The Steelers 2024 season came to a rather undistinguished end on the road against the Baltimore Ravens in the Wild Card round. It has been nearly a decade since the city of Pittsburgh relished in the glory of a playoff win. That is nearly an eternity for a franchise that won four Super Bowls in six years during the decade of the 1970s.

As a point of clarity, my Steelers journey began in the 1970s. I fondly remember that decade as a decade of winning and winning consistently. As a pre-teen, I just assumed that once we got to the playoffs, we would win the Super Bowl. Alas, that has not been the case since the 2008 season.

To say the way the 2024 season unfolded was frustrating would be an understatement, but here we are discussing yet another ‘one and done’ playoff loss. To be fair, I did not think that we would even be in a position to make a run in the playoffs, but once we got there, I had expectations of at least getting past the Wild Card round.

What is frustrating to me is how we played in the Wild Card against the Ravens. We were borderline non-competitive and that is the antithesis of how the Steelers have typically played, at least in the regular season. Changes need to be made. Here are five changes that must be made this offseason to avoid another disaster in 2025.

The Steelers must strike balance on the offensive side of the ball

This is the final tally for the Steelers offense in 2024: we ranked twenty-third in total yards per game, twenty-seventh in passing yards per game, eleventh in rushing yards per game, and sixteenth in points per game.

There is a mammoth chasm between our run game and our passing game. I don’t think that is an earth-shattering statement. When we hired Arthur Smith, we discussed what I thought the offense would resemble. I knew we would re-establish the run game, which we did, for the most part.

Unfortunately, the aerial attack was virtually non-existent. I realize that personnel has a lot to do with the type of scheme a team chooses to deploy, but, at some point, you have to establish a passing game even if that is not necessarily what you want to do.

In several games this season, it was almost as if we were reticent to pass the ball. In today’s NFL, the modern NFL, to be precise, you need balance or at least the ability to either run the ball or pass the ball if the circumstances dictate doing one or the other. That was not the case for the 2024 Steelers offense.

The Steelers must find a franchise quarterback

Twenty-one years. That’s right, it was twenty-one years between Terry Bradshaw and Ben Roethlisberger. I don’t know about you but I can’t wait another twenty-one years before we find our next franchise quarterback.

I don’t think it’s controversial to say that neither Russell Wilson nor Justin Fields played well enough for the Steelers to make a significant investment in either of them. That’s not to say that we won’t try to re-sign one or both of them, but that doesn’t change the fact that we need to find our next franchise quarterback.

So, where do we find our next franchise quarterback? Good question to which I do not have a good answer. The obvious answer is the draft but that hasn’t necessarily worked out for us. We could go the free agent route but how did that turn out for us this year?

I do believe we will draft a quarterback in the 2025 draft and hope whoever it is can ascend to the mantle of being a franchise quarterback. I will say that hope is not a plan. A plan is a plan and I’m not so sure we have one.

The Steelers must move on from Teryl Austin

I realize that Mike Tomlin is heavily involved on the defensive side of the ball, but the utter collapse of that unit during the five-game losing streak is justification enough to move on from Austin. To be fair, the defense did not get much help from the offense, but the defense was supposed to be the strength of the 2024 Steelers.

To put this into perspective, the defense finished the 2024 campaign with the following rankings: twelfth in total yards allowed, twenty-fifth in passing yards allowed, sixth in rushing yards allowed, and eighth in points per game.

On paper, the defense played pretty well, but the reality is much more somber. We could not stop the pass, the predilection to play man coverage on seemingly every third down was mind-numbing and predictable, by the way, and the inability to stop the run in the Wild Card game against the Ravens should be enough to warrant a change at defensive coordinator.

The Steelers must consider a scheme change on the defensive side of the ball

This goes hand-in-hand with the aforementioned need to move on from Teryl Austin but it goes deeper than just changing the person at the helm of the defense. While I am not suggesting a complete overhaul of our base 3-4 defense, I am suggesting we take a look at who we trot out there in certain circumstances.

I am also suggesting that we find players, either via the draft or free agency, who can actually cover opposing tight ends, running backs, and wide receivers. Our linebackers were flat-out liabilities in pass coverage. A case in point is Patrick Queen, our big free agent addition in 2024.

Queen gave up fifty-eight completions for a seventy-six percent completion percentage. What is more alarming is that Queen gave up almost ten yards per completion, meaning that every time Queen was on the field and the opposing QB threw his way, it was essentially for a first down.

Additionally, we need to implement a true 4-3 option for situations where we are facing a team that desires to play a ‘ground and pound’ style of offense, a la, the Baltimore Ravens. We play them twice a year. We know what they like to do. How about we stop the run and force them to pass? There’s an idea.

Mike Tomlin must be willing to be more pliable, more quickly

If you didn’t get a chance to watch Mike Tomlin’s season-ending press conference, I would encourage you to do so. I thought Tomlin was forthcoming and introspective, but it frankly sounded like every other season-ending press conference after we got bounced in the first round.

As I have said many times, I am a Mike Tomlin supporter, but I am not a Mike Tomlin apologist. I am sure that Tomlin has done, is doing, and will do the ‘woulda, shoulda, coulda’ exercise, but that doesn’t change the fact that we haven’t won a playoff game in nearly a decade.

To paraphrase Tomlin, if you have red paint, you paint the barn red, but you don’t paint the barn red because that’s what color the barn should be painted. During the five-game losing streak, there were glaring deficiencies on both sides of the ball, but, from my perspective, they were not sufficiently addressed.

We find ourselves on the outside, looking in once again because of a seeming unwillingness to put aside what we’ve always done in favor of what we should be doing, and what we should be doing is making changes ‘on the fly’, if necessary. If Tomlin is serious about not getting bounced in the first round, change is not only necessary but critical.