Well, I don't know about you, but I am relieved that the Steelers' 2025 draft is behind us. All the 'pomp and circumstance' leading up to and continuing throughout the three days of the draft was exhausting.
Every year, my son and I try to predict what player we might draft in what round, what player might be drafted by the AFC North rivals that we wouldn't want to be drafted by them, and on and on. Like I said, it's exhausting.
Now that the dust has settled and with OTAs and minicamp right around the corner, it's time to get down to business, as it were. To paraphrase Mike Tomlin, our game is football, and our business is winning. While Pittsburgh has never had a losing season since Tomlin has been our head coach, which is a monumental feat in and of itself, the fact remains that we have not won the Vince Lombardi trophy since the 2008 season.
For a fan like myself, who grew up watching the Steelers' dynasty of the 1970s, not having won a Super Bowl for sixteen seasons is frustrating and unacceptable. Winning now is obviously a priority, but it may come at the expense of this year's rookie class.
Pittsburgh Steelers 'win-now' philosophy may spell doom for the 2025 draft class
Let me clarify what I mean by my statement that the Steelers 'win-now' philosophy may spell doom for the 2025 draft class. Art Rooney II grew up having been surrounded by both losing and winning teams, but I would venture to say that he fondly remembers the decade of the 1970s, as do I.
All any of us remember, including Art Rooney, is this: the Steelers have not won a Super Bowl since the 2008 season, our last playoff win came in 2016, and, quite frankly, we have not been competitive in the playoffs since 2016. No one is happy about that, including Art Rooney.
It remains to be seen how the Steelers will fare in 2025, but if you listened to the post-draft press conference, both Mike Tomlin and Omar Khan made it pretty clear that the draft strategy was to get to a physical brand of football. They backed that up by drafting two defensive linemen, one of whom was selected in the first round.
There's no telling what type of career Derrick Harmon, for example, will have, but I think it's fair to say that there's inherent pressure placed on a first-round draft pick. I would argue that is the case with any first-round pick, regardless of the year in which that player was drafted.
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For the Steelers, a team that has not had a playoff win in nearly a decade, the pressure to win in the here and now is tenfold. Pittsburgh may ask too much of this rookie class, and that may spell their doom. I hope it doesn't, and it is a question that will remain unanswered until the end of the 2025 season.
I appreciate the aggressiveness with which they addressed the obvious shortcomings on the defensive side of the ball, but players are only as good as the scheme they are in, and the scheme is only as good as the coaching staff that supports the players.
I have questioned over the years, since Tomlin has been head coach, whether the defensive scheme needs some 'tweaking' or outright revamping. Again, that is a discussion for another time.
For right now, the Steelers will enter 2025 with a lot of questions and, perhaps, not a lot of answers. But if they are pinning our hopes on the 2025 draft class to take us to the 'promised land', that may prove to be nothing more than an unrealized dream.