Everybody is painfully aware of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ long win drought in the playoffs, but it’s relatively easy to cite reasons for some of their recent failures. The quarterback position has been well below the line ever since Ben Roethlisberger’s elbow injury in 2019, and the overall roster has not been in a great spot since then either. The Steelers are out of excuses in 2025 with an uncharacteristic offseason of aggressive moves by Omar Khan and the front office.
The Pat McAfee Show’s Steelers correspondent Mark Kaboly thinks the Steelers could find themselves in hot water if they meet the same fate as recent Steelers teams.
“If they don’t make the playoffs or at least win or at least be highly, highly competitive, I don’t see anybody who can really make an excuse for them,” Kaboly said Friday via Kaboly + Mack on YouTube. “You could be on the flip side of this all and be the Pittsburgh Pirates and just don’t give a crap. So I’m fine with it, but when you put it all out there like they’ve done with [DK] Metcalf, [Jalen] Ramsey, [Jonnu] Smith trades, [Aaron] Rodgers – you’re opening yourself up for criticism if it fails.”
There are plenty of Steelers fan who would’ve liked the team to begin its rebuild and trend the roster younger to prepare for a new franchise quarterback next offseason. They did quite the opposite by making their roster one of the oldest in the league with additions like Ramsey, Rodgers and Slay. The most recent example is giving T.J. Watt another new contract to keep him with the team through his mid 30s.
The reality is that nobody will be happy until the Steelers end their playoff drought. And even then, there are plenty of others who have much higher expectations than that every season. I commend the Steelers for maximizing their window with guys like T.J. Watt and Cameron Heyward.
Khan did a great job of balancing an all-in approach this offseason with a forward-thinking strategy for the 2026 NFL Draft. Very few teams will have as much draft capital as the Steelers next year in what is shaping up to be a QB-heavy draft class.
Going all-in now sends the right message to the young players on the roster that the Steelers always want to compete. It’s hard for the Steelers to rebuild with the correct culture in place if they go about the rebuild in the wrong way.
Yes, they may have opened themselves up to extreme criticism if all of the aggressive offseason moves amount to spinning their wheels with the same end result. But I’m not so sure they care what it looks like from the outside. And I commend them for having a clear plan for both the present and future.
