The NFL held the Divisional Round of its playoffs this weekend with the Steelers sitting at home, banished from the postseason in a Wild Card game at Kansas City last weekend.
There's little doubt the NFL got its eight best teams through to the its quarterfinals. The Steelers clearly weren't in that class this season, going 2-5 against the teams that reached the Divisional Round, including two losses each to the Bengals and Chiefs.
What do they need to get to the level of teams such as the Chiefs, Bengals, Bills and Titans, the four finalists in the AFC?
Well, it's a simple -- yet complex -- fix, dependent on the direction the team chooses to go.
Let's take a look at how the Steelers need to approach this:
FIXING THE OFFENSE
This is job one of this offseason.
Ben Roethlisberger isn't going to be back. And as much as he's meant to the franchise over the years -- including in 2021 -- that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Roethlisberger threw for 22 touchdown passes with 10 interceptions and 3,700 passing yards in 16 starts this season, pedestrian numbers by his high standard.
But he also led the NFL with 6 fourth-quarter comebacks and seven game-winning drives. He also served the purpose of paying things forward within the locker room, teaching young offensive players such as running back Najee Harris and tight end Pat Freiermuth what it means to play in the NFL.
The Steelers will miss that leadership in 2022, but they can and need to get more out of the quarterback position on the field.
Roethlisberger's intended air yards of 6.7 yards per pass attempt was second-lowest in the NFL, with only the Lions' Jared Goff (6.4) ranking lower.
And when Roethlisberger did attack down the field, he largely just threw the ball up and hoped a receiver would run under it. His downfield accuracy -- once a calling card -- never returned after his 2019 season-ending elbow surgery.
With Roethlisberger's mobility also a non-factor, the Steelers were just too easy to play against defensively.
The stats back that up. While it's easy to look at their offensive output from 2020 to 2021 and see a drop of 5.8 points per game from one season to the next from 26 points to 20.2, the decline really began with a Week 12 game in 2020 against the Ravens.
In their past 25 games, including a pair of playoff losses, the Steelers have averaged 20.8 points per game.
Getting that number to 24 or more points per game in 2022 is a must.
The Titans averaged 24.6 points per game this season and locked up the No. 1 seed on the AFC playoffs. And they did so with star running back Derrick Henry and wide receiver A.J. Brown both missing extended time and with quarterback Ryan Tannehill posting numbers similar to that of Roethlisberger (3,700 yards, 21 touchdowns, 14 interceptions).
The difference? The Titans ran the ball effectively, finishing fifth in the league in rushing at 141.4 yards per game.
And it wasn't all the running backs. Tannehill contributed 270 rushing yards to that attack and scored seven rushing touchdowns. He only averaged 15 rushing yards per game, but considering the Steelers got 58 rushing yards as a team out of their quarterbacks -- 3.2 yards per game -- this season, it's a huge difference.
And 53 of those rushing yards came from backup Mason Rudolph in two games. Largely, the quarterback running wasn't a threat at all for the Steelers this season.
The other difference between Roethlisberger and Tannehill? Roethlisberger needed 605 pass attempts to accumulate those stats. Tannehill just 535. Roethlisberger averaged 6.2 yards per pass attempt, while Tannehill was at 7.0.
The Steelers need to find a way to successfully attack downfield more on offense.
And all of those things go hand in hand with continuing to fix the offensive line.
The Steelers finished 28th in adjusted line yards per Football Outsiders. They were 11th in adjusted sack rate, but that was largely because Roethlisberger got rid of the ball faster than any quarterback in the NFL this season.
Rookie Dan Moore, a fourth-round draft pick, looks like a keeper at left tackle, though adding a stud left tackle in the draft could push him to the right side. Kevin Dotson has promise at left guard, though he finished the 2021 season by missing almost the entire second half of the season with a high ankle sprain.
Right tackle Chuks Okorafor is set to become an unrestricted free agent, as is right guard Trai Turner.
The Steelers can release oft-injured Zach Banner at a savings of $5 million and offer that money and perhaps slightly more instead to Okorafor, who has earned it over the past two seasons.
An upgrade over Turner at guard would be a boost. The veteran stepped in and replaced David DeCastro following his release at the end of mini-camp, but selecting a long-term replacement in the draft or signing a veteran guard who offers more upside would help immensely.
At center, Mike Tomlin isn't giving up on rookie Kendrick Green, despite benching him in favor of J.C. Hassenauer late in the season. But don't think that just because Tomlin is willing to give Green another shot at winning the starting job, the team won't try to do better there or perhaps improve two spots with one draft pick if the opportunity presents itself.
Green also can play guard -- his primary college position -- and a mid-level veteran center or selecting a stud such as Iowa's Tyler Linderbaum in the first round would improve the line play right away. And Linderbaum could play center or guard, as well, depending on how the Steelers want to configure things on the inside.
