by Aubrey Bruce, For New Pittsburgh Courier
Within the past 12 months, the Pittsburgh Steelers Football Club has signed two defensive standouts, safety Minkah Fitzpatrick and linebacker T.J. Watt to arguably make them the highest-paid players at their positions. One of the reasons that they were prohibited from signing other key defensive and offensive players four or five years ago was because the Black and Gold were fiscally handcuffed to the contractual albatross of an aging and ineffective starting quarterback, “Big” Ben Roethlisberger—which, from a reality perspective, was totally their fault.
Mike Tomlin, former Steelers GM Kevin Colbert and current GM Omar Khan understand one key concept: If a team is weak in one area, they have to be twice as strong in other areas to maintain and/or increase a competitive edge, no matter what the sport. The Steelers’ coaching and management strategy had to be almost chameleon-like to keep the wolves of defeat out of their pasture. One of the prime reasons that has caused the transition of the Steelers to be more difficult than the average rebuilding process of other NFL franchises is because the Steelers don’t believe in using the excuse-breeding label for losing known as “rebuilding.” In the opinion of this layman, the Steelers seem to rely on the concept of “restructuring” to maintain their franchise, therefore allowing the team to continuously function at a high level.
When Minkah Fitzpatrick was resigned by the Steelers, he was asked since he was traded to the Steelers, what did he appreciate about the Steelers team and organization and why he wanted to be here for the long term? He said, “I think the thing that I appreciate most about this organization is its commitment to winning. I think everything that we do or even me coming here was a commitment to winning.”
He also pointed out that when swimming in the deep sea of adversity, the Steelers did not accept or expect defeat. “It could have been a season (2020), where we lost our starting quarterback, our legendary Hall of Fame quarterback. It could have been a season where they just tanked and decided to call it quits but they went out and acquired me…and said, you know we’re going to do what we got to do to win games. If we have to win on defense, you got to win on defense and it wasn’t a perfect season, but it was a season that was dedicated to winning even though it wasn’t prime circumstances for winning. We went out there and I feel like that kind of set the tone for these last few seasons. It showed me that this program is a winning program. They’re going to do whatever it takes to win. And they’re going to hold you to that standard on a day-to-day basis. And that’s what Coach T and the coaching staff and Mr. Rooney do. If you’re not moving and focused on winning and being your best and competing, then they’re not going to want you here.”
Now, boys and girls, please take note of these few small nuggets of info that may provide some insight into why there are stark differences in regards to the winning and losing cultures of the teams that the Steelers compete against in the AFC North Division.
It was just 26 years ago (1996) that the displaced Cleveland Browns began competing in Baltimore as the Ravens. The Ravens have never selected the number one overall pick in the draft, but they have selected the fourth overall pick twice.
Since the year that the Steelers were founded in 1933 and throughout their 89-year history; the Pittsburgh Steelers have selected the first overall pick of the NFL draft three times.
The Bengals were born in 1967 and during their 55 years of existence, they’ve selected the number one overall pick in the draft four times. The Cleveland Browns have selected number one overall five times.
In the 89 and 26 years that the Steelers and the Ravens have existed, combined they have won 8 Lombardi Trophies. During the last decade the Bengals and Browns have had far more of their share of #1 overall picks. How many Lombardi trophies have the Browns and Bengals won since the NFL and AFL 1966 merger? The answer is zero, goose egg, nada, none.
There were even unsubstantiated rumors swirling around that certain teams may have glanced the other way if a loss would allow them to have a draft choice toward the top of the leaderboard. Some of these allegations did not originate from some 400-pound internet ogre sitting below the bridge in his empty pizza box-cluttered basement, creating baseless conspiracy theories originating from someone whose only outlet to vent is to yell at his mother because the pizza arrived cold and the breadsticks were hard.
The culture of winning is not built on the foundation of “what ifs.” Successful franchises are founded upon the principles of “what is.” So the very next time that a team, any team starts to hover around “the painted area” of the first overall pick as they say in hoops, maybe, just maybe you might want to delay that planned trip to “Vegas.”