Nobody can ever accuse Steelers star Cameron Heyward of quitting, but many certainly said that of the team last week. In fact, broadcast color analyst Kirk Herbstreit even took the Steelers to task during the game. He questioned where their fight was while looking out of sorts in the first half. While they showed a little more gumption in the second half, they still lost by 14.
But did anybody quit out there for the Steelers? Were there players who were simply giving up, tapping out, as some have suggested? Cameron Heyward doesn’t think so, though even he left some room for doubt, speaking from only his perspective.
“You had guys like Patrick Queen fighting through illness. If they’re giving less than 100 percent, they’ve got to live with that”, Heyward said of his Steelers teammates on his Not Just Football podcast. “But from my perspective, there wasn’t anybody like that”.
For what it’s worth, Heyward is in good company in defending the Steelers. Former NFL WR Steve Smith Sr. agrees that they didn’t give up—they simply stunk. And personally, I tend to agree with that as well, at least from a broader point of view. You’re always going to have individual instances of a player not giving maximum effort on a given play. But did the Steelers collectively just throw in the towel? Absolutely not, which is arguably even more worrying.
Of course, none of this matters at this point, as the Steelers are already in offseason mode. Well, perhaps it’s not entirely irrelevant; perhaps it could enlighten some decisions they need to make. We already know with reasonable confidence the Steelers are not going to make a change at head coach, though.
What about Mike Tomlin? Does he think that his Steelers gave up or lacked fight? On the whole, he was complimentary of his players after the game in that regard. But both he and Heyward lamented certain lapses, like failure to rally to the ball.
You can’t lose five games in a row without some major red flags, of course. And it’s a lot easier for a player to check out mentally amid such a miserable run. Steelers players certainly vented their frustrations, but they were arguably trying to be productive. That was their fleeting effort to search for a solution, the exact opposite of giving up.
Over the Steelers’ final five games, they gave up 27.4 points per game while scoring 14.2. That might look like a team that wasn’t trying, but the results don’t necessarily reflect the effort. This is a team with some major flaws, and some unfortunate luck, too. Some of the luck they created themselves, some the league threw at them. Some of it was injuries, but all of it was a convergence of obstacles at the worst possible time.
