The Pittsburgh Steelers are entering the playoffs as losers of four straight games after dropping their regular season finale to the Cincinnati Bengals, and while the Steelers haven’t looked like the same team that started the season 10-3, Mike Tomlin emphasized that they don’t need to wipe the slate clean after their recent struggles. In his postgame press conference following the loss to the Bengals, Tomlin said that the Steelers need to learn from their four-game losing streak and figure out what went wrong to prevent it heading into the postseason.
“I don’t know that you go clean slate. You better learn from these lessons. We’re a mentally tough group, it’s ok to learn from these lessons and to remember the things that created this, because there’s nothing mystical about it. So that’s gonna be my mentality and that’s what I’m gonna relay to the guys as we move into next week,” Tomlin said via the team’s YouTube channel.
There’s been a myriad of issues for the Steelers over their past four games. Defensive communication was a problem, although that issue seemed to be cleaned up a little bit against the Bengals. The offense has struggled to do much of anything, with Russell Wilson struggling and the ground game not playing the same way it did early in the season.
They’ve also been getting dominated in the possession battle, and winning time of possession was one of Pittsburgh’s trademarks when they were winning games early in the season. It’s hard to feel confident about the Steelers given how poorly they’ve played as of late, but their mistakes are fixable, and Tomlin knows that they can get them fixed. He added that he knows this team is mentally tough from being around them, and they’re going to have to prove that and have some hard conversations about what’s going wrong and really work to fix things if they want to avoid going one-and-done in the playoffs for the fifth straight time.
It’s a disappointing end to a promising regular season, but the real season starts in the playoffs. While the Steelers don’t enter with much momentum, they’re a veteran-laden team that’s hungry to win in the playoffs, and to do so is going to require a lot of work over the next week. Just trying to move on and look at the playoffs as a clean slate is the wrong mentality to have for a team that’s struggled so much over the past month. In order to keep their season alive, the players and coaches will really need to dig deep and look at what’s gone wrong lately.
