Fans’ Outrage Over Steelers’ Playoff Failures Appropriate but Misplaced

It’s not what they’re doing that’s the problem. It’s how ineffectively they’re doing it that needs to be fixed.
Tomlin

MIKE TOMLIN | PHOTO BY KARL ROSER/PITTSBURGH STEELERS

He’s gone from Coach of the Year to the Coach They Wish Was No Longer Here in a span of five weeks or five one-and-done trips to the postseason (take your pick), but that doesn’t mean the avalanche of criticism being heaped upon Mike Tomlin is entirely on point.

There’s justifiable frustration, but there’s also a lot of piling on going on in Steeler Nation these days. Complaints about Tomlin’s approach or philosophy being outdated are particularly off base.

Let’s start with his maniacal obsession with not turning the ball over.

Teams that have won the turnover margin are 7-0 in the postseason and 20-1 since the Divisional Round in 2023. And the current two-time defending champion Kansas City Chiefs have won 37 consecutive games in which they’ve come up plus in takeaway/giveaway. So maybe there’s something to that one.

A desire to run the ball, likewise, is much more enlightened than it is a fatal flaw.

Ask the Washington Commanders, who are crashing the NFL’s Final Four party as a Cinderella in part because in the regular season they possessed the NFL’s No. 3 rushing offense. Ask the Baltimore Ravens, a team perceived as one of this season’s legitimate Super Bowl contenders because of the legs of Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry. Ask the Philadelphia Eagles, who might just be in the process of running Saquon Barkley all the way to the Lombardi.

A reliance on defense, too, isn’t just prudent, it’s a prerequisite.

The Eagles got past the LA Rams last Sunday because of Barkley, and because a four-man rush was able to sack a franchise-caliber, former Super Bowl-winning quarterback at the precise moment a stand on defense needed to be made. Defense still wins championships (or at the very least contributes mightily to championships being won much more often than not).

This stuff isn’t antiquated, it’s how football is played.

Of course, it also takes a quarterback.

But the notion a team needs to bottom out to get a draft pick high enough to secure the type of QB you have to have to win is an absolute fallacy. The Chiefs went 12-4 and won their division in 2016, then traded up to position themselves to draft Patrick Mahomes in 2017.

The Bills went 9-7 and made the playoffs in 2017, and then traded up twice on the way to drafting Josh Allen in 2018. Jackson was the 32nd overall selection by Baltimore in the same draft in which Buffalo landed Allen. And Philadelphia’s Jalen Hurts was a second-round pick, 53rd overall, in 2020.

You need not lose big before you win big.

And the Steelers haven’t been winning in the regular season merely to maintain Tomlin’s non-losing seasons streak (something that’s rarely if ever mentioned by anyone in the organization unless it’s in response to a direct question on the subject). They’ve been winning in the regular season because you have to do that to have a chance to reach the postseason and win there.

The hard part is identifying the QB capable of facilitating winning in the postseason, and then committing the resources necessary to get him.

Just as the idea is to aggressively push the ball down the field and still protect it (it can’t be the latter at the expense of the former).

Just as it is to run the ball effectively enough that the running game can be counted upon in the weighty moments (short-yardage situations and the end of games are a much bigger deal than rushing yards per game).

Just as it is to have the defense rise up when needed, as opposed to having a defense capable of doing so in theory (you can’t shut down Joe Burrow and the Bengals one week and then no-show against the Ravens the next).

The Steelers weren’t good enough at any of that stuff this season.

And the quarterback issue being unsettled transitioning from one season to the next, again, is a reflection of how well they’ve identified answers and committed resources at that position since Ben Roethlisberger left.

These are the issues about which fans have a right to be outraged. Anything else is complaining for complaining’s sake.


Mike Prisuta is the sports anchor/reporter for Randy Baumann and the DVE Morning Show. He’s also the host of the Steelers Radio Network Pregame Show and the color analyst for Robert Morris University men’s hockey broadcasts.

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