The Steelers also could look at things from a different perspective and take a wide receiver early in this draft to help improve the offense.
A rookie wide receiver with speed to complement Diontae Johnson and Chase Claypool -- the only two receivers currently under contract for 2022 -- could help free things up in the running game. That could happen even if JuJu Smith-Schuster is brought back on another one-year contract as he was in 2021. Johnson is heading into the final season of his rookie deal, while Claypool is going into the third of his four-year deal, so continuing to restock that position is a must.
All of those issues will be predicated on what the team does at quarterback.
Some have suggested the Steelers will absolutely take a quarterback in the first round of this year's draft. But that's not necessarily the case.
If there isn't a quarterback the team likes with the 20th pick in the draft, the Steelers won't just take one to take one.
Instead, the Steelers could add another veteran to the equation -- Mitch Trubisky, Marcus Mariota, Teddy Bridgewater, depending on the cost -- to compete with Mason Rudolph and Dwayne Haskins for the starting job.
The Steelers and the rest of the NFL will get a good look at five of the potential first-round quarterbacks -- Kenny Pickett, Desmond Ridder, Carson Strong, Malik Willis and Sam Howell -- at the Senior Bowl in two weeks. With underclassman Matt Corral the only top-ranked quarterback not participating in that game, the Steelers will have a good idea if they'll want to go after a rookie quarterback or go the veteran route in the next few weeks.
Finish fixing the line, get a plan at quarterback and add a speed wide receiver and the offense should take a step forward in 2022.
Adding a veteran running back to back up Najee Harris, as well, would be on the wish list. Benny Snell had 38 touches in that role in 2021. No other team in the league's No. 2 running back had fewer than 65 touches.
If you truly want to run the ball better and more effectively, it can't all fall on one player.
All of this goes beyond who the offensive coordinator is in 2022, whether it's Matt Canada or someone else. If these things aren't addressed, Andy Reid would have issues coaxing more points out of this offense.
FIXING THE DEFENSE
This is a little more straight forward than what it will take to rework the offense.
T.J. Watt, Cam Heyward and Minkah Fitzpatrick remain nice blocks with which to build around.
Tyson Alualu and Stephon Tuitt are under contract for 2022 at a combined cost of $17.4 million. Together, they combined to play five quarters of football in 2021.
Getting them back goes a long way toward fixing the run defense, which was dead last in the NFL.
Alualu has already gone on record as saying he will return in 2022, though he'll be 35. As for Tuitt, who missed the entire season with a knee injury and while dealing with the death of his brother, that remains to be seen.
But the Steelers had an inkling he was going to miss the 2021 season. That's why they negotiated his salary down to $1 million for the season, pushing money to 2022.
Either way, adding another young prospect to that room or a veteran nose tackle-type is a must.
Chris Wormley and Isaiahh Loudermilk both proved to be valuable backups in 2021 but were asked to play too much. Loudermilk could blossom into a starter, to be sure, but that has to happen organically instead of being forced as it was this season.
Montravius Adams, signed off the practice squad of the Saints at midseason, showed some promise as a potential backup to Alualu and should benefit from a full offseason and training camp. But he's an unrestricted free agent. A low-level free agent deal should get him back.
In the secondary, corners Joe Haden and Ahkello Witherspoon are set to become unrestricted free agents, as is strong safety Terrell Edmunds.
Haden will turn 33 in this offseason and, while his leadership is a bonus, paying for cornerbacks in their mid-30s is not the best way to team build.
But Witherspoon, 26, and Edmunds, 25, are both young enough to still be improving and are coming off solid seasons. They have to be priority re-signings on the defensive side.
That will leave tackling what to do at inside linebacker as the main focus on defense.
Devin Bush and Joe Schobert were a disappointment in their first season working together. By season's end, both lost playing time to Robert Spillane, who is slated to be a restricted free agent. Picking up Spillane's tender offer is a no-brainer.
But the situation with Bush and Schobert isn't as cut and dried. Both would have benefitted greatly from better play in front of them on the defensive line. All too often, guards, fullbacks and tight ends got to the second level too easily. And neither Bush or Schobert are great getting off blocks, particularly from offensive linemen.
The Steelers have a decision to make on Bush's fifth-year option for 2023. And at just over $12 million, there's no way they can pick that up.
They also can't pay Schobert the $8.75-million base salary he is due for 2022. Releasing him would create $7.9 million, while a restructure would bring an additional $5.1 million.
Because of their cap situation, the Steelers don't need to do anything with Schobert right away. They can wait and see what happens in the draft -- adding a blue chip, off-ball linebacker would make a lot of sense -- before making a move with Schobert's contract.
The team has some expectations for 2021 fourth-round draft pick Buddy Johnson, but if a stud off-ball linebacker is staring the Steelers in the face on the first two days of the draft, it would be awfully difficult to pass on him given where they are at contractually with Bush and Schobert.
