Former Pittsburgh Steelers safety Ryan Clark thinks the team should want to lose in 2025 to pursue a quarterback.
Clark, looking at the long-term future of the Steelers’ franchise, said the quickest way for the team to turn around would be a losing season, which would get them up near the top of the NFL Draft to land a quarterback.
“They should want to lose,” Clark said on ESPN’s “Get Up.” “I know this goes against everything that’s black and yellow. But they’ve been a competitive team for the entire time that Mike Tomlin has been there. But since Ben Roethlisberger got to like the last two or three years of his career, they were not a championship contender.”
The Steelers’ last losing season was in 2003, but that allowed them to get low enough in the draft to land Ben Roethlisberger, which changed the franchise’s direction. Since 2020, the Steelers have hovered around 9-8 to 10-7 for most years and simply have not done anything in the postseason.
They have not won a playoff game in eight years or lost six straight ones. Overall, Pittsburgh’s playoff struggles have put them in a cycle of mediocrity that Clark argues they have to break, and the only way to do that is by landing a quarterback.
The Steelers have a war chest of compensatory picks at their disposal in 2025, but if they end up picking in the late teens to early 20s, they would likely have to part ways with their 2027 first-round pick to get up high enough for a game-changing quarterback.