The Steelers made the playoffs for the 11th time in head coach Mike Tomlin’s 17 years as their head coach — and the team has never had a losing season under his leadership. But Pittsburgh was still not a very good team before they lost at Buffalo by a 31-17 score in the AFC Wildcard round of the playoffs.
They were outscored by 1.2 Points-Per-Game and outgained -38.8 net Yards-Per-Game in the regular season. While they had a 10-7 regular season record, their Pythagorean win total was just 7.9. They won nine of their 11 games decided by one scoring possession — and while Tomlin’s effective game management deserves some of the credit, they had several fluky victories. They scored two defensive touchdowns in their opening-week win against Cleveland before beating Baltimore later in the season from a blocked punt safety. They were outgained in 12 of their 17 regular season games but somehow still won six of those games.
A silver lining is that after getting outgained in all ten of their games under the immensely underqualified offensive coordinator Matt Canada, Pittsburgh won the yardage battle in five of their last seven regular season games after he was fired.
The offense has since been completely retooled with all three quarterbacks now gone. General manager Omar Khan brought in Russell Wilson and Justin Fields as inexpensive reclamation projects. Many observers will be bullish on Wilson finding new life with the Steelers — these are the folks who tend to think that “Russ Can’t Fail — he can only be failed!”
The “Let Russ Cook” brigade can point to his 26:8 touchdown-to-interception ratio to advance that he was pretty, pretty good after all last season. Maybe … but that analysis gets refuted by Sean Payton’s decision to not only give up on Wilson after one year by also eat $85 million in dead cap money. Payton eventually deployed the Taysom Hill gameplans with Wilson in the second half of the season with the offense usually not throwing the ball even 30 times a game.
Wilson seems to have paid close attention to Aaron Rodgers' seminar on Stat padding. Yes, Wilson completed 66.4% of his passes and threw just eight interceptions — but he held on to the ball too long with the third-highest seconds per pass attempt rate and taking 45 sacks. Wilson’s depth of targets continues to decline as well — his 6.9 Yards-Per-Attempt rate last year was the lowest of his career. And then there is Fields who led the NFL in seconds per pass attempt. Former Atlanta head coach Arthur Smith has his hands full as the new offensive coordinator. His schemes with the Falcons and previously as the OC for Tennessee are run-first with plenty of motion and play-action. Smith likes to use the middle of the field in the passing game, especially with his tight ends. But will this be a good fit with the risk-averse Wilson in the twilight of his career (and working for the veteran minimum this year? Only 13% of his passes last season were in the middle of the field. By the way, how much cognitive dissonance is required for Wilson dead-enders to be optimistic about his upcoming season in a run-heavy approach like the one in Seattle that initially spawned the “Let Russ Cook” fanaticism?
Finally, there are the underlying cultural issues with this franchise. The players still love Tomlin — but in finishing 28th in the NFLPA’s postseason report card, the organization received Ds in Nutrition and in Travel while getting Fs in Ownership and the Locker room and an F- in Treatment of Families. The Seahawks Legion of Boom found Wilson to be phony before Payton concluded paying him $85 mill to play elsewhere was the preferred solution. How is he going to fit into this environment while issuing NDAs to teammates before they can socialize with him? And what if he loses the starting QB job to Fields? Then what?
Maybe the Tomlin magic and a good defense will be enough for this team to overachieve once again now that a professional offensive coach is calling plays. On the other hand, the brewing situations underneath Tomlin’s management might finally boil over.
Best of luck — Frank.