The Pittsburgh Steelers were supposed to finish below .500 a number of times in recent years. Even after starting a season 2-6, Mike Tomlin has managed to crawl out of the basement. His consecutive non-losing season streak grows both more impressive the longer it lasts and less so the longer his postseason drought does.
But the 2025 season could be the year Tomlin and the Steelers finally bottom out. They made a go of it with Russell Wilson and Justin Fields last year, and it didn’t work out. In fact, the bottom had dropped out by the end of the season. And yet it seems their best option for this upcoming season is to try it again with one or the other.
Ray Fittipaldo isn’t impressed, nor is he optimistic about their immediate future. “It would not surprise me one bit [if] the Steelers finished the 2025 season with a losing record”, he wrote in a recent chat session for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “This team is in the middle of a rebuild even though the front office will never call it that”.
Many predicted that the Steelers would have their first losing season under Mike Tomlin last year, but that didn’t happen. In fact, for a while, they offered the illusion of contending status, jumping out to a 10-3 start. But that didn’t last once they had to face the actual contenders.
The Steelers did benefit from a relatively soft first half of the schedule, even more so than on first blush. The Aaron Rodgers-led New York Jets proved to be paper tigers, and Kirk Cousins looked like an old quarterback with a bad leg. Justin Herbert was injured in the Chargers game—yet they lost to a 39-year-old backup in Indianapolis.
Still, the Steelers beat the Commanders and the Ravens in the second half of the season. Even with a loss to the Browns, there were signs of a good team. That all came to a screeching halt, though, in mid-December, and it might not stop there.
Were the Steelers just riding a wave of momentum before settling into their new reality? Were they overperforming, as many now believe, with a regression to the mean inevitable? They have to play the NFC North in 2025, and the Bills, Seahawks, and Chargers.
Surely there have to be some reasons for optimism. For example, the Steelers may finally have their offensive line of the future on the field next year. In turn, they may finally have a running game that can drive them forward, especially if they hit in the draft.
That doesn’t solve the riddles at the quarterback, wide receiver, cornerback, and defensive line positions. It doesn’t show Minkah Fitzpatrick how to play like an All-Pro again, either. I don’t know if the Steelers have a losing season next year, but it would probably be in their best interests, so that they can finally stockpile higher-quality draft picks.
