Will these Steelers be team to end 8-year playoff skid? Why there's 'urgency' in Pittsburgh
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Brooke Pryor, ESPN Staff Writer
PITTSBURGH — The last thing members of the Pittsburgh Steelers see before reaching the inner sanctum of their locker room at Acrisure Stadium are steely silver letters mounted on a black cinder block wall. They spell out the same phrase coach Mike Tomlin repeats countless times a day: The Standard is the Standard.
With six Lombardis proudly displayed in the trophy case, the established standard of the prestigious franchise is a world championship. But with five straight postseason losses dating back to 2016, the Steelers have fallen short.
They enter Saturday’s prime-time wild-card game against the Baltimore Ravens (8 p.m. ET, Prime Video) having finished 10-7 — but on a four-game losing streak that cost them the AFC North title.
It’s been eight years since their last playoff win and 14 years since a Super Bowl berth. Tomlin’s lone Super Bowl win was nearly 16 years ago.
“What you mentioned is my story,” Tomlin said Monday, asked about the streak of playoff losses. “It’s not this collective’s story. Many of these guys involved do not tote those bags. I happily tote those bags, but it’s not something that I’m going to project on the collective.”
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Exactly 357 days earlier, Tomlin expressed the same sentiment to the Steelers’ team website ahead of the Steelers’ last attempt to break the cycle, a wild-card loss at the Buffalo Bills.
“It’s not their burden to bear,” Tomlin told the site last January. “I don’t ask them to tote my luggage. I don’t project my luggage onto them. … Sometimes you’re kidding yourself if you think history like that is important to guys who weren’t a part of it. It’s not.”
Despite the playoff skid, team owner and president Art Rooney II extended Tomlin a three-year contract extension prior to the 2024 season. But Rooney was also firm in his desire to snap the streak in last year’s end-of-season news conference.
“There’s an urgency,” Rooney said then of winning a playoff game. “I think everybody, myself, Mike, guys that have been on the team for a while … everybody, we’ve had enough of this. It’s time to get some wins. It’s time to take these next steps.”
And yet, despite appearing to take a step forward with a new quarterback room and an 8-2 start, the season-ending slide has seemingly put the Steelers farther away from breaking their one-and-done playoff cycle, let alone from a deep postseason run. The Steelers enter the playoffs in a frustratingly familiar spot as the albatross of the franchise’s longest playoff drought of the Super Bowl era enshrouds the legacy of a proud organization and the future Hall of Fame head coach who famously hasn’t had a losing season.
But to the Steelers faithful, never losing means a lot less if their team isn’t winning in the postseason.
EVEN IN THE wake of another first-round loss, members of the Steelers walked off the snowy Buffalo field a year ago feeling they were on the precipice of ending the drought. The team weathered a slew of injuries and inconsistent quarterback play to rally for the No. 7 seed.
With a solid, young nucleus of offensive skill position players — running back Najee Harris, wide receiver George Pickens and tight end Pat Freiermuth — to complement a veteran defense, the Steelers appeared a couple pieces away from being a contender.
“I do feel that we’re closer this year at this stage of the game than we were at this point last year,” Rooney said at the season-ending news conference. “I thought we had a really solid rookie class, a few guys that really stepped in as solid starters for the future. Need to do that again. Need to have another good draft class. I think we have a core group of players that we can compete [with.] I think the biggest thing we need is quality play at the quarterback position.”
For most of the season, the Steelers got that from Best of NFL Nation
• TWO PLAYERS ON the roster have won a playoff game with the Steelers: Boswell and defensive tackle
