Airing of Grievances: Discontent with the State of the Steelers

As we head into the Holidays, I wanted to take some time to celebrate the infamous Seinfeld episode “The Strike” where Kramer brings back the retired Costanza-ian holiday Festivus. In said holiday, the consumerism of Christmas is taken out and replaced with an aluminum pole (tinsel is too distracting), the feats of strength, and what is pertinent to this post, the airing of grievances.

This is a time to tell all of the people you love how they have disappointed you over the past year. The Steelers certainly have a laundry list of issues I could point out. That said, I’ve narrowed it down to four things that are really deserving of this holiday hate. Here is a list of grievances that I have against the Steelers.

The Steelers coaching staff is poor

The NFL is an ever-changing business, and unsurprisingly, this is a copycat league. One successful scheme or play will quickly make its way to a multitude of other teams. In a similar vein, a good positional coach will typically be poached by another team looking to improve in that area.

The Steelers are the standard bearer for the opposite of this. While other teams play the chess match of poaching up-and-coming coaches, Pittsburgh keeps things internal. When they do look outside of the organization, less-than-desirable names are usually the targets.

Having internal hires is a good thing on paper for your coordinators. This means that your assistants are developing and worthy of being promoted. In the Steelers case though, this doesn’t seem to be the case. Their record is further proof of this.

Pittsburgh has a great chance at changing that narrative this year. They will head into the offseason with a vacant offensive coordinator spot, and that could, in theory, be filled by a hot coaching prospect. I’m not optimistic though, as this team has continued to try the same process over and over again. The process of bringing in coaches has been frustrating, and that was evident with their lack of success this season.