BALTIMORE -- Now the tough decisions have to be made.
After consecutive seasons of missing the playoffs, you can bet the Steelers won't sit still. Especially not with the way this one ended, with a thud Sunday, 28-10, against the Ravens.
Especially not with how this team once controlled its own playoff hopes with three weeks remaining, only to lose all three of those games.
"This is not a good feeling," corner Joe Haden said. "It’s Pittsburgh. We’re not used to this. This is not the norm. Everyone feeling like that is different. They know next year, they’re trying to win a Super Bowl. It’s not just fluff and talk. Us missing the playoffs is definitely an underachievement."
Even without Ben Roethlisberger. Take a franchise QB out of the equation and there aren't many teams that still have a shot. That still realistically believe they should be a playoff team. This team did, even after starting the season 1-4 while recovering from the shock of losing Roethlisberger just six quarters into the season.
"Up and down kind of rollercoaster ride," guard David DeCastro said while describing the season. "I thought the guys battled hard. We had a lot of injuries. But we don’t make excuses. We had a chance to secure it. It does hurt. We had it in front of us. We had it under our control. That makes it hard to swallow."
So where do they go from here?
There are some tough decisions, as mentioned, coming.
First up will be deciding how to handle the situation with Bud Dupree. When the Steelers picked up his fifth-year option at $9.2 million, many fans screamed bloody murder. How could the Steelers pay that much for a player whose career high was 6.0 sacks?
Now, the question will be how can the Steelers not pay Dupree, who added another sack to his total in this game to improve his career high to 11.5 sacks.
The Steelers will likely put the franchise tag on Dupree, which will give them some wiggle room when it comes to negotiating a long-term deal with the 26-year-old linebacker. The tag this year was $15.2 million, and, as Dupree told me last month, he would report and sign it.
"I'm just waiting, talking to my agents," Dupree said after this game. "I don't know. This is my first team. You always want to finish where you start. That lets you know you've had a good career. At the end of the day, the NFL is a business. There's a lot of stuff going on with our team. A lot of people are free agents this years."
"I would really hope we would keep Bud," Haden said. "He’s playing amazing ball. Him and T.J. (Watt), they’re two of the best outside linebackers on the team as a tandem. You never really know how the money works. He might have played himself into crazy numbers per year. He deserves it all. I hope the Steelers can finesse it and figure it out so we can keep those two together."
To do that, however, some other guys are going to have to go.
That could include guard Ramon Foster, who is 33, and perhaps sees the writing on the wall.
"I know the reality of this," said Foster, who is set to count $5.5 million in 2020. "If they’re going to release me, just tell me when I’m (home) in Tennessee. Don’t wait. That’s all I say. Don’t waste my time. I know they’ll give me that common courtesy. If not, let’s roll for No. 12 (season)."
Those will hardly be the only major decisions.
But there's no doubt there will be turnover from this roster. It's typically 20 or so spots each year that change. And as much as the Steelers might want to keep this defense together, it might not be possible.
After all, it won't be just Dupree who is an unrestricted free agent, but nose tackle Javon Hargrave, as well.
But nose tackles are easier to replace than edge rushers who collect double digits in sacks.
Freeing up the money to pay Dupree becomes the team's top priority this offseason -- beyond getting Roethlisberger healthy.
This team finished with 54 sacks, which is amazing considering it rarely played with a big lead. Dupree was a big part of that.
• Mike Tomlin is not getting fired. And he's not going to fire offensive coordinator Randy Fichtner.
Watching this game as Devlin Hodges struggled in the rain, going 9 of 25 for 95 yards, the biggest takeaway was how the Steelers managed to win three games with him at quarterback, not how they lost his final three starts.
It was obvious opposing defensive coordinators figured out what Hodges couldn't do and then forced him to do it, even if he wouldn't admit it.
"No, I don't think so," Hodges said. "If you ask them, they may say differently. We had stuff there. Just can't turn the ball over and (I've) got to execute."
But that's all part of it. Opponents realized what Hodges couldn't execute and they took advantage of it.
A lot of people feel Fichtner is to blame for that. But there's no more important position in sports than quarterback. And if you're sub-par at quarterback, it has a trickle-down effect on everything else you do.
The Steelers defense wasn't great Sunday. In fact, it was one of its worst performances of the season. But it wasn't 28 points worth of bad.
But five three-and-outs, including on the team's only first quarter possession, are killers.
• That said, Hodges deserves a shot to go to camp with the team. But that's all he deserves.
The four quarterbacks the Steelers will take to camp next year will be Roethlisberger -- presuming he's healthy -- Mason Rudolph, Hodges and Paxton Lynch.
These dreams of a veteran backup are just that. The Steelers still believe in Rudolph. And he's now a guy with 10 games worth of playing experience. And they'd like an entire offseason to work with Lynch and see what he's got. He is, after all, a former first-round draft pick. There are some tools there. But he was only an emergency quarterback for this game.
