The path Philly took to their latest Super Bowl win feels like exactly what the Steelers hoped for in 2024… only they did it better.
It’s been just days since the Philadelphia Eagles stunned with a 40-22 win over the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX, defeating the team that, throughout each of the past three seasons, has felt unbeatable — especially in the postseason.
How did Nick Sirianni & Co. bring down Andy Reid and the Big Bad Patrick Mahomes? Well… it was a recipe that the Pittsburgh Steelers have been tinkering with since the retirement of Ben Roethlisberger — a family recipe, handed down from a previous generation of Super Bowl winners in the 1970’s — the great Steel Curtain.
The recipe itself is simple: play possession-down football, be physical, allow the run game to dictate every conversation, and don’t turn the ball over. The Eagles checked every one of those boxes. They led the NFL through the regular and postseason with an average time of possession of 32:21, while averaging the second-most rushing yards per game (184.1) and fourth-fewest turnovers per game (0.8).
So, why did the Steelers and Eagles have such different outcomes? The devil’s in the details.
The Steelers have certainly tried to accomplish this brand of football. In 2021, the Steelers drafted running back Najee Harris in the first round, prepared to place their offensive identity straight on his back just as the team was ushered out of the Ben Roethlisberger era. The problem? They didn’t have the offensive line to establish an efficient and physical run game.
The Steelers have since tried to upgrade up front, but unfortunately building an imposing offensive line takes time. The investment in the trenches did begin soon in GM Omar Khan’s regime, drafting developmental OT Broderick Jones and blocking TE Darnell Washington in 2023 followed by three OL selections in the first four rounds of the 2024 NFL Draft. But still, despite those investments, the coaching didn’t seem to be enough to bring the unit up to par.
Under OL coach Pat Meyer, the team continued to shuffle different combinations at OT all offseason between veteran Dan Moore Jr., coming off a truly disastrous 2023 campaign, second-year OT Broderick Jones and rookie Troy Fautanu. The Steelers failed to ever truly commit to one OL configuration during the offseason, instead opting for versatility. No doubt, that versatility came in handy when injuries began to pile up, but it’s difficult to imagine that it didn’t come at the cost of the development of their first-round developmental tackle.
Finally, there was the investment in the defense. After leading the league in offensive spending in the 2017 season, the Steelers had entirely flipped the script, diverting most of their financial resources to the defense. Soon enough (2022), defensive stars T.J. Watt, Cameron Heyward, and Minkah Fitzpatrick were leading the roster in salary cap hit, and financial investment on offense took a significant downturn. Pittsburgh would go on to lead the NFL in defensive spending in the 2022, 2023 and 2024 seasons. And while the talent level on defense has been supreme, it’s continued to feel like it’s been a struggle to achieve consistency beyond the propensity for creating splash plays and turnovers.
So where does that leave us? How have the Steelers’ attempts to achieve Mike Tomlin’s vision failed in comparison to what the Eagles have built with a series of crafty draft picks, contract maneuvers and free agency signings?
Well… some of it seems to come down to the timing just as much as it does the execution. For example, the Eagles’ addition of star Saquon Barkley (and the significant price tag that came with it) was well-timed compared to the addition of Najee Harris. Barkley wasn’t coming in to change the trajectory of the offense like Harris was; the Eagles were already a run-centric offense with an established offensive line and a complementary quarterback capable of doing his own damage on the ground. The defense they went on to build complemented the run just as well. It was Mike Tomlin’s vision, executed to perfection from a timing perspective.
Now, to execute the timing of it all, you need the right front office. You need the right coach. You need the right scouts. You need the right assistants. And while the Steelers have some key heavy hitters in those departments like Tomlin and Khan, the lack of urgency to move on from assistants that aren’t up to par has all but doomed this franchise to its lack of progress for the foreseeable future.
Since the Steelers’ last playoff win in the 2016 season, the Eagles have won two Super Bowls with two different head coaches (Doug Pederson and Nick Sirianni) and two different quarterbacks (Nick Foles and Jalen Hurts). They’ve had five different offensive coordinators and four defensive coordinators in that span. In fact, the Eagles had fired both their offensive coordinator (Brian Johnson) and defensive coordinator (Sean Desai) ahead of the 2024 season after an 11-6 campaign that resulted in a Wild Card loss because that just wasn’t good enough. It’s that mentality that sets the Eagles apart from the Steelers — the tweaks in coordinators
Time and time again, we’ve seen underperforming assistants (Matt Canada, Teryl Austin, Pat Meyer) stick around well after it appeared their time with the black and gold should have been up. And that’s not to say that turnover for turnover’s sake is the goal — but the urgency to find the right supporting staff just isn’t there; the organization instead typically opts to let an assistant’s contract expire rather than get a head start on finding the next best person to do the job. Though organizational stability is something that should be highly valued, the process of evaluating coaching fits (and the ability to move on quickly when the fit isn’t there) feels as though it should be expedited more quickly beyond what the Steelers have achieved in recent seasons.
If the Pittsburgh Steelers can manage these tweaks — and with Khan and Tomlin at the head of it all — then the path to a Super Bowl with this formula is, indeed, possible. The 2024 Philadelphia Eagles were living proof of that.