After starting the season 10-3, the Pittsburgh Steelers ended the regular season 10-7 and were bounced in the first round of the playoffs by their arch-rival Baltimore Ravens. To the outside, it was a shocking collapse and even with HBO’s Hard Knocks filming inside the Steelers facility, we never got to see how the team truly handled it.
Steelers safety and special teams ace Miles Killebrew sat down with Sports Spectrum and revealed that even as special teams captain and veteran, he didn’t know how to deal with the collapse as the losses kept piling up.
“I feel like I’ll be more prepared to kind of be a resource for younger guys in the locker room in future seasons having experienced this season,” said Killebrew. “I think this was a very unique season for the Steelers. I mean, to be 10-3 and then all of a sudden just flip and lose five-straight like that. That was a crazy thing. I had never really experienced that before…I’ll be honest man, I didn’t really know in real time how to help some guys navigate through that as effectively as I wish I would’ve.”
Killebrew joined the Steelers in 2021 after playing for the Detroit Lions for five seasons. Since joining the Steelers, the team was always competitive but often needed late season surges to even make the playoffs. However, this season was the opposite. As Pittsburgh entered their last four regular season games they were sitting pretty at 10-3 and in the driver’s seat to win the AFC North. Even with a tough schedule, a collapse of such magnitude seemed unforeseeable.
When adversity strikes, teams turn to the captains and leaders, but Killebrew struggled to find the words to help and uplift the locker room as he himself was shocked at the collapse and poor performances. Coming from the Lions, Killebrew was not unfamiliar with long losing streaks. In 2019, his Lions lost nine-straight games to end the season. In fact, his rookie season, 2016, Killebrew’s Lions had a similar end to the year as the 2024 Steelers, going from 9-4 to 9-7 before being blown out in the Wild Card game.
But, the Lions and Steelers are not the same. The Steelers hadn’t experienced an end of season collapse like this since 2009, while the Lions were the league’s laughing stock when Killebrew was there in 2016. Since Killebrew joined the Steelers, the team always knew how to dig itself out of a hole and played their best with their back against the wall. But this time Pittsburgh had no answers and instead went out with a dying whimper.
With Pittsburgh’s season being over for more than a month now, Killebrew has had time to reflect on the collapse. If adversity like this season strikes next season, hopefully he and the team will be more prepared and know how to stop the bad momentum from snowballing into disaster.
