Saunders: Steelers Franchise Has Identity Crisis
The Pittsburgh Steelers have an identity. That identity has been forged over 50 years of being one of the most successful franchises in NFL history.
While there have been times that the Steelers have done things differently, the team has built as the cornerstones of its foundation being able to run the football and playing with strong defense.
The 2024 Pittsburgh Steelers took many steps toward those ends. They fielded the highest-paid defense in the NFL this season, adding Patrick Queen, DeShon Elliott, Payton Wilson and Donte Jackson to an already-good unit.
It got worse, falling from sixth to eight in scoring in the regular season before yielding 464 yards of offense to the Baltimore Ravens in another first-round playoff exit on Saturday.
The Steelers used three picks in the first four rounds of the last draft on offense linemen, hired a former offensive line coach as offensive coordinator in Arthur Smith, who had been the architect of one of the game’s elite rushing units as the offensive coordinator of the Tennessee Titans. They went from 4.1 yards per carry last year to 4.1 yards per carry this year.
Against Baltimore on Saturday, they averaged just 2.6 yards per carry. When it comes to the organization’s foundational philosophies, progress is hard to see.
Tomlin was asked if he was surprised by the performance of his defense on Saturday, as it allowed a franchise-record 299 yards rushing to the Ravens and another record 186 yards to Derrick Henry.
“Not in combination with our ineffectiveness on offense,” he said. “I just think when you’re on the grass like that against a group and a unit like that, with a guy like [Lamar Jackson], it could look the way it looked.”
It wasn’t particularly surprising. After holding down the Ravens for a long time, Baltimore has now rattled off consecutive two-touchdown victories against Pittsburgh.
The Steelers are looking way up at the Ravens in terms of personnel, but also in the way the teams are constructed. For better or worse, the Baltimore offense is built around Lamar Jackson and his playmaking. The Steelers tried to contend with a 36-year-old Russell Wilson on the veteran minimum.
It’s not impossible to win in the NFL without elite quarterback play. The Detroit Lions, Minnesota Vikings and Philadelphia Eagles all had great seasons without one of the game’s greats at their disposal as a signal caller.
Those teams have elite top-to-bottom rosters and innovative coaching. The Steelers have neither.
Either the team must find a way to be much more successful at the things that it considers to be organizational tenets, or it must re-evaluate the value of those components of their identity.
A team designed to run the ball and play defense, that can’t do either, is not going to win very much.
Aaron Becker contributed reporting from Baltimore.
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