Pittsburgh has made the playoffs in four of the past five years yet has zero postseason wins to show for it.
In an effort to rectify those failures, the Steelers have plunged head first into the offseason, trading for wide receiver DK Metcalf and adding defensive contributors such as Malik Harrison, Darius Slay and Juan Thornhill.
Defensive lineman Cameron Heyward has long been part of a Steelers team known for building conservatively. Now, heading into Year 15, he’s taken notice of the team’s emphatic push for more serious contention.
“I think we’re in a state of urgency,” Heyward said Friday on The Rich Eisen Show. “We have a lot of guys that, like myself, are in the latter stages of their career. We all want to win. It’s not just enough to win a playoff game, which we haven’t won in a couple years, and there’s a bad taste in our mouth because of that.”
Asked to elaborate on Pittsburgh’s urgency, Heyward pointed to several of his acclaimed teammates.
“Urgency to do it before we have multiple guys that hang it up,” Heyward said. “You have a guy like T.J. Watt. You don’t just get a T.J. Watt and you sit on that T.J. Watt, you make sure you maximize those opportunities to win at a high level. And with Minkah Fitzpatrick — All-Pro guys that are soon to be Hall of Famers that we have so much respect for. We’ve got to win now. It’s not enough to look toward the future and say, ‘Oh, two or three years out we could be very good.’ Two or three years out we could be a totally different team, so we’ve got to make the most of this right now.”
Heyward humbly left himself off the list of guys the franchise must win for. At 35, he’s coming off his fourth All-Pro campaign and seventh as a Pro Bowler, having added another eight sacks to his 88.5 career total.