The Pittsburgh Steelers could hardly have entered the postseason in worse morale. They lost their last four games of the regular season, only the third playoff team in history to do so. And from there, things went about as well as you might imagine, falling behind 21-0 in the opening round.
Considering the Steelers only ended up scoring 14 points of their own, you can extrapolate how they fared. The defense had no answers for the Ravens’ potent offense, with a run game that picked up 299 yards. As for the offense, for half of the game, they couldn’t get out of their own way. But perhaps it was just a culmination of everything that was coming to a head.
“It wasn’t good enough, let’s say that,” Steelers president Art Rooney II said of their playoff performance, via Kaboly + Mack. “It wasn’t good enough. We were a team that was coming off four losses in a row, and we may have had some confidence problems going into that game. I don’t know for sure. But it was not a great performance, and hard to overcome that. But we will.”
While Rooney is only providing his perspective, his perspective is pretty relevant as the Steelers’ owner. To say that the Steelers lacked confidence going into the playoffs is concerning. Even in the context of a four-game losing streak, you need to believe in your team. After all, they did win 10 games out of 13 before losing four. It should have just been a matter of recovering their lost identity.
Instead, perhaps the Steelers should have gone searching for their lost confidence. And I suppose they did, HC Mike Tomlin attempting to use positive reinforcement techniques with full-grown professional athletes. It didn’t work.
It’s hard to say there is anything the Steelers uniquely encountered late in the season that couldn’t have been overcome. Sure, they faced tougher opponents, but they were healthy for the playoffs. They had George Pickens back by then, and he even played well in the loss to the Ravens.
Confidence is something you can only exercise so much control over, of course. If somebody is not confident, it is very difficult to convince them to feel otherwise. So did Rooney sense a lack of confidence? He routinely interacts with players and greets them in the locker room after every Steelers game.
In other words, he has looked into their eyes at these moments, and his conclusion is they lacked for confidence. While nobody would be surprised that the Steelers had a deficit in self-belief in early January, I can’t recall an owner ever saying that about his team. And even though he was only offering his personal observation, it weighs a lot more when you own the team.
