Steelers Have History in Turning Around Ugly Starts

The Pittsburgh Steelers have a lot on the line in Monday’s Week 2 matchup with the Cleveland Browns after starting the season with a big loss to the San Francisco 49ers.

The Steelers will be looking to avoid their first 0-2 start in five years, and avoiding that kind of start has been key to making the playoffs in the course of NFL history.

Since the NFL-AFL merger in 1970, less than 10% of the teams that started 0-2 went on to make the playoffs, and less than a quarter of them finished with a winning record. But the Steelers have been something of an outlier in that way, and even if the start is 0-2 or worse, they have proven they can turn things around.

The Steelers started 0-3 in 2019 before finishing 8-8. In 2013, they started 0-4 on the way to another 8-8 finish. Head coach Mike Tomlin has never had a losing record, despite those slow starts on his resume.

His predecessor Bill Cohwer did one better. In 2022, the Steelers started 0-2 but went on to finish 10-5-1 and made it to the Divisional Round of the AFC playoffs. In 2000, they started 0-3 before rallying to finish 9-7. In 1993, they started 0-2 and made it to the playoffs with a 9-7 record, losing in a Wild Card game.

Chuck Noll did it in 1989, too, going 0-2, including 51-0 and 41-10 divisional losses in the first two weeks before rebounding to make the playoffs at 9-7. That team went on to finish 9-7 and upset the Houston Oilers in the playoffs.

“Well, anytime you play in a game where the game gets totally out of hand within the first couple of minutes, then you have to suffer for the next 58 minutes or so of playing time, it’s a humbling experience,” Steelers color broadcaster Craig Wolfley, an offensive lineman on the 1989 team, said to Steelers Now in 2022.

The last time the Steelers let an 0-2 start turn into a losing season was 1986, when they started 0-3 and 1-6 before finishing 6-10. They were 8-8 after starting 0-2 in 1981 and 5-9 after an 0-3 start in 1970.

So the NFL history is not on the Steelers’ side if they drop another game this early in the season, but their own history suggests that a rebound, even from an ugly start, is definitely possible.

They just need to not let the negativity from one game, or from a bad early start, bleed into the rest. This week, that negativity includes not only the loss, but also the loss of stars Cam Heyward and Diontae Johnson to significant injuries.

“We’ve got a new opportunity this week to go out there and make people completely forget about what happened if we go out there on Monday Night Football and goose-egg Cleveland,” free safety Minkah Fitzpatrick said. “We have the opportunity to turn things around. It’s still early in the season. We can still accomplish everything that we wanted to accomplish. We’ve just got to lock in, play ball, and learn from last week.”

They can also follow their history in being able to do so.