As the Pittsburgh Steelers prepare to watch another Super Bowl from home, it's clear as day that several changes must be made if the organization wants to get back into the contender conversation. The standard for success in the National Football League has been set by the Kansas City Chiefs in recent years, as the franchise looks to win its third-straight Super Bowl. The Philadelphia Eagles will be no easy out, but overall, fans in the Steel City can agree that the current make-up of the team in Pittsburgh is not close to enjoying a run to the big game.
One of the more clear realties in the NFL over the course of the 21st century is that any organization that wants to compete for championships each year needs an above-average quarterback to do so. Ever since Ben Roethlisberger decided to hang up his cleats, the position has been in flux and offense as a whole has been stagnant.
The Steelers attempted to act quickly and reached for Kenny Pickett in the first round of the 2022 NFL Draft. He had to be rushed into a starting role because of the organization's questionable decision to set up a signal-caller room that had Pickett, Mitch Trubisky and Mason Rudolph. No one from that season remains on the roster, and Pittsburgh enters the 2025 offseason with no quarterbacks tied to the team aside from a futures contract with Skylar Thompson.
Prior to that disaster, the franchise's other closest thing to a succession plan was selecting Rudolph in the third round in 2018, when Roethlisberger still had several years left. In hindsight, all of this was a mistake. There wasn't a legitimate option to learn from Roethlisberger while the legend was still in uniform and once he retired, a rookie signal-caller in Pickett was truly set up to fail.
Recent comments from Reid out of New Orleans during Super Bowl week highlight a mistake that the Steelers made not once, but twice. One of the greatest coaches of all time said that one simple year of Patrick Mahomes sitting behind an intelligent veteran allowed him to speed up the learning process and contributed to his quick growth.
"I'm not saying he couldn't have been as great as he is now if he didn't sit," Reid stated. "But to be with Alex Smith, I thought, was something you can't buy. He was able to sit there and watch a guy who’s the ultimate professional, on and off the field, and just get an idea of the lay of the land of how things work in this league. I think that helped him in that part of his career."
It's very likely that Mahomes was always going to be as elite as he is without any sort of guidance from Alex Smith, but Reid's comments are worth noting and can be related to Pittsburgh. It's not far-fetched for some to believe that Roethlisberger wasn't completely sold on helping to mentor Rudolph, but the entire strategy behind the Rudolph selection clearly didn't work if he was supposed to be the two-time Super Bowl champion's successor.
The second mistake in recent years was drafting Pickett and, with all due respect, expecting a guy like Trubisky to help him get up to speed quickly wasn't an overall solid approach. The Steelers had a future Hall of Fame quarterback in Roethlisberger and did not plan correctly when he was in the building, and the plan was even worse once he left.
Quarterbacks don't grow on trees, but the simple fact that Reid felt it necessary to credit Smith isn't a testament to strictly Smith's professionalism. It also is a glowing compliment about Kansas City's strategy when it came to Mahomes. The best thing for him at the time was sit behind a serviceable quarterback. Trubisky wasn't that, and Rudolph was drafted too early to be taken as a serious future plan.
Steelers' Post-Ben Roethlisberger Era Has Been A Disaster
While Pittsburgh has made two trips to the postseason in the three years since Roethlisberger retired, it's impossible to deny that the most important position on the roster has been botched. Whether it was making several mistakes planning for an aging quarterback's retirement while that individual was still on the team, or reaching for a young signal-caller with no one on the depth chart to help him transition, Reid's comments highlight that the Steelers are well behind the eight ball.
