The Pittsburgh Steelers were a fun and explosive team to watch during the Killer B’s era in the mid-2010s, but similar to the 1990s Steelers, they’ll always be remembered for not winning a Super Bowl. The closest that the Steelers have got to reaching another Super Bowl was in 2016, but Tom Brady and the New England Patriots annihilated them in the AFC Championship Game. The stunning loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars in the 2017 divisional round game was also another missed opportunity after finishing the regular season 13-3.
In a recent interview with Bryan DeArdo of CBS Sports, former Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell touched on the failure of the mid-2010s Steelers not getting a Super Bowl ring.
“We didn’t get a ring. I look back on it, we could have had a ring, but injuries plagued us,” Bell said. “We lost to Jacksonville. We couldn’t stop Leonard Fournette for nothing. If we had Shazier, that’s a totally different story.”
Fournette rushed for 109 yards and three touchdowns to lead Jacksonville to a 45-42 upset over Pittsburgh. The Steelers battled back from a 35-7 deficit but the defense failed to come up with a crucial stop late in the game. As Bell mentioned, the loss of inside linebacker Ryan Shazier, who suffered a career-ending spinal cord injury in Week 13, was a huge blow to the defense. Shazier was having a career year prior to the injury.
Despite getting crushed by Jacksonville 30-9 earlier in the year, some Steelers players came into the divisional round game a little too cocky, as Le’Veon Bell tweeted before the game, “I love round 2’s…we’ll have two round 2’s in back to back weeks…” The tweet was in reference to the Patriots, who beat the Steelers in Week 15 after the infamous Jesse James reversed touchdown catch. A quote from Steelers free safety Mike Mitchell in a Sports Illustrated interview also was released before the game where he stated, “We can play [the Patriots] in hell, we can play them in Haiti, we can play them in New England … we’re gonna win.”
Le’Veon Bell also explained how his groin injury in the 2016 AFC Championship Game in New England just deflated the entire team. In the two weeks prior, Bell rushed for 167 yards and 170 yards in the Steelers’ playoff wins over Miami and Kansas City. Bell suffered the injury in the first quarter and did not return. Without Bell, the Steelers became one-dimensional and Bill Belichick’s game plan centered on double-teaming Antonio Brown. The Steelers were also without Martavis Bryant that season due to a year-long suspension for multiple violations of the league’s substance abuse policy. So the Steelers’ secondary wide receivers were Eli Rogers, Sammie Coates and Cobi Hamilton.
“The game plan was resolved so much around me,” Bell told DeArdo. “New England’s outside rushers would peel and guard me like (a) receiver. So our game plan was to kill them the whole game with me running routes out of the backfield. All of that had to go out of the game plan as soon as I went down. The majority of the game plan is out the window now.
“We started being super pass-heavy,” Bell recalled. “All that year, Ben had crazy games. So even when I got hurt, everyone was so confident.
“What I should have done a better job of, I shouldn’t have showed my teammates that I’m hurt and I’m not coming back in. I think my teammates saw (the disappointment) in my face and my demeanor, and I think that hurt the energy of the team. It wasn’t on purpose, I was just so down that I couldn’t be playing with y’all.”
Brady carved up the Steelers’ defense by throwing for 384 yards and three touchdowns to lead New England to a 36-17 win and another Super Bowl berth. Patriots wide receiver Chris Hogan also had a field day, catching nine passes for 180 yards (20.0 average) and two touchdowns. The Steelers had an explosive offense in 2016, but the secondary was pretty below average with cornerbacks Ross Cockrell and Cory Sensabaugh and safeties Sean Davis and Mitchell starting in the secondary.
Even without Brown, Bell and DeAngelo Williams (all sidelined due to injury), the Steelers nearly upset the eventual Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos in the divisional round in 2015. The 2016 and 2017 seasons were the big missed opportunities for the Steelers to win a seventh Super Bowl title, however. Losing Shazier in 2017 definitely hampered the Steelers’ chances of hoisting a Lombardi. Bell makes a valid point that if they had Shazier, it’s a totally different story in 2017.