Mike Tomlin doesn’t want his Pittsburgh Steelers looking too far back – or too far ahead – as the NFL playoffs approach for his reeling team.
Four weeks ago, the Steelers were riding high in the AFC and firmly in control of the North. An 0-4 stretch to close the regular season followed, dropping the Steelers (10-7) to the No. 6 seed and sending them to high-flying Baltimore (12-5) for a wild-card matchup on Saturday night.
In four weeks, the Super Bowl will be days away from being played. And while the Steelers are in no position to be considered one of the AFC’s front-runners for a spot in that game, it remains the goal for a franchise that hasn’t won in the playoffs since the 2016 season.
“It’s not about dreaming about the next month,” Tomlin said Monday at his weekly press conference. “It’s not about pouting over the past month. It’s about this week for us.”
Based on their play in the final month – the Steelers hadn’t lost four in a row to end a season since 1999 – there is more reason to pout than be optimistic that a long playoff run awaits. But Tomlin doesn’t want the Steelers to enter the playoffs with a clean slate, but rather embrace the “ills” of the 0-4 stretch.
“Build a course of action to correct it and then go about the physical labor of doing so,” he said. “That’s what I’m talking about by carrying the baggage of the last four weeks. There are lessons to underneath it all for coaches and for players and for the collective.
“For us to be successful, the fruit of those lessons have to be evident in our play.”
The Steelers and Ravens will meet for the third time since Week 11 with each team winning a at its home venue. The Steelers defeated the Ravens, 18-16, at Acrisure Stadium on Nov. 17, but the Ravens raced to a 34-17 victory Dec. 21 in the rematch at M&T Bank Stadium. That represented the second loss of the four that ended the Steelers’ regular season.
“The more familiar you are, the more significant the strategic component is,” Tomlin said. “As a coach, I welcome that. I want the responsibility of being a component of how the game unfolds and stay a step ahead of them.”
How the Steelers fare in the third meeting – and whether they stop their late-season slide as well as buck their recent playoff history – will determine how long they remain in what Tomlin calls the single-elimination tournament.
“I certainly want us to have belief in self, but I don’t want us to waste a whole bunch of time in the next four,” Tomlin said. “The next four will be defined by how we string them.”
For their third consecutive trip to the postseason, the Steelers will enter as a wild-card team, which means opening on the road. That doesn’t bode well for a team that lost by 14 points at Buffalo last year and by 21 at Kansas City in 2021 after enduring home upsets by Cleveland in 2020 and Jacksonville in 2017.
“That’s my story,” Tomlin said of his team’s recent playoff failures. “It’s not this collective’s story. Many of these guys involved do not tote those bags. I happily tote those bags. It’s not something I’m going to project on the collective.”
At the top of Tomlin’s agenda is finding a way for the Steelers to be competitive early in games. The Steelers have not held a lead at any point in the past four games. They trailed 10-0 against the Bengals and were down by double digits in the first half against the Chiefs, Ravens and Eagles.
“Some of that has to do with the people we played having done a nice job. Some of that has to do with us,” Tomlin said. “Rest assured, we’re working extremely hard to rectify it. I’m excited about taking another whack at it this week.”
Although the Steelers won’t be taking any momentum into the playoffs unlike the Ravens, who have won four in a row, Tomlin isn’t concerned about his team’s confidence being rebuilt.
“We’ve been in too many battles, and we’ve had to much success to be fragile in that way,” he said. “We certainly can hate our recent performances and the outcomes, but I don’t think it’s reflected about how we feel about ourselves or our ability to make plays or engineer victory.”
The Steelers are 3-1 against the Ravens in the postseason, with all of those playoff meetings taking place at Acrisure Stadium. A chance at securing another home playoff game evaporated during the losing streak while the Ravens were securing the No. 3 seed.
“I expect it to be a hostile environment,” Tomlin said. “I welcome that. It’s important we smile in the face of that as a collective. It’s a tax to pay for not winning the division, and we pay that.”