With season likely lost, Tomlin, winless Steelers must take hard look in mirror

Ben Roethlisberger needs elbow surgery, and his season is over. With their franchise quarterback on the shelf, the Steelers’ chances of contending for a playoff berth took a major hit. Mason Rudolph will take over at quarterback, and while the Steelers are high on him — they insisted they had a first-round grade on him last year — he represents a major step down from Roethlisberger.

Roethlisberger wasn’t great last year, posting Pro Football Focus’ 17^th-best passing grade and 16^th-best offensive grade among quarterbacks. For several seasons prior, however, he was a regular in the top five, according to PFF’s grading system. His effectiveness helped mask issues that have been creeping up on the franchise for several years, and may threaten to overwhelm them now.

With the season likely lost, Pittsburgh must take a hard look in the mirror and evaluate the state of the franchise. What they find might be disheartening for Steelers fans.

The past 20 months for the black and gold have been tumultuous and disappointing. First, Mike Tomlin suggested before a regular-season showdown with New England that a Steelers-Patriots AFC Championship Game matchup was a foregone conclusion, only to see his team self-destruct in a home playoff loss to Jacksonville.

Days before that game, Le’Veon Bell threatened to sit out or retire if the team used the franchise tag on him again. It did, and sure enough, he sat out the entire 2018 season. Antonio Brown and Roethlisberger returned for the 2018 campaign, and while they were productive, the team struggled, the stars took verbal jabs at one another, and Brown’s late-season desertion of the team set the tone for an ugly, drama-filled offseason.

Interpersonal conflict was one thing, but when the team was winning, that didn’t matter. More troubling for the long term is the deterioration of the team’s vaunted defense, its longtime calling card.

Tomlin’s first six seasons saw the Steelers lead the league in scoring defense three times, finish second once, and never end up worse than 12^th. Starting in 2013, they only cracked the top-10 twice, and were too often scorched by the league’s better offenses, particularly their nemesis New England.

That’s bad enough, but what’s worse is that the team has spent enormous amounts of draft capital trying to fix the problem but to no avail. Counting this season’s selection of linebacker Devin Bush with the 10th overall pick, the Steelers have picked a defensive player in the first round seven straight years. They have tried and failed to beef up their oft-maligned secondary, spending six picks on safeties or cornerbacks in the first three rounds since 2015, and signing cornerback Steven Nelson, formerly of the Chiefs, to the richest free-agent contract in team history this offseason.

Tomlin cut his teeth as a defensive backs coach, so it would stand to reason that he would be able to get the most out of young secondary talent, but the opposite has been the case. Senquez Golson (2^nd round, 2015) never saw the field due to injury. Artie Burns (1^st round, 2016) is a bust. Sean Davis, picked in the second round that year, has been underwhelming. Cameron Sutton, a 2017 third-rounder, has not distinguished himself. Last year’s first-rounder, safety Terrell Edmunds, has also struggled, and was torched repeatedly by the Seahawks in Week 2.

Only Joe Haden, signed after being cut loose by the Browns before the start of last season, has been consistently good. Perhaps the Steelers are convinced that signing or trading for talent from outside the organization is the best way to improve the back end, because on Monday night, they traded their 2020 first-round pick to the Dolphins for Minkah Fitzpatrick.

Even with that addition, the Steelers figure to struggle, and if they do, it will reflect poorly on Tomlin. This is his defense, not defensive coordinator Keith Butler’s, and it hasn’t been good. Tomlin has always favored talent over scheme on both sides of the ball. It worked offensively, until most of that talent was gone. Now, Steelers wide receivers can’t get separation, the running game can’t get going, and the team struggles to score. Defensively their philosophy results in them being gashed repeatedly by shallow crossing routes and quick-hitting passes. They have no schematic answers because the head coach doesn’t think they need any.

The failure to adjust on both sides of the ball is a direct reflection of the head coach’s stubbornness. That same stubbornness hurts Tomlin when it comes to in-game decisions involving clock management and challenges. He hasn’t won a challenge in more than two seasons, and routinely takes heat from local media and fans for his timeout usage.

Is Mike Tomlin, despite his gaudy record, closer to an average coach who gets a major boost by virtue of Roethlisberger’s presence? Is the franchise suffering from a serious talent drain, one masked by high-level quarterback play? Is a housecleaning in order?

The Steelers might not like the answers they find, but it would be in the team's best interest to use the rest of the 2019 season to find out.