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Brooke Pryor, ESPN Staff Writer
BALTIMORE — Safety DeShon Elliott didn’t mince words after the Pittsburgh Steelers‘ 28-14 AFC wild card loss Saturday night.
Despite only being with the organization for a season, Elliott was clear in his frustration with the Steelers’ cycle of futility: a regular-season record above .500 followed by a one-and-done playoff stint.
“I know that in the past we’ve played well in the beginning of the season, and then we just s— the bed at the end, and same s— happened this year,” Elliott said after the Steelers’ sixth playoff loss in eight seasons. “Closed the season out on five game losing streak including the playoffs. So we got to figure out what’s the problem. We got to figure out how to get better. We got to figure out how to get past that point. We got to figure out how to finish strong in seasons to go into the playoffs.”
The routes taken by the Steelers to get to this point have been different each year, but the destination is the same. In their two most recent playoff appearances prior to the 2024 season, the Steelers rallied from slow starts to clinch a playoff berth in the last week of the season. In 2020, they started out 11-0 before losing four of their final five. And in 2017, they won the AFC North and hosted the Jacksonville Jaguars after a first-round bye. Yet each of those appearances ended the same way as the Steelers’ season concluded Saturday night in Baltimore: a loss in their lone playoff game.
“I’m just assessing what transpired tonight,” coach Mike Tomlin said when asked about their pattern of one-and-dones in the playoffs. “As I told you guys earlier in the week, those are my bags, not this collective’s bags. And so my energy is on that group in there and what they were willing to give and the journey that we’ve been on this year and certainly it came to a disappointing end tonight.”
Saturday night was a rerun of the same nightmare that’s played out in each of those postseason losses, too. The Steelers fell in a big hole early and trailed 21-0 at halftime, marking their second-largest halftime playoff deficit behind the 25-point hole to the Browns in 2020.
“Losing sucks,” said edge rusher T.J. Watt who didn’t record a tackle or sack and had five quarterback pressures. “Losing five in a row to finish the season out sucks. Felt like we had a good week of prep. Felt like we were ready for this one. We weren’t. We weren’t able to stop the run. Haven’t been able to stop the run. We weren’t able to get it fixed. So it’s been rough last month of football.”
Dating back to the 2016 AFC Championship loss to the New England Patriots, the Steelers have been outscored by a combined 96 points and outgained by 641 yards in their last six playoff losses. “It’s tough in a game, but can’t whine about it,” said Cam Heyward, who’s been on the team for each of the last six playoff losses. “They’re going to make plays, but we have to make our own plays, and we did not do that.”
The Ravens made those plays from their opening possession when MVP candidate Lamar Jackson and running back Derrick Henry combined for 71 rushing yards on a drive that ended with a 15-yard Rashod Bateman touchdown snag. The Ravens had even more success running the ball on their second scoring drive when they exclusively rushed the ball the entire 98-yard series and finished in the end zone with an eight-yard Henry run. By the end of the night, the Ravens put up 299 rushing yards on a once-stout Steelers run defense.
“Having 300 yards rushing on you is worse than having 300 yards passing,” Elliott said. “It was like a will. They definitely put belt to butt today.”
As has been the case through the Steelers’ four-game losing streak to end the regular season, the defense struggled to verbalize exactly what needed to change, not only in Saturday night’s loss, but also in season-ending slide and the recent stretch of playoff losses.
“It’s too fresh,” Watt said. “I don’t know. I don’t have the answers. Clearly. If I had the answers, I would’ve done something differently this week. I felt like we had a good week, good week of prep. Felt like we had a relatively healthy set of guys, especially defensively, put the pads on. I felt like we had physical practice week and didn’t correlate.”
Watt later added: “if I had the answer, we wouldn’t be here right now. I’m going to have to take a look in the mirror and have some conversations, but I don’t have the answers.”
Though they couldn’t put a finger on the necessary fixes, the problem, players who spoke after the game said unanimously, isn’t Tomlin.
“I don’t worry about Mike’s message,” Heyward said. “I worry about our technique and our execution. That’s what I’m really worried about. I just wish we had played a lot better. It’s not a message thing, it’s not that’s groundbreaking, but there was opportunities to be had, and we didn’t seize anything.”
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