If you are a Steelers fan whose answer to the team's December collapse from contention for a postseason bye to waving bye-bye to the playoffs is to fire the coach — are you sure you are a Steelers fan?
Have you not noticed how this franchise operates over the past 50 years? Do you need another 50 to catch on?
The Steelers' belief in stability has been an essential factor in keeping them as the most successful franchise in the NFL since the 1970 merger. They are the only team to win more than 500 games in that time. No one else is particularly close. And before you declare that only the Super Bowl matters, remember they have more wins in that game, too.
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Those beseeching Art Rooney II to rescue the Steelers from the malaise that has afflicted them of late, that resulted in a regular-season collapse from 7-2-1 to 9-6-1 and second in the AFC North, should understand he is complicit in this flop.
No one on the outside of the organization knows exactly how the decisions are divided inside the front office, but there is no doubt the man signing the checks could have issued an ultimatum regarding the most impactful, and disastrous, player personnel decision of the franchise’s past decade.
So the Steelers will not fire head coach Mike Tomlin for the failures of 2018, nor should they even consider it. Which is not to say they will not re-evaluate their decisions about personnel on and off the field.
As they do, they should consider how the six biggest factors in their demise — one for every defeat this season, or one for every team participating in the AFC playoffs — affected their performance and how each one might be addressed.
Here they are, presented in ascending order with a Robert Ludlum-style twist:
6. The Official Inferiority
It is always problematic to blame officiating for the failure of an athlete or team, which is why this entry is at the bottom of the list.
There are specific judgment calls that can be argued to have favored the Steelers in crucial circumstances, such as Justin Hunter’s block on Antonio Brown's game-winning touchdown catch against the Bengals. And there are those that exacted a damaging toll against the team, such as the two pass interference calls charged to cornerback Joe Haden in the loss to New Orleans.
If you eliminate those, however, you still are left with the two egregious errors by the officials in the Steelers’ loss to the Chargers, blown calls that directly led to 14 points for Los Angeles.
These were not on judgment calls, but on obvious penalties any television viewer can correctly cite from the comfort of his or her own couch, and that the league under prior administrations — where have you gone, Mike Pereira and Dean Blandino? — rarely, if ever, missed.
The first of those was a clear false start by Chargers right tackle Sam Tevi on an LA touchdown pass.
The second was a clear block in the back on a punt return that LA turned into another TD.
I can tell you that before Al Riveron took over as Senior Vice President of Officiating, blocks in the back were caught pretty much every single time. I know this because of years watching the Steelers' annually dreadful special teams return units being busted for this offense.
The NFL's officiating has never been this poor in its modern history. Even games not involving the Steelers included blown calls devastating to their playoff chances, notably the inadvertent whistle that robbed Cleveland of a potential fumble return TD against the Ravens in Week 17.
A few years ago, complaints about officiating primarily regarded the complexity of individual rules. (Just ask Dez Bryant about that.) There were far fewer about basic competence. Now, the refs can't even handle elementary stuff.
5. The Boswell Implosion
Less than a year after being named to the Pro Bowl, and a few months after signing a lucrative long-term contract, kicker Chris Boswell morphed into a pile of jelly with a periodically functional right leg.
Boswell was the NFL's best pressure kicker in 2017. He scored a team record 142 points and converted four game-winning field goals to help the team achieve a 13-3 record. He kicked a 53-yarder in a home game against Green Bay, tied for the longest field goal ever at Heinz Field.
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He was pretty much the worst at any moment of any game in 2018. He missed seven of 20 field goal attempts, connecting on just 5-of-10 on kicks between 40 and 49 yards.
The organization was too slow to react to this crisis, choosing not to bring in competition for Boswell until after he’d gaffed in the team’s loss to lowly Oakland in early December, including a potential game-tying attempt from 40 yards on the final play.
4. The Tomlin Intransigence
Tomlin is blamed for many elements of the Steelers' failure over which he had little control. Tomlin is a convenient target for some Steelers fans in the same way Bill Cowher was during all the years he was losing home AFC championship games. And, unfortunately, Tomlin is a target of many for a reason Cowher never had to confront.
But Tomlin's refusal to pursue a video replay specialist to assist in determining whether the Steelers should challenge officials' calls is a massive failure that belongs entirely to him. Tomlin now has navigated two consecutive seasons in which he did not successfully challenge an official's call. It may be easy to buy 10 Powerball tickets and never get a winner, but 0-for-10 in the replay world is an achievement.
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It is ridiculous, though hardly comical, the Steelers do not employ an individual whose sole job is to monitor every close play using all available technology to determine if a replay challenge is warranted. Right up the street, the Penguins won a Stanley Cup in 2016 in large part because their replay specialist caught an offside maneuver by the Lightning on a goal in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals. Head coach Mike Sullivan challenged the play, and the goal was wiped from the board.
