The Pittsburgh Steelers have not won a playoff game since 2016. However, they have not had a losing season in over 20 years. But that might be exactly what is wrong with the Steelers, according to former outside linebacker James Harrison. Harrison joined the Pat McAfee Show to discuss where the team is heading now and how to improve. From his time as a member of the team, he believes that their standard has fallen.
Instead of looking to win, Harrison believes they are looking at what they can do not to lose. The clear differences in the mentality of those two ideas is huge, and Harrison thinks the team has become too content with just skating by without wins in the playoffs.
“The expectations should never change. I think the expectations have become, ‘We don’t want to have a losing season,’” Harrison said on the Pat McAfee Show. “I’m not throwing salt or flak at anybody. But the Pittsburgh Steelers standard is to win Lombardis. When you go into that building, there’s six of them sitting there, and right now, we’re not even winning a playoff game. I think we need to get back to what the standard of the Pittsburgh Steelers legacy, the lore is. That’s [non-losing seasons] just not what it is.”
Team president Art Rooney II acknowledged two weeks ago that the team wanted to see more playoff success after their loss to the Buffalo Bills.
“We’ve had enough of this,” Rooney said. “It’s time to get some wins; it’s time to take these next steps.”
Rooney cited the team’s ability to turn around a three-game losing streak into a four-game stretched that rescued their playoff hopes as a reason to believe that Tomlin still has what it takes as a head coach. And on Tuesday in an interview with Bob Pompeani of KDKA-TV, Rooney included Tomlin in the message of those who are frustrated.
“I made that comment for a lot of us who have been in the organization for a while, and I include Mike Tomlin in this, we are getting impatient,” Rooney said. “We want to take that next step. We want to win playoff games and go deep into the postseason. So, we miss being a part of that, and that’s where the urgency is. We need to get back to playing football deep into January and hopefully February.”
The 51-year-old is entering his 18th season as the Steelers head coach. He has a career record of 173-100-2 and is tied for 11th in NFL history for most coaching wins. But he needs to find a way to break the streak of playoff futility. Without that, all of the regular season accolades are largely fruitless. And for the Steelers, a lot of those problems are on the offensive side of the ball. With the new hire of Arthur Smith, they hope that can rectify where they are and lead to some postseason success.