The Pittsburgh Steelers suffer their sixth playoff loss in eight seasons

BALTIMORE — Safety DeShon Elliott pulled no punches after the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 28-14 loss in the AFC wild card game Saturday night.

Despite being with the organization for only one season, Elliott was clear in his frustration with the Steelers’ cycle of futility: a regular-season record above .500 followed by a one-and-done playoff season.

“I know in the past we played well at the beginning of the season, and then we just shit the bed at the end, and the same thing happened this year,” Elliott said after the Steelers game. sixth playoff loss in eight seasons. “We closed the season on a five-game losing streak, including the playoffs. So we’ve got to figure out what the problem is. We’ve got to figure out how to get better. We’ve got to figure out how to get over that point. I’ve got to figure out how to finish seasons strong to get there.” to the playoffs.”

The Steelers have taken different routes to get to this point each year, but the destination is the same. In their two most recent playoff appearances ahead of the 2024 season, the Steelers rebounded from slow starts to clinch a playoff spot in the final week of the season. In 2020, they started 11-0 before losing four of their last five. And in 2017, they won the AFC North and hosted the Jacksonville Jaguars after a first-round bye. However, each of those appearances ended the same way the Steelers’ season ended Saturday night in Baltimore: a loss in their only playoff game.

“I’m just evaluating what happened tonight,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said when asked about his pattern of individual games in the playoffs. “As I told you earlier in the week, those are my bags, not the bags of this collective. And so my energy is in that group there and in what they were willing to give and in the journey that we have taken this year and certainly, “Tonight had a disappointing ending.”

Saturday night was a repeat of the same nightmare that played out in each of those postseason losses. The Steelers fell behind early and trailed 21-0 at halftime, marking their second-largest halftime playoff deficit behind the 25-point deficit to the Browns in 2020.

“Losing sucks,” said running back TJ Watt, who didn’t record a tackle or a sack and had five quarterback pressures. “Losing five in a row to end the season sucks. I felt like we had a good week of preparation. I felt like we were ready for this. We weren’t. We couldn’t stop the run. We haven’t. “We couldn’t stop the run. We couldn’t fix it. “So the last month of football has been difficult.”

Since the 2016 AFC Championship Game loss to the New England Patriots, the Steelers have been outscored by a combined 96 points and outscored by 641 yards in their last six playoff losses. “It’s a tough game, but I can’t complain about it,” said defensive tackle Cameron Heyward, who has been on the team for its last six playoff losses. “They’re going to make plays, but we have to make ours, and we didn’t.”

The Ravens began making those plays on their first possession when MVP candidate Lamar Jackson and running back Derrick Henry combined for 71 rushing yards during a drive that ended with a 15-yard touchdown reception by Rashod Bateman. The Ravens had even more success running the ball on their second scoring drive when they exclusively ran the ball during the 98-yard drive, which was capped by Henry’s 8-yard touchdown run. By the end of the night, the Ravens had 299 rushing yards on a once-solid Steelers run defense.

“Having 300 yards rushing is worse than having 300 yards passing,” Elliott said. “It was like a will. They definitely buckled down today.”

As has been the case during the Steelers’ four-game losing streak to end the regular season, defensive players struggled to verbalize what they needed to change, not only in Saturday night’s loss, but also in a stretch that ended the season and the recent streak. of playoff losses.

“It’s too fresh,” Watt said. “I don’t know. I don’t have the answers. Clearly, if I had the answers, I would have done something different this week. I felt like we had a good week, a good week of preparation. I felt like I had a relatively healthy group of guys, especially at defense, I put the pads on and I felt like we had a week of physical practice and we had no correlation.”

Watt later added: “If I had the answer, we wouldn’t be here right now. I’m going to have to look in the mirror and have some conversations, but I don’t have the answers.”

Although they couldn’t identify the solutions needed, players who spoke after the game unanimously said the problem isn’t Tomlin.

“I’m not worried about Mike’s message,” Heyward said. “I’m worried about our technique and our execution. That’s what really worries me. I just wish we had played a lot better. It’s not a message thing, it’s not something innovative, but there were opportunities to take advantage of and it didn’t take over.”