Last season, the Pittsburgh Steelers defense did its part but the offense struggled from the opening weekend. Despite all the struggles, Pittsburgh found a way to stay in the playoff hunt until the final week of the regular season. But it was a second straight season of no playoffs for the Steelers and the focus this offseason must be to get the offense back on track and take some of the pressure off of the defense.
Here are three things that must happen this offseason if the Steelers want to fix the offense.
Ben Roethlisberger must get healthy
This is easily the top offseason priority. Roethlisberger went down with an elbow injury in the second game of the regular season and the wheels fell off from that point forward. If Roethlisberger can’t come back completely or not at all, it puts the entire team into a state of forced transition.
The offensive line must get its mojo back
It was hard to watch the Steelers offensive line fail to run block last season. As good as they were in pass protection they were as bad as run blockers. As a group, they only rushed for 90.4 yards per game with was No. 30 in the league. How much of this was the loss of Mike Munchak or how much of it was just a lack of talent on an offensive line getting older? Honestly, it is probably a healthy dose of both.
OC Randy Fichtner has to figure out what he has
It was pretty clear as the season went on, Fichtner didn’t have a clue what kind of talent he had on the roster and what to do with them. He once again completely abandoned the run game, leaving two inexperienced quarterbacks to fend for themselves in a one-dimensional offense.
