Pittsburgh Steelers president Art Rooney II is doing his media rounds after their most recent first-round playoff exit. Facing the same questions every year, he remains confident in how the team does business. Even though their desired results continue to elude them, he believes they are still on the right track.
“I’m very comfortable with the culture in this team,” Rooney told Ashley Liotus on WTAE. “I think it is a winning culture. I think people need to keep it in perspective here. Even though we haven’t reached our goal of winning a Super Bowl, we’ve had winning teams. We’ve been making the playoffs.”
This is a dangerous line for Rooney to walk, especially in light of his brother’s recent remarks. Jim Rooney, who holds no position within the Steelers organization, said that they outperform the NFL mean. Many construed that as expressing satisfaction with the current state of affairs and extrapolated that the organization feels the same way.
While the Steelers have not had a losing record in decades and they make the playoffs more often than not, that is as far as it goes. They haven’t won a playoff game since 2016, which is their longest drought in the Super Bowl era. Since then, they have lost six straight playoff games, which is tied for the longest active losing streak.
“I understand the disappointment in terms of not succeeding in the postseason,” Rooney said of the Steelers’ recent struggles. “But it’s not like we haven’t had some success around here. We just need to continue to build on the culture that we have and players like T.J. [Watt] and Cam Heyward. Those kind of players help you with the culture and make sure that it’s being passed down to the younger players.”
Steelers fans don’t want to define success as non-losing records and one-and-done playoff appearances. That might fly in Cleveland or Jacksonville, but not in Pittsburgh. And for a team that defines success for itself as Super Bowls, it’s questionable to call this success.
At the same time, Rooney is the head of a business and it’s his job to sell optimism. That includes defining the current state of affairs for what it is, rather than what it is not. The Steelers aren’t winning Super Bowls, and it’s hard to see the path to winning another in the near future. With that said, they are winning games, and they are qualifying for the playoffs.
The problem is, one even struggles to argue there are worse places to be in. Teams like the Steelers who are merely good struggle to escape that purgatory. Unless you have a quarterback who can transcend the mediocrity, you’re not going anywhere. Not without cap space, draft resources, and more than a little bit of luck. So what does a winning culture really mean in the absence of actual wins in the playoffs? Because one of the very players Art Rooney cites, T.J. Watt, doesn’t even know what it’s like to win a postseason game.
