The 2024 Steelers Aren’t Any Different

We here at Nine Straight Threes took a little time off for the holiday, and considering the fact that the majority of posting around here so far has revolved around the Steelers, we missed quite a bit. You may have heard, but Pittsburgh played three games in 11 days.

They lost all three. And not in competitive fashion, either. If you’re reading this, you probably watched, and therefore you know. The Eagles manhandled them, the Ravens outclassed them in the fourth quarter – the time when Mike Tomlin wants his teams to separate themselves – and then the Chiefs dropped a boulder-sized chunk of coal on them on Christmas.

It wasn’t just that the Steelers lost, it was that in the process they looked like frauds, unworthy to share the field with three bona fide Super Bowl contenders. With Philadelphia the story was overall roster superiority. Against the Ravens it was Lamar Jackson finally getting a second look at the Steelers in the same season and taking full advantage of it. Kansas City was Tomlin losing his schematic battle with Andy Reid so badly that if Reid was playing chess, Tomlin was laboring over Connect Four.

It's not like Steelers fans were ignorant of the difficulty of this particular stretch. Most everyone pointed to it the second the schedule was released. Some variation of, “They had better make hay before those games,” followed. Inherent in such a statement is an understanding that three losses were a possibility, even for a good team.

Well, three losses are exactly what everyone got, and despite any advance mental preparation, these 11 awful days have curdled expectations for the rest of the year, if social-media and talk-radio frustration is any indication.

You know what? I can’t blame anyone for feeling that way, I’m in the same boat. All of my optimism that this team was built a little different than the dead-men-walking outfits of 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 has evaporated.

The only realistic chance I give them of snapping their seven-season streak without a playoff win involves them drawing the Houston Texans in the first round. In order to guarantee that, they need to beat the Bengals after the Ravens, a 20-point favorite, get on with the formality of dispatching the hapless Browns.

Problem: I don’t think they will beat the Bengals. Which means they’ll likely get the sixth seed. Which means they’ll get the Ravens for a third time. Can’t say I’m thrilled about their chances in that one, given how their last matchup went, and given the fact that Lamar Jackson finally had a breakthrough game against the one team that has been his nemesis.

Add it all up and you get a team that looks for all the world like it’s headed for a four-game losing streak to end the season, followed by an unceremonious playoff exit. Again. These are familiar stories. Last year’s team won three in a row to get into the playoffs, sure, but the Steelers have lost three in a row in four of the last six Decembers – including last year, believe it or not! Not exactly indicative of a team peaking at the right time.

Squint at this year’s team and you can make out a group that might be falling apart at the seams. There’s squabbling on defense, a frustrated George Pickens on offense, Russell Wilson turning the ball over at very inopportune times, an offensive line whose midseason surge in performance has faded the last few weeks, and a head coach openly acknowledging the need to get the stink of three straight losses off of his team.

All of this begs the question: What, exactly, has changed with this franchise?

Doesn’t seem like much of anything, if you ask me. The quarterback room is different, and so is the offensive coordinator. Patrick Queen represents the team’s latest big swing at filling the off-ball linebacker position, one that they covet and value highly, while the rest of the NFL moves in the opposite direction. The Steelers have tried to re-tool on the fly to keep up with the Joneses, but their efforts have yielded what, exactly?

Only Houston looks like a less-deserving playoff team in the AFC. Wilson, despite his ability to raise the offense’s ceiling, still isn’t in the class of Jackson, Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, or Justin Herbert. If Joe Burrow and the Bengals overtake Denver for the 7^th seed, Wilson will slot behind him as well.

The offense is still run-first, run-second. It still struggles to sustain momentum over the course of games. The nine-figure defense is getting strafed by quality opposition, and some of its highest-profile players are visibly confused on the field, and frustrated by communication issues. Safety Minkah Fitzpatrick spoke of the team being done in by motions and bunch formations in recent weeks; all of these problems seem like things that should be getting ironed out – for good – in Weeks 1 and 2.

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Philosophically, I still see the same Pittsburgh Steelers. They want to out-tough the opposition, they want to out-hit the opposition, and they want to win physical, usually close games. It’s like they’ve learned no real lessons from their recent failings. Arthur Smith is a better coordinator than Matt Canada, but he hardly slots in as one of the league’s hotshot play callers. Winning big in the AFC means trying to compete in the conference’s arms (read: quarterbacks) race.

Jackson, Allen and Herbert are aliens. Burrow is a surgeon. C.J. Stroud and Bo Nix are promising young players on the rise. Mahomes is simply better than everyone else. The Steelers have already tried to fight great offense the conventional way, with expensive defense. It doesn’t work. When they finally decided to draft a young quarterback of their own, they made a huge error in reaching for Kenny Pickett, scrapped that plan after two years, and have tried to catch lightning in a bottle with Wilson and Justin Fields.

It’s gotten them 10 wins, but they had 10 last year with Pickett, Mitch Trubisky and Mason Rudolph. So again, what’s really changed, other than a vague belief that this situation could turn itself around because of Wilson’s past track record?

Vague belief. That’s all the Steelers really have, from my vantage point. Vague belief that one of these times, their defense will show up in a big way against a big-time opponent. Vague belief that Wilson will have a game where the moonballs find Pickens or another wide receiver’s hands, and the quick strike offense works some magic. Vague belief that in the big picture, their approach (whatever it is), will eventually start to bear fruit.

From Art Rooney II on down to Tomlin, they can all say that the status quo isn’t good enough, that it’s time to start winning some playoff games. Their actions suggest otherwise. I don’t see a team frustrated by their obvious flaws and ready to pursue new courses of action to fix them. I see a team assuming that one of these games, things will turn out different, just because.

In other words, the more things change, the more they unfortunately stay the same.