With another season of failure freshly finished in the Steelers history books, the hope things might change, though distant and frail, was still alive.
Even now, as of this writing, Tomlin hasn’t been extended. It’s technically still possible, however remote, this will finally be the end of the Steelers’ Curse, their Neverending Hell, their continual circuit on the hamster wheel finally over.
Yet, owner Art Rooney II’s recent press conference was less than encouraging.
Rooney said he believes the team can compete with this group of players. Why?
Lamar Jackson and Joe Burrow, two of the top-five best quarterbacks in football, live in your division. Patrick Mahomes, already one of the sport’s all-time greats, has a stranglehold on the AFC Championship. CJ Stroud and Trevor Lawrence are both problems in the South. Josh Allen, King Turnover or not, still provides more firepower than you can deal with. This is all without mentioning quality coaches in Kevin Stefanski, Shane Steichen, Mike McDaniel and now Jim Harbaugh to deal with.
Remove TJ Watt from your team. What gives you confidence you can compete with any of them on the game’s biggest stage?
Regular season success is fickle and for the truly great teams, it’s just practice. Sports media has told us for months how vulnerable the Chiefs are. This Kansas City squad has one of the worst receiving units in the sport and yet, less than a week away from the Super Bowl, who is representing the AFC yet again? Kansas City.
For a full season, we heard how lifeless the offense was, how susceptible the team was but they found ways to win most of the season and come playoffs, it has looked routine for them. The ice bowl versus Miami wasn’t competitive, the road game in Buffalo a familiar tale and the upset of favored Baltimore made anyone who doubted Kansas City feel dumb: “I’ve seen this before. Why did I doubt history, deny my memory?”
I took Kansas City to win all three games. Miami does not play well in the cold. The moment has been too big for the Bills too many times to trust them. Baltimore has two playoff wins since 2015 and played one quality half versus Houston.
For as much as the world changes, truths don’t. Pedigree, principles and revolutionary, forward-thinking philosophies always carry the most weight, not talent. It’s why I expect a Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl win. The Red Kingdom getting points in three straight playoff games is comically wrong.
The Steelers have none of these things.
Their pedigree is getting outclassed in all areas when they make the playoffs.
Their principles are antiquated. In a league where quarterbacks are lighting up scoreboards, Pittsburgh is not only content but emboldened to run their offense like it’s 1997. Play defense, try not to allow 20 points, which means they have to be one of the best defenses in football every year and hope the offense can accidentally fall in the end zone once or twice.
Defense is important in today’s game. The Chiefs have the best defense and even though half their receivers don’t have hands, they’re in the Super Bowl but if you’ve watched professional, NFL football the last ten years and believe a play style from 1997 is going to succeed in 2024, you shouldn’t be anywhere near a sports organization.
A large part of failure in life comes from a refusal to adapt and the Steelers are run by both an owner and a head coach who have no interest in changing their ways despite repeated, loud disappointments.
Poor results are usually a product of bad process. Baking a cake will likely go poorly if you use salt rather than sugar but Pittsburgh is brazenly confident their recipe is correct and continues putting their salt-laden pastry in the oven that is the NFL season. The finished product in 2024 and going forward will be as expected.
The Steelers’ revolutionary, forward-thinking philosophies are ignoring the middle of the field, the area most targeted by the league’s most productive offenses, hiding their quarterback rather than weaponizing him and hoping they can grind out yards with their run game.
This philosophy is not only foolish; the Steelers are ill-equipped to run such a scheme.
Still, the Steelers can’t stop watching their Super Bowl videos from the 1970’s. They genuinely believe this is what’s missing from their franchise: they’re not being true to who they are.
Change is necessary in life. It is something you can resist and fight with all your tenacity but change will happen around you whether you want it or not. Evolving as a person, business or in this case, sports franchise, is not betraying your identity: it’s bettering it. It’s how you become more knowledgeable, wiser and such things spur creativity and innovation, two words the Pittsburgh Steelers are deathly afraid of.
Running in Reverse
Pittsburgh this past week decided to hire former Atlanta Falcons head coach Arthur Smith as offensive coordinator. The fan base and media was told the Black and Gold would be casting a wide net in search of a play caller with experience.
It’s genuinely hilarious a professional sports organization needs to mention they want someone with experience. They had to clarify that because the last two guys they hired had zero, repeat, zero play-calling experience at the NFL level. If you’re reading this, you had just as much experience calling plays in the National Football League as the Steelers’ last two offensive coordinators.
In a world where Starbucks is hesitant to hire a high school student with no work history, the Pittsburgh Steelers are willing to give anyone a look.
