NFL predictions at this time of the year can be very hit-or-miss. We've just started the free agency period, and the NFL Draft is still a month away. Trying to gauge how much success a team is going to have in the upcoming season can be a tricky thing to guess.
One interesting prediction by Dan Graziano of ESPN caught the attention of Cleveland Browns fans recently. No, it wasn’t about the Browns. Instead, it was about their divisional rival, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and how they could be in for an unforgettable season for all the wrong reasons.
The Steelers have been living on the edge of failure for many years now, where they’ve been good but not good enough to win anything of real significance. Cleveland fans would love to see their rivals falter, and they may just see that if Graziano’s prediction comes to be: The Steelers are about to have their first losing season since 2003, the insider says.
"First of all, it has to happen at some point. Playing 22 straight seasons without a losing record is a stunning accomplishment and a testament to the culture and stability that have defined the Steelers over that time. But the reason this isn't an overreaction? It has kind of been on a knife's edge for a while now, and it's possible Tomlin was holding it all together."
A losing season for the Pittsburgh Steelers is on the horizon
Pittsburgh has a new and experienced coach in Mike McCarthy replacing Tomlin, but it just won’t be enough. Yes, McCarthy has had previous coaching success. He's got a 174-112 overall record in the NFL. He spent 13 seasons as the Green Bay Packers head coach and accumulated a 125-77 record. However, his last coaching gig with the Dallas Cowboys wasn't that great. His teams did win, but they failed to get far in the playoffs. Sound familiar, Steelers fans?
A bigger issue than a new head coach, Graziano believes that since the Steelers lost their former star quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to retirement, they’ve just been plugging the quarterback position with over-the-hill quarterbacks like their presumed current solution: the 42-year-old Aaron Rodgers. Without focusing on getting a young and legitimate quarterback back leading Pittsburgh, the team will get worse before it gets better.
While the Steelers have won between nine and 10 games over most years, they still haven’t won a playoff game in the NFL since 2016. They’ve lost five straight wild-card playoff games in that time. That included the 2020 loss to the Browns.
Pittsburgh had been a laughingstock of a franchise when they entered the NFL in 1933. Back then, they were called the Pittsburgh Pirates. They didn’t have a winning season until 1942, and they only had a total of seven winning seasons from 1933 to 1972. That’s almost 40 years of a losing culture.
They turned it around in the early 1970s with the arrival of former head coach Chuck Noll. That helped ignite a competitive rivalry with the Browns. Unfortunately for Cleveland fans, that rivalry got less competitive when the last coach, Tomlin, was coaching the team. Pittsburgh holds an 83-65-1 record now over Cleveland.
With Tomlin's departure and no serious quarterback plan from the Steelers organization, maybe now Browns fans will have the last laugh again as their divisional rivals try to avoid that floor falling out below them.