Perhaps because of his failure rate, and definitely because he does not have access to the best information, Tomlin has allowed possibly game-changing decisions to go unchecked. There is no excuse for this.
3. The Butler Efficacy
After Pittsburgh allowed 45 points in a playoff loss to a Jaguars offense that never was known for its potency, the Steelers chose to bring back defensive coordinator Keith Butler for another season.
Then they gave him almost no new tools to employ in search of improvement.
The defense never was as horrid as it was last January at Heinz Field, but it was crummy enough to lead here. It failed to get crucial stops against the Chargers, Raiders and Saints during the team’s collapse and, early in the season, the Chiefs.
This was entirely predictable. The loss of star linebacker Ryan Shazier late last season to a spine injury tore a massive hole in the center of the team’s defense. The answer to repairing it was, essentially, to ignore it and hope it would go away. The team did not draft a player at inside linebacker, and in free agency the one signing was Jon Bostic, a journeyman who’d been traded twice in a five-year span for late-round draft picks. In the final five weeks of the season, he averaged 13 snaps a game.
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To repair its meager secondary, the Steelers drafted safety Terrell Edmunds and signed free agent safety Morgan Burnett, a player who frequently was injured during his time with the Packers — and who, largely because of injuries, was a full-time player in fewer than half of this season’s 16 games.
Butler’s defense, which ranked 16th in the league in points allowed, thus failed to hold fourth-quarter leads in five games, from pitiful Oakland to powerful New Orleans.
It’s difficult to know whether Butler is a quality NFL defensive coordinator. It’s impossible to understand why the organization didn’t give him the players to prove it, one way or another, in 2018.
2. The Turnover Conundrum
A lot of what ailed the Steelers could have been managed if they did not rank 28th, at minus-11, in turnover ratio. They gave away the ball 26 times; they got it back only 15.
It’s clear why the defense doesn’t intercept passes. Its personnel beyond the front line (and Haden) is so obviously limited that getting coverage anywhere near a targeted receiver is an achievement. When the Steelers got one DB close enough to the area of a receiver to deflect the ball into the air, there almost never was a second nearby to field it. They intercepted only eight passes, also 28th in the league, despite generating enough pressure to tie for the lead in sacks.
On the offensive side, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger can attempt to excuse his 16 interceptions by claiming it’s a product of his gambling style, but plays like the pick-6 he threw Sunday against the Bengals are simple carelessness. He can be better.
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The team’s nine fumbles were more difficult to explain and almost invariably were devastating. This ranks just 15th in the league, but did anyone experience such disastrous results as tight end Xavier Grimble giving away a touchdown in Denver and James Conner following that with one that ended another essential drive? Or how about Conner’s late fumble against Cleveland that kept the team from securing an opening-game victory? Or, of course, team MVP JuJu Smith-Schuster fumbling away a last-second drive toward a game-tying field goal or game-winning TD in the New Orleans loss that cost the team the division lead?
Only six teams compiled a negative turnover ratio in double-digits. The Steelers finished at 9-6-1. The other five compiled a composite record of 21-59.
1. The Bell Vacancy
No accounting of the Steelers’ gradual implosion in 2018 can be accurate or complete without acknowledging the impact of management’s arrogant, reckless and foolish decision to assign a second franchise tag to top running back Le'Veon Bell.
The Steelers employed Bell a year ago at a price of $12.5 million and got from him not a single 30-yard run and 11 touchdowns in 406 touches. He clearly demonstrated to them he was no longer worthy of such an enormous portion of their salary cap — as if a cursory examination of recent Super Bowl champions’ running back expenditures couldn't have told them the same.
So what did they do? They ignored his persistent self-interest, his reportedly chronic tardiness, his disinterest in dealing with the franchise on its terms — the Steelers don’t guarantee contracts to three years on paper, but they habitually honor the long-term deals they sign with top players — and chose to tag him a second time at an even greater cost. Any opportunity the Steelers had to significantly improve their obviously damaged and porous defense was blown right there.
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And, when he chose not to play under the conditions of the franchise tag, it became apparent how replaceable he was. Second-year back James Conner delivered a Pro Bowl season in his absence. He produced 13 touchdowns in 136 fewer touches, and likely would have contributed more were it not for three games lost to injury. The offense improved dramatically as a red-zone operation, from 18th with Bell in the backfield in 2017 to first in 2018.
Bell’s absence only became an issue when Conner was injured. Tagging Bell also meant it was impossible — or, to be fair, presumably unnecessary — to bring in a legitimate back up.
This piece of mismanagement will get far less attention than anything else connected to the team’s playoff's absence, particularly when it’s so much easier to shout for the coach to be fired.
But the Pittsburgh Steelers played all of 2018 with a lighter deck than any of its competitors. And they can't say they were not warned this would be a mistake.
