The Pittsburgh Steelers are once again heading to the playoffs, doing so for the second-straight season and the seventh time in the last 10 seasons. But they haven’t recorded a playoff win since 2016, and they’re not entering this postseason on the best note, with their 19-17 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals Saturday their fourth-straight.
That loss made the Steelers just the third NFL team ever to head into the playoffs on a losing streak of four or more games, following the 1999 Detroit Lions and the 1986 New York Jets. And it led to a hammering from Joe Buck and Troy Aikman on the commentators’ appearance on SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt following Saturday’s game:
Scott Van Pelt, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman have a grim outlook on the Steelers chances of a deep postseason run. pic.twitter.com/jL4BZPkvqT
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) January 5, 2025
After an introduction on the Steelers’ season-ending slump and offensive woes, Van Pelt asks “Troy, I don’t assume in a week you can become the team you hope to become. What does Pittsburgh do in a week?” Aikman responds “Man, I don’t know, Scott. It’s ugly. It’s ugly. And they’ve got to be better on that side of the ball.”
Aikman continued “The good news was their defense, that had been struggling, played really well against an offense that, as we know, had been scoring a lot of points. So that part of it, I think they’ve got to feel good about.
“But on the other side of it, they’ve just got to get better. It’s got to get better, and the passing game has to get a lot better. They run the ball a lot, they don’t necessarily run it well, but you’ve got to throw the football better than they have thrown it if you’re going to do anything in the postseason. The fact that they’re in the postseason is fortunate for them; when you lose four straight, typically that’s not enough to get in.”
Van Pelt then asked Buck for his thoughts on the Steelers’ offense in particular, saying “I just don’t know where you feel confident offensively. What’s your sense of this?” Buck responded “Well, I don’t know how you come out of this game where George Pickens had one catch, no yards, three drops, and feel good about yourselves. He missed three games with a hamstring, you know, he had three catches last week in the return from that. But we all saw the same game.”
Buck then talks about Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin’s in-game frustration with his team, and concludes with “It wasn’t good enough tonight. And whether they are a five-seed or a six-seed, as Troy said earlier in the game, doesn’t really matter if their offense is going to look like this. They’re going to have to protect better, and they’re going to get Pickens involved more no matter what. He’s their top target on the outside, and he’s that guy by a mile.”
Aikman then concludes “They’re one and done, Scott. If they don’t play better on offense than they did tonight, it’s going to be a short trip in the postseason, and they’ll be looking for their first playoff win since 2016 going into next year.”
That’s some notable criticism from the commentators, even becoming essentially a prediction (at least from Aikman) before the Steelers’ wild card opponent is even determined. And it speaks to the potential value (at least in candid commentary) of quick post-game interviews with game announcers; Buck and Aikman just spent hours calling this team’s game and watching their offensive miscues, so it’s fresh in their mind, and they might be more willing to say what they really think immediately after a game than in a days-later interview. They certainly spoke their minds here, and in ways very critical towards Pittsburgh (and there will be plenty of Steelers’ fans taking notes and bringing this clip back up if the team does get a playoff win).
There is perhaps some hope for the Steelers from those past two teams that slumped into the playoffs. The 1999 Detroit Lions, who finished the regular season 8-8 thanks to those four concluding losses, lost their wild card game handily to Washington. But the 1986 Jets‘ five-game losing streak heading into the postseason only left them at 10-6, similar to Pittsburgh’s 10-7. And they thumped the Chiefs in the wild card round and came close to winning their divisional round clash with the Browns, only losing on a controversial roughing the passer call on Mark Gastineau following a hit on Bernie Kosar. (No word on if Gastineau has confronted anyone involved there in the ensuing years.)
Thus, there is potential for a season-ending slump to turn around in the playoffs. We’ll see if the Steelers can pull that off, and if they can make some of these criticisms look wrong in retrospect.
