These aren’t the Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970s. To former quarterback Terry Bradshaw, the showing the team displayed Saturday night is unrecognizable from his day or even modern-era teams that may have struggled but never looked as helpless as they did in their 28-14 Wild Card loss to the Baltimore Ravens.
Weighing in on the NFL on FOX pre-game show, Bradshaw expressed confusion over how poor the Steelers looked.
“The defense was just horrible, they couldn’t stop the run, couldn’t stop the pass,” Bradshaw told the panel via The Mirror’s Charlie Wilson. “They couldn’t do anything right last night. … This just doesn’t look anything like the Steelers teams we’ve seen.”
In some respects, he’s write. The 299 rushing yards Pittsburgh allowed is a franchise postseason record while Derrick Henry’s 182-yards is an individual-best. It capped off one of the the worst five-game stretches in team history. For just the third time in franchise history, Pittsburgh failed to lead for a single moment of five consecutive games. The other two instances occurred in their earlier days, Chuck Noll’s first year in 1969 and 1938 when the team still went by the Pittsburgh Pirates, not the Steelers.
Pittsburgh has lost six-straight playoff games, matching the longest active streak in the NFL. The Steelers continue to get stuck on the hump of Wild Card weekend, unable to progress no matter what element of the roster they attack.
Even during low points since the merger, the late 1990s and all of the 1980s, Pittsburgh would capture some measure of playoff success. Now, they seem further away from the target after being embarrassed by an AFC North rival that beat them up twice in a four-game span.
Bradshaw’s opinion of Mike Tomlin has ebbed and flowed throughout his career, once going viral for calling Tomlin a “cheerleader,” comments he would eventually walk back. He didn’t appear to make any specific mention of Tomlin during today’s show but as the head coach overseeing it all, he bears more responsibility than everyone. Just don’t expect Pittsburgh to go out and make a change at the top.
