Sports: Steelers 2025 Season, Unlucky To Be So Lucky

The end of the Mike Tomlin era came to an end this week. He will go down as one of the greatest coaches in NFL history. This blog is not about him as much as the Steelers and the 2025 season. On a superficial look at the season, it seems like it was essentially the same as the last 3 seasons. After all, the Steelers finished 10 and 7 and lost in the first round of the playoffs. This edition of the Pittsburgh Steelers was a very poor football team that made it to the playoffs almost on sheer luck. They were one of the worst-performing clubs in Steeler history and yet managed to finish 10 and 7. In games where they had huge turnover margins, they barely won. Some of their other wins were very fortunate. Let’s look at this team on both sides of the ball and see how they compare with Steeler teams of the past that were as bad or worse than this team.

Starting with the defense, who certainly had Joe Buck and Troy Aikman fooled as they kept referring to the Steelers as a great defense. Does this sound great to you? In total yards given up, they ranked 26th out of 32 teams. They were 29th in passing yards allowed. In points allowed, they were 17th. There were not that many teams in Steelers history that were ranked lower in the league than this year’s Steelers defense. When they were, they all finished with worse records, with one exception: the 1963 Steelers, who ranked 11th out of 14 teams in yards allowed. They finished with a 7-4-3 record. Their offense was good, ranking 6th in points and 3rd in total yards. All of the other teams with similar defensive records finished well below .500. One Steeler team did finish at .500. That team, along with the ’63 Steelers, had a very good offense. As you will see, this was not the case with the 2025 Steelers.

The Steeler offense ranked 25th in total yards and 15th in points scored. Points scored was the only stat that the Steelers ranked in the top half of the league. The Steelers were 22nd in the league in passing yards and 26th in rushing yards. When you look up and down at the team stats, they look more like Pirate team stats than a team that went 10-7 and won the AFC North. How did the Steelers do it? Many people look at the turnover differential and say that is why the Steelers had a good record. The Steelers had the 4th best turnover ratio, with 27 takeaways to 15 turnovers, for a net of +12. In two games against New England and Indianapolis, they had a net turnover margin of +9. They won those games, but both games went down to the wire. In the other 15 games, they had a margin of +3. In both wins against Baltimore, they were very fortunate. The replay reversal of an apparent touchdown catch in the first Ravens game gave them their first win. In the last game of the season, a missed field goal at the end of the game gave the win to the Steelers. Remember also that it took a game-ending 60-yard field goal to beat the Jets 33-31. Without some of their good fortune and two big turnover games, the Steelers could have easily gone 7-10 or worse.

In the opening round of the playoffs, the Steelers got 3 turnovers but could only put 3 points on the board related to the turnovers. They did this a lot during the regular season. There were 22 Steeler teams that were ranked 4th or higher in turnover ratio over their history. Only 3 of those teams scored fewer points than the 2025 Steelers. One of them was the 2023 Steelers, one of the worst offenses in Steeler history. They did finish 10-7. That team ranked 6th in points allowed and 21st in yards allowed. They were 3rd in the league in turnover ratio. In reality, the Steelers’ lucky season is really very unlucky. If they had finished the way they should have, around 7-10 or 6-11, they would have gotten a much higher draft choice. They would have been more open to a total rebuild. It would have been a more appealing draft pick if they had chosen to trade up. In the next 2 weeks, I expect the Steelers to have a new coach. He may be coming in at the worst possible time. Art Rooney II recently said the Steelers are not looking at rebuilding. The Steelers will have to make some major moves. They have more needs than the Pirates. They will need a quarterback, 2 wide receivers, a cornerback, 2 safeties, and a new lineman on both sides of the ball. Hopefully, the Steelers’ ability to acquire players will also start to get lucky. So far, it has not been lucky or very effective.