The Pittsburgh Steelers didn’t manage to move the needle, team president Art Rooney II admitted earlier this week. The needle is playoff success, and he conceded that they appear to be as far from that now as they were a year ago. Despite their presumed best efforts to work toward changing that, they wound up right back in their usual spot. Following a 10-7 regular season, the Steelers lost in the first round of the playoffs.
Not only did they lose in the Wild Card Round yet again, they also lost their final four regular-season games. They are just the third team in the modern era to reach the playoffs riding a four-game losing streak. The Jets managed to win a playoff game under those conditions. This Steelers time didn’t even come particularly close to that.
“After losing five in a row, it’s hard to say we’re any closer”, Steelers president Art Rooney II said, to winning in the postseason, via Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The last time they did win a playoff game was back in 2016. That year, they reached the conference finals, but they are on an active six-game playoff losing streak since then.
In fact, the Steelers now have the longest active playoff losing streak in the NFL. Before Mike Tomlin, they never lost more than three playoff games in a row. Tomlin now has an 8-11 all-time playoff record, though, a stark contrast to his .630 winning percentage in regular-season games.
This past offseason, hoping to get over the hump, the Steelers made some bold moves. They hired Arthur Smith as offensive coordinator, turned over the quarterback room, and spend big (for them) in free agency.
It looked to be working, initially jumping out to 10-3 record, initially. The Steelers even managed to sustain success through a midseason quarterback change, which isn’t easy. But it all came crashing to a halt when the quality of competition picked up.
“We got to play the cream of the crop there [during] that three-game stretch, the Christmas tournament if you will”, Rooney said. In consecutive weeks, the Steelers played the Eagles, Ravens, and Chiefs, two of whom are in the conference finals. “We played the best teams in the league, and, obviously, we could see we’re not there”.
It felt like more than the Steelers just losing to better teams during that five-game streak, though. Indeed, it felt something like the wheels coming off of a moving car. This is a team that crashed into the finish line while running on fumes. The real wonder is how they made it as far as they did. And it seems that losing streak may have helped put that into perspective.
