Steelers not making excuses after playoff exit
Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin watches during the first half Sunday against the Denver Broncos in Denver.
Steelers linebacker Ryan Shazier (50) leaves the field with teammate nose tackle Steve McLendon after their loss Sunday against the Broncos in Denver.
DENVER – Throughout an injury-riddled season, the Steelers refused to make excuses, especially about not having some of their best players available.
They expected to win regardless of who or how many players they were missing.
It was the same way following their 23-16 season-ending loss Sunday to the Denver Broncos.
Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger gritted his way through the game, despite a shoulder separation suffered the previous weekend in a first-round playoff win at Cincinnati. But playing without star receiver Antonio Brown, who suffered a concussion in the same game, and leading rusher DeAngelo Williams, who missed each of the playoff games with a sprained foot, the Steelers failed to generate enough offense to pull away from Denver.
“Injuries are not an excuse. Everyone has injuries,” said Steelers linebacker James Harrison.
“You’ve got to be able to make it through those injuries. I felt like we could have done that, but we came up short. There are no excuses. They played better than we did. Injuries are not going to be an excuse. I’m not going to diminish what they did. They played better than we did.”
For more than three quarters, it looked as if the Steelers would again find a way to persevere as they had throughout much of this season.
Placekicker Shaun Suisham tore his ACL in the Hall of Fame Game in Canton, Ohio, touching off a flurry of moves that would see the Steelers use four placekickers before finally settling on Chris Boswell in early October.
A week after Suisham’s injury, All-Pro center Maurkice Pouncey suffered a season-ending broken leg in the second preseason game. Others would following, including All-Pro running back Le’Veon Bell and left tackle Kelvin Beachum, both of whom appeared in just six games.
Roethlisberger also missed four games and portions of five others as he struggled through knee, foot, head and shoulder injuries.
“We dealt with a lot of issues this year,” said Roethlisberger, “a lot of injuries, a lot of next man up, people going down. A lot of teams just kind of quit, and we didn’t. We stepped up and got to this point. Obviously, we’re disappointed we didn’t go further, but we made it to this point with a lot of young guys stepping up.”
That could bode well for the Steelers heading into the 2016 season.
The Steelers have 21 pending unrestricted free agents, including cornerbacks William Gay, Antwon Blake and Brandon Boykin, Beachum, nose tackle Steve McLendon, guard Ramon Foster and safeties Robert Golden and Will Allen. But they also will have more money to work with than in previous years.
The contracts of Lamar Woodley and Troy Polamalu, which ate up just over $13 million of the salary cap in 2015, will be off the books and the NFL cap is expected to rise $7 to $10 million.
Don’t expect a frenzy of free agency signing, but the Steelers could add a veteran or two to supplement a young and improving roster.
It will, however, have to be the right kind of player. The closeness of the locker room was one of the reasons many players gave as a reason why the Steelers didn’t wilt when faced with adversity.
“When you’re in it, you don’t really sit back and think, ‘Woe is me.’ You’re disappointed for the individual, but we knew there were games to be played,” said tight end Heath Miller of the response to the injuries. “Guys continued to step up. We made it this far but it wasn’t quite far enough.”
The Steelers will have difficult decisions with some aging players, most notably Harrison. The 37-year-old linebacker continues to play at a high level, though he split time with 2013 first-round draft pick Jarvis Jones.
Harrison is under contract for 2016 at a relatively inexpensive cost of $1.5 million and said previously that he would like to return, though he knows it’s not solely up to him.
“I’m going to sit back and look at it and see what I feel like, what I think,” said Harrison, who had two sacks in the playoffs and is currently 2.5 behind Jason Gildon’s team record of 77 in his career.
“It’s not totally up to me.”
With the sting of a postseason loss still reverberating, it’s too soon for the organization or a player to make any decisions about the future. The hollow feeling of a season-ending loss so close to the final goal is going to be there for a while.
“You’re down any time you lose in the playoffs,” Harrison admitted. “You’re in the game for the ultimate goal, and that’s to get the Lombardi (Trophy). You’re a step or two away from doing that and you lose that opportunity, it’s always hard.”
Sunday’s loss means the Steelers will have the 25th pick in the first round of the draft, one pick behind Cincinnati, which won the AFC North title but lost to Pittsburgh in the playoffs. … With his 339 passing yards against the Broncos, Roethlisberger became just the seventh quarterback in NFL history with more than 4,000 yards passing in the postseason. … The Steelers-Broncos playoff game drew 43 million viewers, the best ratings for an AFC playoff game in 21 years.