The Steelers Are Stuck in a Time Loop of Mediocrity. And It’s Getting Old.
Pittsburgh lost its sixth straight playoff game on Saturday night, tying the longest active streak in the NFL. And while the team and staff are often praised for their ability to overachieve, regular-season consistency is not enough anymore.
The Pittsburgh Steelers have been here before. They were here last season, when they lost by two scores to the Buffalo Bills in the first round of the playoffs. They were here two seasons before that, when they lost by 21 to the Kansas City Chiefs, also in the wild-card round. And the year before that they fell to the Cleveland Browns, as a COVID-stricken Kevin Stefanski celebrated at home on his couch. As with most things, Pittsburgh is a model of consistency.
But after their sixth straight playoff defeat—this time a 28-14 wild-card loss to the division rival Ravens—the Steelers need change. The routine is getting old, and instead of becoming a team on the rise, Pittsburgh is stuck in a time loop. As the Steelers head into the offseason, the only thing they should be focused on is getting out of it.
Wild-Card Weekend 2025
It’s possible to look at the Steelers’ presence in the playoffs this season as a meaningful achievement, something that would ordinarily justify staying whatever course led to that outcome. After all, Pittsburgh’s preseason expectations were low; at most, it was considered the third-best team in the AFC North. Both Steelers quarterbacks, Russell Wilson and Justin Fields, were cast-off reclamation projects. And the general consensus about this roster was that it presented a stiff test to coach Mike Tomlin’s 17-year streak of finishing with a record at or above .500.
But the Steelers went on to win 10 games, including victories against every division opponent plus eventual playoff teams like the Chargers and Broncos. Both Fields and Wilson, who started the majority of the season’s games, looked better playing in black and yellow than they had in previous stops. The offense got by, the team had the eighth-ranked defense by DVOA, and they were second in DVOA on special teams. And setting aside the score and the 299 rushing yards the Ravens racked up against an exhausted Pittsburgh defense on Saturday night, there shouldn’t be too much shame in losing to Baltimore, a genuine Super Bowl contender with an MVP-favorite quarterback and one of the most explosive running games in the NFL.
But unfortunately, winning nine or 10 games and overachieving preseason expectations is actually not the ultimate goal in the NFL. And examining each recent Steelers playoff exit individually risks missing the bigger picture, which is that this franchise has not been close to real contention in a very long time.
Since the 2010 season, when Pittsburgh got to the Super Bowl but lost to Green Bay, the Steelers have won three playoff games. The opposing quarterbacks in those games were A.J. McCarron, Matt Moore, and Alex Smith. In the same time span, they’ve lost nine playoff games, including ones to teams led by Tim Tebow and Blake Bortles. Pittsburgh is tied with Miami for the longest current postseason losing streak in the NFL. (The Commanders could join them if they lose to the Buccaneers on Sunday night.)
The factors that led to those exits, too, have been consistent. The Steelers haven’t had the ball with a lead one time in their past six playoff games. Their offenses haven’t been strong enough to contend with high-scoring opponents—overall, that unit has not ranked above 23rd in total yards in the past six seasons. On a perhaps related note, the quarterbacks in that span have been late-career Ben Roethlisberger, Mason Rudolph, Duck Hodges, Kenny Pickett, Fields, and Wilson. The offensive coordinators have been Randy Fichtner, Matt Canada, and Arthur Smith.
Much of the blame for these outcomes—overall and this year’s—will be laid at the feet of Tomlin, who is either the most overachieving or overrated coach in the NFL, depending on who you ask. It’s obviously fair to put the responsibility on the head coach, especially one who has significant input on personnel decisions and has chosen his own assistants. And even if you think Tomlin has once again, in a sense, overachieved, it is getting hard not to associate Pittsburgh’s lackluster playoff performances with his core values—namely consistency, at the expense of risk-taking.
“I’m just assessing what transpired tonight,” Tomlin said in his postgame press conference Saturday. “Those are my bads, not this collective’s bads, and so my energy is on that group in there and what they were willing to give and the journey that we’ve been on this year, and certainly that came to a disappointing end tonight.”
On a micro level, conservatism hurt the Steelers against Baltimore, particularly in the first half, when the offense punted on fourth-and-2 and fourth-and-inches, putting their tired defense back on the field to face one of the hottest offenses in the NFL each time. After the fourth-and-inches punt in particular, Baltimore’s red-hot offense went on a 13-play touchdown drive without calling a single pass play.
And zooming out, if you grant the idea that even with more aggressive play calling this Pittsburgh team was overmatched against Baltimore, the fact that the Steelers in the post-Roethlisberger era have chosen to keep their core intact, to try to compete with good defense and bargain-bin quarterbacking, shows their roster-building design to be faulty—to be geared to go .500 every year but little more.
Tomlin does not seem to be on the hot seat. Steelers owner Art Rooney II hasn’t made any public statements about the current job security of his coach of 18 years, and a firing would be shocking. Last year, after Pittsburgh’s playoff exit, Rooney seemed to put his foot down by saying, “We’ve had enough of this; it’s time to get some wins.” But he signed Tomlin to a three-year extension five months later. The Steelers have had three coaches since 1969 and value keeping it that way. Plus, in this lackluster year for the coaching pool, the odds of replacing Tomlin with someone better would be slim, while he’d likely be hired by another team with a vacancy in a snap.
I think holding steady at the position is more than justified, if that’s what they choose to do. Tomlin is one of the best coaches in the league in several important respects—motivation, preparation for individual games, the particular myopia it takes to get several dozen adult men to operate as one for months at a time. When it comes to managing dramatic talent, no one this side of Andy Cohen is better.
I do think the idea of a trade would be interesting to consider, given that it would balance the fact that Tomlin has major value with the potential benefits of a fresh start, but coaching trades are relatively rare.
So, assuming the Steelers aren’t moving on to their fourth coach since the Nixon presidency, the question for Pittsburgh is whether it can have a change in philosophy without a change in its top leadership. There are big moves the Steelers could make this offseason, from assistant coaches to the roster, that would set them on a potentially different path.
One would be to make a splashy quarterback trade, since both Wilson and Fields will be free agents. The Steelers could investigate what it would take to get players like J.J. McCarthy or Kyler Murray. These moves would be costly and they could fall flat, but they’d be a departure from the Steelers’ recent MO around the position. And even if a move like that ended in disaster, the Steelers could wind up with a top-five draft pick—or the freedom of a total rebuild.
The Steelers could also embrace a rebuild now. There are players—including safety Minkah Fitzpatrick, edge rushers T.J. Watt and Alex Highsmith, tight end Pat Freiermuth, receiver George Pickens, defensive lineman Cameron Heyward, and linebacker Patrick Queen—they could part with to recoup cap space and draft capital. A lot of those moves would be painful, but that’s the cost of starting fresh.
And they have to do something. Otherwise, see you here this time next year.