• The wheels didn't completely come off in this one until the fourth quarter, when the Steelers' offense was on the field for just 3:12 yet somehow handed the Ravens nine points.
OK, seven of those points came from Jordan Berry mishandling a punt in the rain. But he did so at his own goal line because the offense couldn't generate a single yard, down 19-10, with just under five minutes to play.
Berry is an NFL punter but he struggles in poor weather. And he counts $2.1 million against the salary cap next season.
That might be too rich for a team that will have to spend on some big ticket items such as Dupree and perhaps Hargrave. Every dollar will count.
• Diontae Johnson might be the next breakout star for the Steelers in 2020. He caught four of his seven targets in this game for 54 yards and also averaged 12.0 yards on his two punt returns.
Those two returns gave him the numbers he needed to qualify for the league leaders. His 12.4-yard punt return average led the league.
"Wait until next year when I do it all season," he told me after this game.
Wait, indeed.
Surprisingly, there were only seven punt return touchdowns in the NFL this season. Johnson had one of them. And he was awfully close a couple of other times, despite only being the return guy for the second half of the season.
He's a dynamic playmaker. His emergence, coupled with that of James Washington, should give this offense some hope for 2020 with the return of Roethlisberger.
• Benny Snell finished this game with 91 yards on 18 carries. He runs hard and with bad intentions.
Snell finished this season with just eight fewer carries than James Conner. If you're looking for a reason why the Steelers faltered down the stretch, look no farther than Conner and JuJu Smith-Schuster.
Conner's second-half production consisted of 19 carries for 84 yards and five receptions for 15 yards spread over three games and seven quarters.
Smith-Schuster's production from Week 9 on was 12 catches for 109 yards on 24 targets, including two catches for six yards in this game on six targets.
Those two were Pro Bowl players at their skill positions in 2018. Neither played like it in 2019. Injuries certainly played a major role in that. But so did the added attention from opposing defenses -- at least in the case of Smith-Schuster.
• The Steelers have long believed the way to handle running quarterbacks is to hit them every time they run the read-option.
But, boy, did they take that to the extreme in this game. Watt and Dupree were tasked with hitting Robert Griffin III every time he ran the read-option. And they did so at the expense of allowing the running backs to do their thing.
The problem was, the rest of the defense was supposed to account for the running backs. And they didn't do a good job with that.
"We didn't stop the run. Some of that was by me," said Cam Heyward. "I didn't tackle well. The rushing got out of hand, and I don't think we really got anything on offense."
It's a shame, because the Steelers were clearly in Griffin's head. Every time he got hit after handing off, he would run up to the nearest official and scream for a penalty.
But, as Heyward noted, the Steelers didn't stop the run well enough -- or do anything on offense themselves -- to make it matter.
• If there's a big positive to take out of this season, it's that Chris Boswell is as automatic as they come in terms of human kickers.
Justin Tucker is apparently a cyborg, so he doesn't count. Tucker made his final field goal in this game while slipping and falling, banging it home from 47 yards.
Boswell is very good. He missed two kicks all season, one from beyond 50 yards and the other when there was a bad hold by Berry.
But Tucker is at his own level.
• One of the defensive adjustments I didn't like in this game was a package the Steelers were using that brought Dan McCullers onto the field while taking Watt off it.
I get it. The Steelers wanted to get another big body on the field while still being able to cover on the back end. But there's no defense that should be drawn up that includes Watt ever coming off the field.
Watt didn't have his best game Sunday, but he still finished with 5 tackles, a half a sack, two quarterback hits and a forced fumble.
Patriots cornerback Stephon Gilmore will probably win NFL Defensive Player of the Year, but nobody will convince me he was a better player than Watt this season. Especially not after Gilmore got torched by Davante Parker all day Sunday in a loss to the Dolphins.
• Losing the final three games of the season certainly puts a pall on this season. But it was an interesting ride, for sure.
There were a lot of ups and downs, but this team was somehow still relevant going into Week 17 despite being held together by rubber bands and chewing gum.
"I feel like a lot of guys on the team stood up, despite adversity, despite the cards we were dealt the whole season," Dupree said. "Guys didn’t tuck their tail. Nobody was soft. Everybody played hard. I’ve got a lot of respect for everybody on this team. We ground it out and fought each and every day. It’s been a long journey, we’ve just got to win."
This was a team that showed so much character, it's tough to look at it and call it a failure. But it was a failure nonetheless.
That was certainly the feeling in that locker room after this game. And that hunger will drive this team through the offseason.
"For sure," Haden told me. "Ready to get back. Hopefully, Ben’s elbow gets back. That will be sick. It sucks. After we lost those last two games, we took it out of our own (hands). We’ve got to make sure when we’ve got control of it, we’ve got to control it."
PHOTO GALLERY
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Steelers vs. Ravens, Dec. 29, 2019, Baltimore. - AP[/caption]
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