It’s wholly possible that the pragmatic pessimist in you refuses to harbor any hope of a Christmas miracle for these Steelers. But if you happen to have a snow globe sitting in front of you as part of your holiday decorations, why not give it a good shake and remember some better times, perhaps even dare to dream? After all, in this 2021 NFL season, nothing much seems out of the realm of possibility.
Long, long ago, before the Steelers made December collapses their winter tradition, Mike Tomlin’s teams actually played their best ball at the end of the year. Late-season surges were commonplace, rather than pipe dreams.
As grim as things have looked at times for this iteration of the Steelers — even in some wins, last Sunday against the Titans included — they are 7-6-1, a half-game out of the division lead and a playoff spot. If a run seems unlikely, keep in mind this is a league in which the 1-11-1 Lions just beat the 10-3 Cardinals, so any sense of logic or reason is out the window.
What it will take, in addition to the randomness of NFL parity, is a Steelers team that is — if Mike Tomlin has said it once, he’s said it a thousand times — singularly focused down the stretch. Last season was promising, until a three-game skid spoiled an 11-0 start and foreshadowed a first-round playoff exit for a group that overachieved, then underachieved in the same season.
“I think I spoke on that before about last year, in previous talks, about how we just got worn out with all those games,” quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said this week. “This year, we’ve just got to keep fighting. … What's going to happen [with other teams], we don't know. We can't control it, so we just have to be ready for anything.”
“I feel like last year, especially, we fell off the details,” said safety Minkah Fitzpatrick. “Whether it’s practice, whether it was film, you could kind of feel the lull in everything we were doing. There was not a lot of energy, there was not a lot of emphasis on detail, so I think that’s something we definitely need to remind each other of right now.”
That could be interpreted as an indictment of the coaching staff, but Tomlin is the same head coach who once made the classic “peaking at the right time” cliche seem routine in Pittsburgh. Let’s examine some of the times that the Steelers clicked when they needed to in the age of Tomlin and Ben Roethlisberger, and whether any of those situations are reminiscent of what they’ll face the rest of the way:
2015
The Steelers dropped to 6-5 with a Week 12 loss at Seattle coming out of their bye. They found themselves in a jumbled AFC playoff race, and things looked bleak considering they had one inescapable Achilles’ heel — a pass defense that ranked 30th in the league after allowing three straight quarterbacks to throw for more than 300 yards. Sound familiar? But the Steelers bounced back for a 45-10 blowout of the Colts, another team that was 6-5 and jockeying for a playoff spot, and back-to-back wins over two playoff teams, the Bengals and Broncos. In all, they won four of their final five to clinch a wild-card spot. They also rode that momentum to a first-round playoff win at AFC North champ Cincinnati before losing at Denver in another rematch.
2014
A Week 13 home loss to New Orleans left the Steelers at 7-5 to end November. Roethlisberger was off-target and the defense was helpless against Drew Brees, yet the final score was only 35-32 in favor of the Saints. Still, the sky was falling, because the Steelers missed a chance to gain ground in the division race in what Roethlisberger deemed a “must-win” game the week prior. But against all odds, they unleashed hell in December, running the table with four straight wins to go 11-5 and win the AFC North. That streak included two wins against the division-leading Bengals and one against the Chiefs, who were 8-6 and also jostling for a wild-card spot. It took a visit from arch nemesis Baltimore in the wild-card round to end the Steelers’ hot streak, and their season.
2013 and 2009
The Steelers missed out on the playoffs both times, but it wasn’t for lack of a finishing kick. They used a couple of three-game winning streaks each year, respectively, to put themselves in position for the postseason if things broke right, but they didn’t. The Ryan Succop miss against the Chargers was the final nail in their coffin in 2013, while 2009 hung in the balance for hours until the Ravens beat the Raiders to knock out the Steelers. When you consider slow starts — the 2013 team was 0-4, the 2009 team 1-2 — these are the two scenarios that might feel most like what we’re witnessing in real time.
2005
Ah, yes, the most famous of all out-of-nowhere surges for the Steelers. It predates Tomlin, but Roethlisberger was at the center of it when they won their last four regular-season games to sneak into the playoffs as the No. 6 seed at 11-5. Current defensive coordinator Keith Butler was on Bill Cowher’s staff back then, too, and he referenced this unforgettable finish a couple weeks ago when talking about how they can navigate a difficult stretch in present day. If ever there was a squad that proved all you need to do is get into the dance, it was this one, which reeled eight consecutive victories in all to capture Super Bowl XL. Living in the past? Certainly. But can history repeat itself? With the way this season is playing out in the NFL, you just never know.
The 2021 Steelers have four regular rookie starters, five if you include punter Pressley Harvin III, but they also have a plethora of veterans who have been through the battles at this time of the calendar. Tomlin is as curious as anyone to see if these guys can flip the script from the let-downs of 2019 and 2020.
“To be quite honest with you, when you're young and inexperienced, you're capable of blinking when things get tough,” Tomlin said this week. “When the road gets narrow, you make mistakes. You lack detail, you lack focus, you lack communication skills, and so forth. The more that you're in those circumstances, you learn. You're shaped by success, particularly in those experiences, and it's reasonable to expect there to be more awareness because of those experiences, more communication, more play-making, more comfort, if you will. So that's why [experience] is significant.”
