The Pittsburgh Steelers pride themselves on tradition. Six Super Bowl wins. The NFL’s longest-tenured head coach. Black and gold uniforms that have rarely been tweaked. They are what you might call one of the dignitaries of football history, established in the earliest days of the NFL and still graced with some of the league’s premier matchups, like the NFL’s first foray into Ireland this fall.
Unfortunately, legacy doesn’t always equate to contemporary impact. “Star Wars” was a cultural phenomenon at the tail end of the 1970s, right around the same time the Steelers were the NFL’s dynastic powerhouse. Today, “Star Wars” is an oversaturated made-for-streaming brand, and the Steelers are the NFL equivalent, living off residuals and banking on nostalgia without lasting results.
Is this an unreasonable critique of a franchise that last suffered a losing record in 2003, the year 50 Cent dropped “In Da Club” and George W. Bush was halfway through his first term? Does consistency warrant no respect anymore? Surely fans of downtrodden, dysfunctional teams like the Cleveland Browns and New York Jets would kill to have even half the Steelers’ annual success.
The problem is, the Steelers tout their higher bar — “The standard is the standard,” head coach Mike Tomlin often quips — like it still applies to their operation. What is the standard? Winning titles? That hasn’t occurred since 2008, when Ben Roethlisberger was 26 years old. Winning conference championships? That hasn’t happened since 2010, when Aaron Rodgers was the trophy-wielding face of the Green Bay Packers, not the 41-year-old “missing piece” of the very Steelers team he conquered in Super Bowl XLV. Winning just a single playoff game? Nope. Not since 2016.
The Steelers deserve credit for staying relevant. But only in the sense that “relevant” means annually eligible for an ugly one-and-done postseason appearance. In the time…
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