After the 2024 season, the Pittsburgh Steelers don’t seem to be in a great place. They’re once again left without a starting quarterback, and none of their options are particularly enticing. Their great defense looked vulnerable down the stretch, and many of their stars are on the wrong side of 30. Because of those things, analyst Marc Sessler believes the Steelers are trending downward.
“I’ll go stock down on the Steelers, and it’s not like a hard stock down,” Sessler said Wednesday on his Heed the Call podcast. “They became forgettable. I think that’s the one thing that I don’t like about what happened to them this year is they became forgettable.
“It was a great story that turned into a non-story. And a great coach that turned into we have questions about the coach, and we’ve got questions about the future at the quarterback position. The Steelers now face the same questions that, I wouldn’t say bad teams, but questionable teams face.”
The Steelers might have become forgettable to Sessler, but for fans, it was like watching a train go off the rails. Things just kept getting worse and worse. One moment, they were 10-3, and the next, they were 10-7. It felt like their team fell apart overnight.
Sessler is correct that the Steelers were one of the best stories of the year before that. Many people had written them off before the season even started. However, they battled adversity to become one of the best teams in the league. They spent most of the year atop the AFC North, even beating teams like the Washington Commanders and Baltimore Ravens.
They couldn’t hold it together down the stretch, though. And now they have a gaggle of questions that need addressed this offseason.
“You don’t necessarily have a quarterback, you’ve got a diva wide receiver who shows up and then vanishes, you’ve got the most expensive defense in the NFL that did not appear as we needed them to appear in the biggest moment,” Sessler said.
It feels like the Steelers’ best option at quarterback is to bring back either Russell Wilson or Justin Fields. Neither of them showed great potential in 2024, so it’s uncertain if the results would be any different in 2025.
George Pickens’ attitude was a problem too. Pickens was the Steelers’ best weapon, but too often he allowed his emotions to control him. Going into the last year of his rookie deal, it’s unclear if he’ll even be with the Steelers in 2025. He could find himself getting traded.
The Steelers’ defense is usually the most dependable part of their team, but that’s less of a sure thing now. While they are loaded with talent, things weren’t clicking to end the year. They got dominated on the ground, struggled to tackle, and were plagued by communication lapses. Things got ugly for the Steelers defenively, and that was with 35-year-old Cam Heyward playing some of the best ball of his career.
Things look bleak for the Steelers right now, but luckily, they have the whole offseason to make improvements. Free agency and the draft should allow them to patch some of their leaks. While their stock may be down right now, it could only take a few moves to bring it right back up.
