The Pittsburgh Steelers, for lack of a better word, are stuck.
Stuck in a cycle of fringe-playoff seasons with quarterback play just capable enough to win games. Stuck with a coaching staff that’s unwilling to sacrifice today’s core for tomorrow’s season. Stuck out of range for a franchise-changing passer with few avenues to finding one.
It’s an unenviable spot, regardless of how long head coach Mike Tomlin’s non-losing season streak continues.
That same competency, according to a Pittsburgh icon, is holding the organization back. Steelers legend Jerome Bettis revealed a potential plan at quarterback to help navigate out of football’s version of the friend zone.
”They’re a victim of their own success because he’s never had a losing season,” Bettis said, via Sports Lens’ DJ Siddiqi. “They’ve never been able to draft in the top five or top 10 where you gotta go get a quarterback. So, they’ve been picking 17th, 18th, 22nd, 24th. You’re not gonna get the quarterback that you need at that point. It’s 100% the quarterback scenario because you haven’t been able to go get that guy.”
Barring a trade, Pittsburgh will pick 21st in April’s NFL Draft. That’s expected to be far later than Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders – the consensus first-round passers in the 2025 class – are expected to fall, leaving the Steelers in a spot awfully similar to 2022. There, they took Kenny Pickett as the first quarterback off the board in an abhorrent class of signal callers.
It’s more than possible that Ward and Sanders are viewed as non-elite prospects by the time the draft rolls around. But if Pittsburgh is in love with a passer, and the teams picking first – namely the Tennessee Titans and Cleveland Browns – are willing to trade down, Bettis would support a blockbuster deal.
“You have to be willing to invest,” says Bettis. “If one of these guys you believe is the guy, then you gotta go out. If it takes three first-round picks, you gotta give them three first-round picks.
“But you’ve gotta go out and get the guy you like,” Bettis continues to say. “I don’t know who that guy is if it’s any of these quarterbacks. I don’t know if you mortgage your future for any of these guys. I don’t know. But if you do like one of these guys, you gotta go all in. Because what they’re doing right now, will not work. It’s proven that it doesn’t work. They have to re-commit themselves to finding that quarterback.”
In 2024, the Steelers rolled out the combination of Justin Fields and Russell Wilson, buy-low veterans looking for a career revival. Both exceeded expectations, but neither established themselves as a clear long-term starter. Either one could reasonably find a new home in free agency.
If nothing else, this offseason in particular could be an inflection point. But it’s an opportunity the Steelers would have to choose to take, and one the front office may be unwilling to accept.
”I just think they need a quarterback. I think that’s been the issue that’s been holding them up is they don’t have the quarterback play that they need to have to be a special football team. I think because of that, they haven’t been able to be a championship-caliber team. They are a playoff-caliber team, but not a championship-caliber team.”
