Omar Khan has one urgent need to address ahead of the 2025 season.

For the fifth straight season, the Pittsburgh Steelers finished with a winning record but failed to get past their first game of the playoffs. With another loaded offseason ahead of them, Steelers general manager Omar Khan has one dire issue to address at quarterback.

Amid the run of mediocrity, some fans have since turned on head coach Mike Tomlin, seeing him as the team’s primary issue. However, the longest-tenured coach in the NFL has a no-trade clause in his contract, and he is one year removed from signing a lucrative extension.

While rumors of Tomlin’s job security continue to swirl, the team continues to ride waves of inconsistency on the field. The Steelers’ struggles have notoriously never resulted in a losing record under Tomlin but they have now gone eight straight seasons without a playoff win.

Pittsburgh evidently has more than one issue to address, but it has failed to tackle its biggest issue, which has plagued it for nearly a decade. The Steelers’ ongoing quarterback issues continue to evade them, resulting in years of middling success and subsequent disappointment.

After the failed Kenny Pickett experience, the Steelers tried out both Justin Fields and Russell Wilson in 2024. Despite finishing with a 10-7 record, neither worked to much success, regardless of what social media persists.

Steelers’ quarterbacks held them back in 2024

Fans have long given up on Wilson, but a few spread the narrative that Fields should have been the signal-caller Tomlin stuck with for the season. The debate sparked Civil War among Steelers supporters, but the evidence clearly backed Wilson. The root issue was that neither should have been the solution to begin with.

While Fields went 4-2 in his six starts to begin the year, only two of those wins ended up being over playoff teams, with one over the Denver Broncos in Bo Nix’s second career start. The two losses were also over teams who failed to make the playoffs and games Pittsburgh should have taken. In hindsight, Fields’ early-season run was much more misleading than it seemed at the time.

Once Wilson returned to the field, the Steelers’ offense undoubtedly opened up. George Pickens finally became a factor after a slow start caused by Fields, while Pat Freiermuth and Calvin Austin III got more involved. The lone downside was the lack of Fields’ rushing threat in the backfield, which negatively impacted Najee Harris and the run game.

However, as he showed down the stretch, Wilson is not the franchise quarterback he used to be. He is a better passer than Fields, but hurdling that low bar was evidently not enough to amount to anything meaningful. During the team’s four-game losing streak down the stretch of the regular season, Wilson averaged just 174.5 passing yards while taking 14 total sacks.

Given how their season ended, Khan and Tomlin will have a tough time justifying either Wilson or Fields returning as the team’s starting quarterback in 2025. Luckily for them, the Steelers have a choice of options to solve the issue in the 2025 offseason.

Omar Khan needs to address long-standing quarterback issue in 2025 offseason

Since Ben Roethlisberger last led the league in passing yards in 2018, the Steelers’ quarterback situation has been mediocre at best. Roethlisberger became a shell of himself late in his career and the team has been searching for answers ever since.

Like most teams, the Steelers will have two chances to address their issues in the offseason. Following their Wild Card loss to the Baltimore Ravens, Pittsburgh will own the No. 21 pick of the 2025 NFL Draft in April. Whether they choose to sign another veteran quarterback or trust another rookie, Khan must end the offseason with a new quarterback on his roster.

With a late first-round pick, the Steelers do not have a ton of quarterback options available to them in the draft. Depending on the results of the Senior Bowl and NFL Combine, either one of Jalen Milroe or Jaxson Dart could rise high enough to warrant their selection.

The most likely route will be in free agency. While no big-name superstars will be available, the 2025 free agency pool will be notoriously full of veteran quarterbacks. Sam Darnold and Jameis Winston headline the list of veterans whose agents Khan should be contacting as soon as free agency begins.

A trade is also a plausible solution, given the lack of surefire names available in free agency. Geno Smith, Tyrod Taylor, Anthony Richardson, Kirk Cousins and Derek Carr are just a handful of names who could potentially become available over the summer.

The route they take does not matter. The Steelers just need to end the 2025 offseason with a long-term solution at quarterback and end their unnecessary fiasco.