PITTSBURGH — The very last thing members of the Pittsburgh Steelers see earlier than reaching the inside sanctum of their locker room at Acrisure Stadium are steely silver letters mounted on a black cinder block wall. They spell out the identical phrase coach Mike Tomlin repeats numerous instances a day: The Commonplace is the Commonplace.
With six Lombardis proudly displayed within the trophy case, the established customary of the celebrated franchise is a world championship. However with 5 straight postseason losses relationship again to 2016, the Steelers have fallen quick.
They enter Saturday’s prime-time wild-card sport in opposition to the Baltimore Ravens (8 p.m. ET, Prime Video) having completed 10-7 — however on a four-game dropping streak that price them the AFC North title.
It has been eight years since their final playoff win and 14 years since a Tremendous Bowl berth. Tomlin’s lone Tremendous Bowl win was almost 16 years in the past.
“What you talked about is my story,” Tomlin stated Monday, requested in regards to the streak of playoff losses. “It is not this collective’s story. Many of those guys concerned don’t tote these luggage. I fortunately tote these luggage, however it’s not one thing that I’ll mission on the collective.”
Precisely 357 days earlier, Tomlin expressed the identical sentiment to the Steelers’ workforce web site forward of the Steelers’ final try to interrupt the cycle, a wild-card loss on the Buffalo Payments.
“It is not their burden to bear,” Tomlin advised the positioning final January. “I do not ask them to tote my baggage. I do not mission my baggage onto them. … Typically you are kidding your self in the event you suppose historical past like that’s essential to guys who weren’t part of it. It is not.”
Regardless of the playoff skid, workforce proprietor and president Artwork Rooney II prolonged Tomlin a three-year contract extension previous to the 2024 season. However Rooney was additionally agency in his need to snap the streak in final yr’s end-of-season information convention.
“There’s an urgency,” Rooney stated then of profitable a playoff sport. “I believe all people, myself, Mike, guys which were on the workforce for some time … all people, we have had sufficient of this. It is time to get some wins. It is time to take these subsequent steps.”
And but, regardless of showing to take a step ahead with a brand new quarterback room and an 8-2 begin, the season-ending slide has seemingly put the Steelers farther away from breaking their one-and-done playoff cycle, not to mention from a deep postseason run. The Steelers enter the playoffs in a frustratingly acquainted spot because the albatross of the franchise’s longest playoff drought of the Tremendous Bowl period enshrouds the legacy of a proud group and the longer term Corridor of Fame head coach who famously hasn’t had a dropping season.
However to the Steelers devoted, by no means dropping means rather a lot much less if their workforce is not profitable within the postseason.
EVEN IN THE wake of one other first-round loss, members of the Steelers walked off the snowy Buffalo subject a yr in the past feeling they have been on the precipice of ending the drought. The workforce weathered a slew of accidents and inconsistent quarterback play to rally for the No. 7 seed.
With a stable, younger nucleus of offensive talent place gamers — operating again Najee Harris, vast receiver George Pickens and tight finish Pat Freiermuth — to enrich a veteran protection, the Steelers appeared a pair items away from being a contender.
“I do really feel that we’re nearer this yr at this stage of the sport than we have been at this level final yr,” Rooney stated on the season-ending information convention. “I assumed we had a extremely stable rookie class, just a few guys that actually stepped in as stable starters for the longer term. Want to do this once more. Have to have one other good draft class. I believe now we have a core group of gamers that we are able to compete [with.] I believe the most important factor we want is high quality play on the quarterback place.”
For many of the season, the Steelers received that from Russell Wilson and Justin Fields. Bolstered by complementary soccer courtesy of a turnover-happy protection and Professional Bowl kicker Chris Boswell with a seemingly limitless vary, the pair helped the Steelers to their finest begin since beginning 11-0 in 2020. Via Week 14, the Steelers have been tied atop the league with a plus-17 turnover differential, and the protection led the NFL with 28 takeaways, together with one other league-best 23 fumbles.
Pittsburgh clinched its playoff berth in Week 15 — the identical weekend its dropping streak started when the Eagles defeated them 27-13 and quarterback Jalen Hurts had three touchdowns and threw for 290 yards. On the time, Tomlin and the Steelers dismissed the concept that one unhealthy efficiency in opposition to one of many league’s high NFC groups might snowball.
However the hairline fractures uncovered by the Eagles spiraled into spider net cracks over the subsequent three video games. Double-digit losses to the Ravens and Chiefs adopted, plus a detailed one to a Bengals workforce they beat in a shootout 5 weeks earlier.
“We’re not doing the basic issues properly sufficient,” Tomlin stated after the Christmas loss to the Chiefs.
An offense that averaged 28 factors and 372 yards per sport in Wilson’s first seven begins managed 14 factors and 259 yards per sport in his final 4.
“All people on this room received to need it,” linebacker Alex Highsmith stated. “That is the one approach we will transfer on and get higher.”
Maybe probably the most alarming of these losses was the regular-season finale to the Bengals the place the offense mustered simply 17 factors and 193 yards of offense in opposition to a workforce that completed the season permitting 25 factors and 348 yards per sport and fired its defensive coordinator a day after the season.