Except for this past month, apparently. The Steelers interviewed a whole three people for the job. Wide net indeed.
The media was told it would be an exhaustive process. Exhaustive for a geriatric, maybe. Most businesses could do three interviews in a day.
The Pittsburgh job is not appetizing because of the worldview the organization employs but it’s not so controversial or polarizing that only three people would be interested in it.
While teams in the NFL looking for coaching changes were interviewing potential suitors left and right, Pittsburgh put their vehicle in neutral and hoped someone might hop on. In a world of Ferraris and Maseratis, Pittsburgh was content to be a 1997 Subaru Forester.
Rooney talked about a sense of urgency with the team, how the franchise is tired of losing and eager to find success in the postseason but his words ring endlessly hollow when his actions look like this on a repeated basis.
The head coach responsible for this team’s mediocrity is still being paraded by the organization as a champion of success despite a resume of nearly a decade now with no notable accomplishments. It seems, and I mean this seriously and sincerely, that Mike Tomlin is more likely to be a victim of a shark attack than he is of ever being held accountable for his lacking job performance.
The stench of settling for average reeks throughout 100 Art Rooney Avenue.
Square Peg, Round Hole
There’s a lot of reasons to be skeptical of this hire. There’s much talk that Smith’s experience as the Tennessee Titans offensive coordinator was appealing to Pittsburgh. There, Smith ran the exact style of offense the Steelers want to run: ground-heavy.
To Smith’s credit, the Titans found a lot of success with him at the helm but there’s a clear and obvious difference between the 2019 Titans and the current iteration of the Steelers.
The Titans had Taylor Lewan at left tackle, a three-time Pro Bowler and Jack Conklin, a now two-time first-team All-Pro right tackle. Ben Jones, an established center in this league, manned the middle of the offensive line. Derrick Henry is a Hall of Fame running back, easily one of the best of his generation.
Compare all this to what the Steelers’ roster card currently looks like. They have Dan Moore at left tackle, a player Pittsburgh would be wise to let marinate on the bench. At right tackle, they have Broderick Jones, who will be going into his second year. Center Mason Cole was rated one of the worst centers in football by Pro Football Focus. Running back Najee Harris is regularly being outperformed by undrafted back Jaylen Warren (who is an objectively very good player, by the way.) Receivers George Pickens and Diontae Johnson demonstrated multiple times this season they don’t consider run blocking a priority.
Pittsburgh does not have the personnel to play bully ball. New general manager Omar Khan had an excellent first offseason. The drafting of Jones and signing of Isaac Seumalo, one of the league’s best guards, shows he recognizes some of the team’s faults but a general manager will be hard-pressed to rearrange this roster enough that they can overpower teams physically come fall. Pittsburgh for many years disregarded the trenches, especially the offensive line. They’ve recently rediscovered how important big men are to gridiron success but this hiring suggests they believe this is a problem they can fix overnight.
It is a problem that was created over the course of years of negligence. It will take years to correct.
Smith also demonstrated his own stubbornness as a coach in Atlanta. Despite drafting skill position players in the first round all three years of his tenure, including tight end Kyle Pitts in the top five, Smith rarely manufactured touches for his best players, preferring utilizing names like KhaDarel Hodge and Jonnu Smith. His failure to correctly manage personnel is the predominant reason he was fired. His fostering of young quarterback Desmond Ridder also left much to be desired, though it’s still too early to say how much of the blame resides with each party.
The chief concern with the Smith hiring is the mismatch of personnel and coaching approach but the second worry is Smith has only ever coached one way. Atlanta this past season lost to the Washington Commanders, the worst pass defense in football this year. Josh Dobbs, who hadn’t yet practiced with the Vikings after a trade days earlier, beat them. Smith also lost to Carolina, the worst team in football and gave up 37 points to the Chicago Bears, an offense similar to the Steelers in its ineptitude.
Throwing from behind is not something Arthur Smith does well. He shielded his quarterback in Atlanta, preferring to run the offense with the ball out of his passer’s hands. Eventually, every team needs their quarterback to make a few plays in order to win and when you demonstrate a regular reluctance to hand over the reins, it gives the quarterback less reps to learn and less confidence in himself to feed off of.
Steelers fans should be somewhat encouraged. The worst offensive coordinator in Steelers franchise history is no longer on the team. The offense should improve by default (it would have to perform Olympic gymnastics to somehow be worse) but those who believe all of Pittsburgh’s roster mismanagement and flawed approaches to the game will simply disappear are mistaken. This is an offense that will struggle to be average in today’s game.
The sad part of it? The organization is choosing this road.
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