A lot can change in five weeks. After winning against the Bengals and Browns in early December, the Steelers were 10-3. ESPN’s Football Power Index gave them nearly an 80% chance to win the AFC North, which would have earned them a home playoff game for the first time since 2017 (their most recent home playoff game was during the pandemic in 2020). At 10-3, Mike Tomlin was considered a strong candidate for Coach of the Year.
However, five weeks later, the conversation has shifted to whether Tomlin can take this version of the Steelers any further. They lost their last five games, including a tough 28-14 loss on Saturday. This defeat marked Tomlin’s sixth straight playoff loss, with the average margin of defeat being almost 14 points per game. In the last eight seasons, 18 teams have won a playoff game.
Pittsburgh hasn’t won a playoff game in eight years, which is the longest streak since 1971. It seems like the Steelers are stuck in a kind of football limbo. Tomlin is good enough to keep them competitive with a .500 or better record each season, but he hasn’t been able to push them further for nearly a decade.
Fans often feel he overachieved with a team that might not have been playoff-caliber, but after the playoff losses, they feel he underachieved with a team that has been expected to make it further.
So, is Tomlin overachieving or underachieving? I would argue he’s overachieving. He has made this roster better. The Steelers have had star defenders like T.J. Watt and Cameron Heyward under his coaching, but Tomlin’s influence can be seen in players who performed better in Pittsburgh than they did on their previous teams.
For example, Minkah Fitzpatrick was benched by the Dolphins as a cornerback, but Tomlin moved him to free safety, where he became a Pro Bowler. Quarterbacks like Russell Wilson and Justin Fields also performed better in Pittsburgh than they did elsewhere in 2024.
Many players who were let go by their former teams, such as wide receiver Mike Williams and cornerback Donte Jackson, played important roles for the Steelers this season. On the other hand, many players who left Pittsburgh over the last five years haven’t thrived elsewhere.
Bud Dupree, Alejandro Villanueva, JuJu Smith-Schuster, and Cameron Sutton didn’t make the same impact elsewhere. Similarly, running back Le’Veon Bell and offensive lineman Chris Hubbard struggled to succeed on new teams, with James Conner being the main exception. It seems that Tomlin gets more out of players than their new teams do.
Could Tomlin be overworking an older team, leading to struggles later in the season? Maybe. Since the playoff drought began in 2017, the Steelers have been great in the early months of the season, with a record of 56-29-2 in September, October, and November.
But that drops to 24-21 in December and January. When you add in the playoff losses, they are a sub-.500 team after December 1st. This could be due to a tougher schedule in the final months, but their performance against playoff teams was about the same early and late in the season.
The defense has also stopped forcing turnovers late in the season. They forced 28 turnovers through the first 13 games but only five in their five losses. The tougher competition at the end of the season also played a role. The teams they played in the final month had an average of 12.4 wins, while the teams they beat earlier in the season averaged only 7.3 wins.
The Steelers have often outperformed their point differential, winning many close games. But their quarterback play has not been elite, which is one of the reasons they haven’t been able to win in the playoffs.
Over the past five years, they’ve ranked near the bottom in QBR among playoff teams. Their playoff losses have been significant, making Tomlin’s job harder to defend. But given their recent playoff appearances, it’s unclear what could have been expected from them.
While Tomlin takes responsibility for the team’s quarterback play, the Steelers’ offensive coordinators also deserve blame. Tomlin hires those coordinators, and the offense has been poor, ranking 25th in EPA per play in the regular season, the same as last year and down from 18th in 2022.
For years, the complaint about the Steelers has been that they don’t run the ball enough, which was true during their glory years under Chuck Noll and Bill Cowher. However, watching the Ravens run the ball successfully in their playoff win over Pittsburgh, with nearly 300 rushing yards, highlighted the Steelers’ struggles.
One big difference between the Ravens and the Steelers is that Baltimore was proactive in drafting its future quarterback. In 2018, the Ravens traded up to draft Lamar Jackson, even though Joe Flacco was still under contract. The Steelers, on the other hand, waited too long to address their quarterback situation after Ben Roethlisberger’s career ended.
The Steelers drafted quarterbacks Joshua Dobbs and Mason Rudolph in the mid-rounds, but quarterbacks from those rounds rarely become starters. When Roethlisberger got injured in 2019, the Steelers traded for Minkah Fitzpatrick, but that move closed their best path to a new quarterback.
The Steelers then used a first-round pick on Kenny Pickett in 2022, but he was traded to the Eagles after 24 starts. Recent moves for quarterbacks like Mitchell Trubisky, Fields, and Wilson haven’t had the same impact as moves made by other teams.
The Steelers will not improve until they fix the quarterback position, but their failure to address it seriously five years ago has left them stuck. Tomlin plays a part in that process, but the Steelers have historically been great at drafting players. However, their first-round picks haven’t been successful lately.
After picking T.J. Watt in 2017, they went five years without drafting a difference-maker in Round 1. Right tackle Broderick Jones, their 2023 first-round pick, hasn’t been great, and 2024 first-round pick Troy Fautanu missed most of his rookie season with an injury.
The Steelers have been more aggressive in free agency because their drafts haven’t been successful. When they last won a postseason game in 2016, most of their starters were drafted by or started their careers with the Steelers, but that number has since dropped.
The Steelers need to figure out what kind of team they want to be and whether their current roster-building strategy will get them there. They may feel they are just a quarterback away from a deep playoff run, but they should have addressed the quarterback situation years ago.
Their recent moves have felt like quick fixes. The team must decide whether they want a major change or a small adjustment. One change that could make a difference is improving their approach to fourth-down decision-making, as they ranked 28th in going for it on fourth down this season.
If they get the right quarterback, they might be able to win that extra game and host a playoff game, which could break the playoff drought. In terms of big changes, however, the Steelers don’t have many options. General manager Omar Khan was only installed in 2022, and the Steelers don’t make sudden changes in key roles.
Pittsburgh isn’t looking to trade away stars like T.J. Watt or Minkah Fitzpatrick, and veteran players like Cameron Heyward are getting older. Even if they wanted to focus more on the draft, that would take years to play out. The only major change that could happen is a coaching change.
Tomlin likely has trade value, but with his new deal signed in June, it’s unclear what he could gain from such a move. It’s likely the Steelers will bring the team back for another season without major changes. There’s nothing wrong with being a competitive 10-win team, but fans expect more after five decades of success. If Tomlin leaves, fans might regret the decision.
