While this team enacts a wide variety of changes year over year, it feels like nothing has actually changed for the past few seasons. This team says all of the obvious things and promises sweeping changes, but the end results always seem the same.
With 2024 being another disappointing season, one has to ask what will actually change this year.
The issue comes down to the offseason game plan. Every year a team can either try to reload or rebuild their roster. If you think you have a real shot at postseason success, reloading is always the right choice. If not, trimming the fat and getting in a better position for future years is logical.
The Steelers always try to be the former. No matter how bad their roster looks or performed the year before, this team remains adamant that they can compete year after year.
When they had Ben Roethlisberger that made sense. He was a legitimate franchise quarterback and was still playing well enough at the end of his career. Instead of going after a top-tier replacement, the team felt forced to take Kenny Pickett in one of the worst quarterback classes of all time.
They rightfully moved on from him last season, and added some names that could be a potential long-term replacement. Neither of those options panned out though, but that won’t stop the Steelers from once again trying to reload this offseason.
Steelers are reloading a broken gun
This intense desire to be competitive every season is killing this team. It isn’t allowing them to secure a legitimate franchise quarterback and instead is forcing them to stream mediocre options. It would be one thing if this issue had just popped up, but the same problems have plagued this franchise for multiple seasons.
The last thing you want to do is overcorrect your team, but when you haven’t won a playoff game in nearly ten years it's time to make some changes. This will lead to a few lean years, but if you have faith in your GM and coach as the Steelers claim that they do, you can navigate those waters.
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But we won’t. This offseason will be just the same. We will bring back a quarterback who either lost the last five games of the season in a relatively embarrassing fashion or go with the option that was benched for him and couldn’t retake the starting job despite that harsh stretch.
That is making changes, that is staying with the known knowing that you can likely scrape together another winning season and potential playoff birth. This team is afraid to correct itself, and so now it is stuck in this mediocre ditch that they have dug themselves.
While it is true that you can go from a middling team to a great one without rebuilding, it takes landing a great quarterback to do so. Pittsburgh has shown an unwillingness to make that aggressive move, so once again, we remain in limbo.
So, in short, I fully expect the Steelers to reload once again this offseason despite being in no position to actually make a Super Bowl run. It is high time you admit that the way you are doing business isn’t working and make a plan for securing your next franchise quarterback. Until the team sees that though, we will be stuck with the same results every year.