply could not score enough to keep up with teams like the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs. That also included the Baltimore Ravens, the team the Steelers play on Saturday. Prior to that four-game skid, the Steelers failed to score 20 points only twice with Wilson at quarterback.
Now, as Baldwin highlighted, Pickens missed time during this stretch. But even when he came back for the final two games, he was ineffective. He was targeted 13 times in those two games but only had four catches for 50 yards. Three of those catches and all 50 yards came against the Chiefs on Christmas.
But the Steelers’ issues offensively go deeper than just the four-game losing streak. As Baldwin points out, they have run the ball quite often this season and accumulated yardage. But they certainly haven’t been efficient in that endeavor. Fields is by far the most efficient runner for the Steelers, averaging 4.7 yards on 62 carries. RB Jaylen Warren isn’t too far behind at 4.3 yards per carry.
But Warren might be the perfect example of the Steelers’ run game flaws. While he dealt with an injury earlier in the season, Warren has only had double-digit carries in five games. Two of those games came in the last three games of the season. Tomlin talked prior to the Bengals game about Warren being the hot hand but needing both him and Najee Harris to run the ball effectively. And on the surface, that makes a lot of sense. The Steelers ran the ball the fourth-most times in the league in 2024. So you need multiple running backs to sustain that.
But Warren had double-digit carries in back-to-back weeks before Tomlin said what he said. So against the Bengals, you would have expected Warren to continue to get carries. But instead, he carried the ball only six times, tied for his fifth-fewest rushing attempts all season. The Steelers opted for a run-heavy approach, which Tomlin admitted maybe should be questioned, yet hardly called Warren’s number.
So the Steelers’ offense is struggling as of late. They are questioning their approach, and they aren’t even utilizing their best players consistently. No wonder FOX Sports says the offense is so flawed.
