Wait until next year.
That was the feeling in the Steelers locker room as they cleaned out their stuff following Sunday's 28-10 loss in Baltimore that left them at 8-8 and out of the playoffs for the second consecutive season.
The Steelers feel like they have the pieces in place for a strong 2020 season, with a lot hinging on the progress and recovery of Ben Roethlisberger from an elbow injury just six quarters into the season.
Given a quarterback of Roethlisberger's talents to go along with a defensive unit that led the league in forced turnovers and sacks while becoming a dominant force, there's a prevailing feeling that the best is yet to come for this team.
"Definitely," corner Joe Haden told me. "If we would have had (Roethlisberger) here this season, it would have been a different season. When he gets back, I think it’s going to be a different story."
The question now will be at what level will Roethlisberger, who will turn 38 this offseason, be at when and if he returns.
He's intent on coming back. And the team is confident he'll be able to do so.
But can he be the quarterback who is capable of placing this team on his back, as he has done so often in the past? Perhaps the bigger question is will he need to be?
The Steelers had 54 sacks this season and forced 38 turnovers despite playing with very few big leads during the course of the season with Mason Rudolph and Devlin Hodges at quarterback.
They played things close to the vest with the two inexperienced quarterbacks playing and had just two games in which they won by seven or more points. They also failed to score 30 or more points in a season for the first time since 1971, making things more difficult on the defense.
The Steelers scored just nine offensive touchdowns in their final eight games, with the passing game falling to 31st in the league.
"That's when we had the most fun, being able to have those leads and make teams truly one dimensional," outside linebacker T.J. Watt told me. "Every week, we talked about wanting to get to that point. We just never got there, especially in the second half. We could never get teams to that point of being able to pin our ears back and pass rush and let the guys on the back end cover. Hopefully, we can get to that point more next year. But it was fun."
Getting Roethlisberger back would help that, even if he's not the same quarterback he was prior to his injury.
There's also some hope that the experienced gained by Rudolph, in particular, will pay dividends down the road.
The 2018 third-round draft pick played well in stretches this season in his first NFL action. But there also were some down points, including getting benched after six poor quarters of play in back-to-back starts against the Browns and Bengals that got him pulled in favor of Hodges, an undrafted rookie.
That worked for a while too, as Hodges won the next two games. But eventually, the bloom came off that rose, and Hodges lost his final three starts, putting up 10 points in each of the team's final three games.
No matter how good the defense, it's tough to win with 10 points.
But there was a spark provided by Rudolph coming off the bench to replace Hodges in the second quarter of a 16-10 loss to the Jets when he led the Steelers on two scoring drives late in the first half before being knocked out of that game with a shoulder injury.
"It was pretty tough. To get your chance again to be in the game and be effective, I would have liked to have finished the game and the comeback and then for this to happen," said Rudolph, who said he had a procedure to reduce his sternoclavicular joint on his non-throwing shoulder.
"We don’t always understand in the moment. But we can look back and say it helped make us harder, make us stronger for the journey of life. That’s the way I look at it. This is a relatively minor deal. But it was enough to take me out of the game."
That was the Steelers' season, at least offfensively, in a nutshell. Just when things would start to look like they were turning the corner, something would happen to derail the offense again.
Pro Bowl running back James Conner missed the majority of the second half with nagging injuries. Pro Bowl receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster was nicked up, as well. And though he only missed four games, he was largely ineffective in the second half of the season, catching just 12 passes for 109 yards in that time.
A healthy Roethlisberger could change all of that. At least that's what the Steelers are banking on.
The quarterback likely won't resume throwing the ball again until OTAs. And the Steelers have some work to do to keep this defense together, as outside linebacker Bud Dupree and nose tackle Javon Hargrave highlight the team's free agents on that side of the ball.
But if everything comes together, there is hope within the locker room.
"Yeah, you get the franchise quarterback back in there with the weapons we have offensively, the defense we have, I feel confident in this team next year," said Watt.
