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Pittsburgh Steelers
People in Pittsburgh know the facts here. As great as Mike Tomlin’s been—he’s now two wins from an 18th consecutive season at or above .500—the team hasn’t been what it was in his early years. The Steelers’ last playoff win was in 2016. Their last AFC title game was that year, too, and that’s the only trip they’ve made to the NFL’s final four over the past 14 years.
Now, that’s holding the Steelers to a higher standard than most franchises. But as Tomlin likes to say, . And he may, finally, have a team to meet the standard again.
His players, after Sunday’s scintillating 28–27 over the Washington Commanders in D.C., are starting to see it that way.
“I just think the biggest difference is we’re finishing where we need to finish,” three-time first-team All-Pro safety Minkah Fitzpatrick told me over the phone after the game. “Even though we gave up 27 points, which is unacceptable on the defensive end, we’re still finishing out the fourth quarter. We’re holding guys to minimal gains when they need points. We’re getting the ball back to the offense. The offense is driving the ball down the field and getting points at critical times.
“That’s the difference, is we’re playing really well in got-to-have-it moments.”
Two of those moments stood out for Pittsburgh in beating a very game, very tough Commanders team.
The first came with Pittsburgh down 27–21, and facing third-and-9 from the Washington 32. There was 2:27 left, and the Steelers had two timeouts, meaning they could, in theory, kick a field goal and still get the ball back after the two-minute warning, down 27–24. So there was a safe play there. And then there’s what Pittsburgh actually did.
Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith had the call in for such a situation, but the idea was to throw it to Calvin Austin. The bet was, in that situation, the Commanders would either double George Pickens, or send a five-man pressure, creating a one-on-one for Austin, who was running a go route on the backside. But Austin had to come out of the game, and that meant the Steelers had to lean on Russell Wilson.
That’s because it was Mike Williams, on the roster for all of six days, coming in for Austin.
Wilson effectively drew it up in the dirt for the ex-Jet/new Steeler—telling he’d put the ball up. Smith lined up Pickens in the opposite slot to try to ensure the one-on-one. Williams then cooked Benjamin St-Juste on the initial part of the route, and Wilson put up a dime to cover the 32 yards to Williams to put Pittsburgh up 28–27.
“As a quarterback, there’s not too much he hasn’t seen,” Fitzpatrick says. “There’s not too much that he hasn’t come across. He just has that experience.”
The second finishing blow from the Steelers came just moments later, with Fitzpatrick, a pretty experienced guy himself, delivering it. The Commanders were in fourth-and-9, and the star safety, and his coaches, anticipated Zach Ertz getting the ball. What’s called a “middle read” route—where if the middle of the field is open, Ertz would run a seam route; and if it was closed, he’d sit his route down at the sticks.
“Usually, I lean away from it and then drive on it once he throws the ball,” Fitzpatrick says. “He sat kind of far. Usually, they sit it in between the hashes. He sat down on the far hash. I was reading the quarterback. Once he threw it, it was .”
Fitzpatrick then says, “Ideally, we want to try to get our hands on the ball before he catches it.” He and Damontae Kazee didn’t quite get there in time to do that—but they did arrive with so much decisiveness and force that Ertz, a 250-pound tight end with his back even to the first-down marker, lost all his momentum when they hit him.
“We all knew where the line to gain was,” Fitzpatrick says. “We’re trying to peel him back to the line of scrimmage and not let him fall back toward the chains.”
They didn’t, and that was that.
And between that play, and the one to Williams, it was abundantly clear that not only is this a Steelers team with a powerful defense and a growing offense, it’s also one that’s showing itself now to be capable of winning on the margins, with, as Fitzpatrick says, the have-to-have-it plays that matter most at the end.
With the 7–3 Baltimore Ravens up next, it’s a good bet they’ll need those plays, too, in a matchup that’s shaping up as the kind that’ll harken back to the Ray Lewis–James Harrison days of one of the NFL’s most heated rivalries.
“They have all their talent, and we have all our talent,” Fitzpatrick says. “It’s going to be a physical game. It’s gonna be who smashes the run, and who allows the least amount of splash plays. It’s gonna be fun.”
If the games these teams just came off are any indication, it should be for the rest of us, too.
