Plenty of blame to pass around for Steelers ugly playoff loss vs Chiefs

The Pittsburgh Steelers were humiliated by the Kansas City Chiefs in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. Here’s who deserves the most blame for their embarrassing performance.

After the dramatic finish to the 2021 NFL season, it all came down to this: a nerve-racking Wild Card matchup against a red-hot Kansas City Chiefs team. Unfortunately, we couldn’t have received a worse game than the one we all witnessed on Sunday night.

There were moments that felt like the Pittsburgh Steelers were going to give us a football game. Moments that gave us hope, and moments that made us jump out of our chairs in celebration. Sadly, those dissipated quickly after the first quarter.

The game got off to an interesting start. While Pittsburgh’s offense struggled to move the ball. The defense had four straight lights-out series against Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs high-powered offense. In fact, Pittsburgh held a 7-0 lead early in the second quarter thanks to a T.J. Watt defensive touchdown from a Cameron Heyward forced fumble.

Though this should have given the team a spark, it was all downhill from here. As the offense failed to sustain drives, the defense was soon gassed, and the Chiefs eventually ran away with a 42-21 win.

This was yet another embarrassing playoff loss for the Pittsburgh Steelers under Mike Tomlin, and there was plenty of blame to pass around for the way this season ended.

No shortage of blame for Steelers loss

Clearly, this was an ugly performance that deserves plenty of criticism. Pittsburgh has now been embarrassed in their last three playoff games and they haven’t won a post-season game since 2016, via Pro Football Reference. At some point, this lack of success where it really counts must be addressed. But for now, we’ll focus on who was to blame for their disastrous performance against Kansas City.

For starters, I have a major issue with both the game plan and personnel decisions in this contest. This falls on the shoulders of the coaching staff — Mike Tomlin not excluded. The first time these two teams played, the Steelers ran for 130 yards on 5.2 yards per carry and still lost by 26; yet they were naive enough to believe they could yield better results with the same conservative game plan the second time around.

Pittsburgh didn’t come out guns blazing like I begged for them to do all week. Instead, they seemed to be content running on first and second downs and passing short of the sticks (which has been the story of their season).

In addition, I thought the personnel groupings were awful. Defensively, Keith Butler was getting Robert Spillane matched up against Travis Kelce and they constantly played some of their slowest lineups against the fastest offense in the NFL.

However, putting all of the blame on the coaches would be a scapegoat. While fans didn’t want to have to analyze Ben Roethlisberger’s performance in his final NFL game, the Steelers quarterback was dreadful in this contest as he constantly checked the ball down underneath and threw multiple passes that should have been intercepted. He finished the night averaging 4.9 yards per attempt and a 15.0 QBR, via ESPN.

As bad as Roethlisberger was, the receivers were perhaps worse. JuJu Smith-Schuster was able to suit up for the first time in three months… and his lack of practice time showed. By the end of the night, JuJu, Diontae Johnson, and Chase Claypool were able to combine for just 85 yards on 25 targets (3.4 yards per target).

While the Steelers did allow 42 points and gave up a 138.3 passer rating to Patrick Mahomes, it’s hard to put an equal weight of the blame on the defense. They played very well early in the game but clearly lost stamina as the contest went on. The second half got ugly, but it was largely because the offense couldn’t hold up their end of the bargain.

The Steelers now have a long offseason to get things figured out, and I expect there to be plenty of changes — starting with a new GM and quarterback next season. We can be thankful to catch Big Ben in one final performance, but this was another ugly playoff loss for Pittsburgh.