The Pittsburgh Steelers will go into the playoffs on a four-game losing streak after Saturday’s 19–17 defeat to the Cincinnati Bengals.
Only two other teams have begun the playoffs on such a streak, as ESPN’s Brooke Pryor pointed out afterward. The most recent team to fall backwards into the postseason was the 1999 Detroit Lions, who ended their season with five consecutive losses and lost in the wild-card round to Washington.
Entering the playoffs about as cold as a team can be seems entirely relevant when asking Steelers players and coaches about their performance. But quarterback Russell Wilson didn’t want to talk about that during his postgame press conference.
“I don’t really wanna talk about the past just because I think we’ve been in that for a little bit here,” Wilson said, via Awful Announcing. “I think the best thing we can do is get ready for the playoffs. It’s a new season. That’s the only thing that really matters anymore at this point, right?
“The reality is, obviously us winning that game would have helped us in some form or fashion. But at the end of the day, when you go into the playoffs, everybody’s 0-0. You gotta beat everybody anyway. And that’s gotta be our focus right now.”
So the Steelers are “on to Cincinnati,” as Bill Belichick once put it, emphasizing what was ahead and pertinent? Or on to Baltimore or Houston, as it applies to this season, depending on whether Pittsburgh finishes as the No. 5 or 6 seed in the AFC playoffs. Who the Steelers play will be based on a Los Angeles Chargers win or loss in Week 18.
However, those four straight losses have a direct bearing on how the Steelers will perform in their first-round playoff matchup because they indicate the team is not playing well.
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Yes, Pittsburgh played three of the NFL’s best teams in the Philadelphia Eagles, Baltimore Ravens and Kansas City Chiefs during its skid. But the offense has scored 17 or fewer points in all four losses. Wilson threw for less than 220 yards in each of those games.
The veteran QB also made a crucial mistake on the Steelers’ final drive, opting to scramble for three yards rather than throw the ball away or run out of bounds with 46 seconds remaining and only one timeout. That costs Pittsburgh 22 seconds.
The Steelers’ four-game losing streak didn’t occur earlier in the season or during another season in which Wilson played for another team. It just happened, as ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt and Ryan Clark pointed out during postgame coverage.
“We’re not talking about 19— we’re not talking about the Great Depression,” Van Pelt said. “We’re talking about the game you guys just lost, that’s the fourth in a row.”
Wilson understandably wants to focus on the positive going into the playoffs. The Steelers can’t replay those last four games. However, coaches and players will spend considerable time studying those results to try and correct mistakes and find any sort of advantage that can be exploited. That’s football. To act otherwise is to be in denial while reality is confronting the Steelers head-on.