The Steelers’ protection, too, seemingly regressed in that stretch. The Steelers pressured three takeaways every within the 4 video games previous to the Eagles loss, however starting that week, that they had 5 whole within the last 4 video games. Via the primary 13 video games, the protection was among the many finest within the league limiting groups to 18 factors and 310 yards per outing. In that four-game slide, nonetheless, these numbers jumped to 27 factors and 381 yards per sport.
They completed 4-3 in opposition to groups who made the 2024 playoffs and 6-4 in opposition to non-playoff groups.
As a by-product of the late-season droop, the Steelers fumbled away a two-game lead within the division and have become simply the third workforce in NFL historical past to enter the playoffs on a dropping streak of at the least 4 video games.
“It is essential that we take the teachings realized from the final month,” Tomlin stated. “Sadly, you in all probability study extra when there’s failure, and clearly we have skilled a few of that, a few of it not jaw-dropping issues or earth-shattering issues, extra affirmation of issues that we consider in or issues that we engineer victory by.”
TWO PLAYERS ON the roster have gained a playoff sport with the Steelers: Boswell and defensive sort out Cameron Heyward. With six subject targets, Boswell accounted for the entire Steelers’ factors within the 2016 divisional spherical win in opposition to the Chiefs. He additionally made 4 — together with the game-winner — within the 2015 wild-card win in opposition to the Bengals. Heyward, although inactive for the 2 2016 playoff wins, pressured a fumble in 2015.
Linebacker T.J. Watt has been on the roster for every of the final 4 playoff losses. Within the common seasons that preceded these winless postseasons, Watt tied Michael Strahan’s NFL sack file, gained NFL Defensive Participant of the Yr and was named to 4 All-Professional groups. The Steelers had 9 different first-team All-Professional choices, the NFL’s main passer (Ben Roethlisberger, 2018) and main receiver (Antonio Brown, 2017) in that interval, too.
“All of it sucks,” Tomlin stated days after dropping to Buffalo final yr. “It does. It is not levels of suck. All of it sucks. I might quite be working. … It is a actually good feeling to be in that match because the street will get slim and to be dwelling out the issues that you just aspire to stay out during the last 12 months. It is not us, and it sucks.”
Even with important roster turnover all through the eight-year drought, there’s an simple, troubling pattern to the Steelers’ latest postseason woes.
In every of their final 5 playoff losses, the Steelers fell in an enormous gap early, trailed by at the least a rating at halftime and have been outscored 105-38 within the first two quarters.
Tomlin, although, declined Monday to say if he’d realized something from these losses to take into this yr’s wild-card sport.
“To be sincere with you, I hadn’t spent plenty of time pondering that within the final 48 hours,” he stated. “I have been preparing particularly for this sport with this collective.”
Within the 2016 AFC Championship Sport, Tom Brady and the New England Patriots constructed a 17-6 benefit halfway by means of the second quarter, and the Steelers by no means received nearer than an eight-point halftime differential.
A yr later, the Jacksonville Jaguars jumped out to a 21-0 lead in lower than 20 minutes of sport time with a gap possession rating, an interception and two extra fast touchdowns. The Steelers, who had a first-round bye because the No. 2 seed that yr, fought again, however fell in a disastrous 45-42 loss that improbably marked the final playoff sport for the trio of Roethlisberger, Brown and Le’Veon Bell.
A two-year postseason drought adopted, however it did not dry up the Steelers’ recurring playoff issues.
Enjoying in entrance of empty stands at Acrisure Stadium on the finish of the COVID-19-affected season, the Cleveland Browns surprised the Steelers six seconds into the wild-card sport when Maurkice Pouncey’s opening snap sailed over Roethlisberger’s head and bounced 20 yards within the improper course till Karl Joseph recovered it ultimately zone for a landing. That snowballed right into a 28-0 deficit by the top of the primary quarter and a 35-10 gap at halftime. The Browns’ last margin of victory was simply 11 factors, however it hardly mirrored the thorough beat down of a Steelers workforce that started off the season 11-0.
“We have been a gaggle that died on the vine,” Tomlin stated after that loss.
The Steelers’ most up-to-date playoff losses had extra of the identical lopsided begins, however in every of these, the outcomes have been considerably anticipated because the Steelers, who clinched the AFC’s last playoff spot with a late-season rally, squared off in opposition to the league’s high groups on the street.
Dealing with No. 2 seed Kansas Metropolis in 2021 in Roethlisberger’s last sport, the Steelers held serve within the first quarter and even went up 7-0 on Watt’s second-quarter scoop and rating. However the Chiefs rattled off three straight touchdowns to take a 21-7 halftime lead and finally gained.
And in final yr’s wild-card loss, the Steelers trailed 21-0 halfway by means of the second quarter and scored lower than two minutes earlier than halftime to chop their deficit to 14. A second-half surge pulled the Steelers inside a rating early within the fourth quarter, however the Payments responded with a surgical landing drive and held off the Steelers over the ultimate six minutes to win 31-17.
“No workforce is similar because the earlier yr, in order that’s all the time a problem,” Watt stated the subsequent day. “However we will must take a protracted laborious look and determine this factor out. I maintain having the identical dialog yearly it appears.”
Until the Steelers pull off the upset Saturday evening, Watt will doubtless have that dialog for the fifth time in his profession.
The end result of the 2024 playoffs doubtless will not dictate Tomlin’s legacy in Pittsburgh or his future as the pinnacle coach of the franchise. However because the workforce continues to return up empty within the playoffs, a show case ready for trophies is as an alternative filling up with baggage.
