There are several things the four teams still remaining in the NFL playoffs have in common, solid quarterback play among them.
But one of the other similarities all four teams – Kansas City, Baltimore, San Francisco and Detroit – have is an impact player at tight end.
That was one major shortcoming of the Steelers this season.
Between Pat Freiermuth, Darnell Washington, Connor Heyward and Rodney Williams, the Steelers got 62 receptions for 536 yards and two touchdowns out of their tight ends this season.
That's simply not good enough.
And given that in his first two seasons Freiermuth became the second tight end in NFL history – Keith Jackson is the other – to have 60 or more catches in each of his first two seasons, it's not because there isn't talent there.
Sure, Freiermuth missed five games this season because of a hamstring injury. But he also showed he could be quite a weapon in a Week 12 win over the Bengals, when he had nine receptions for 120 yards.
But take that game out of the equation, and he had 23 receptions for 188 yards in 11 games. That's simply not enough.
That's why when Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin was talking about what he was looking for in terms of a new offensive coordinator his reply was that he wanted someone who could take advantage of all of the team's weapons.
"I want us to be versatile and dynamic," Tomlin said. "Obviously, we've got to score more points. I want to be able to keep defenses off balance. I wanted to utilize all the talent that we have at our disposal."
While Tomlin didn't mention Freiermuth – or any of the other tight ends, for that matter – by name, he very easily could have pointed to that group as an underutilized asset in 2023.
As Tomlin goes through the process of interviewing potential hires as his new offensive coordinator, while working with the Steelers' quarterbacks should obviously be a big part of those conversations, so too should finding better ways to utilize the team's talent at tight end.
• T.J. Watt was named the AFC Defensive Player of the Year this week by the Committee of 101, a national media committee based in Kansas City consisting of 101 reporters who cover the NFL from across the country.
That is not the most prestigious of the Defensive Player of the Year awards. That would be the AP NFL Defensive Player of the Year, but Watt winning the Committee of 101 award – for the third time – is noteworthy.
Micah Parsons of Dallas named the winner of the same award in the NFC since the Committee of 101 gives awards for both conferences. The fact Watt won the award for the AFC means the committee felt he was the best defensive player in the AFC.
That's noteworthy because that means he garnered more votes than Cleveland defensive end Myles Garrett, who this week was voted NFL Defensive Player of the Year by the Pro Football Writers of America.
The argument for Garrett is largely that he was the best player on the league's best defense. He also had better "metrics" than Watt.
Let's look at those two theories.
What constitutes a team having the "best" defense in the NFL?
Is it yards allowed? Is it points allowed? Turnovers forced? Sacks? Maybe it's a combination of all the above.
The Browns had a good defense in 2023. But to say it was the league's best might be a stretch.
Cleveland led the NFL in yards against. But the Browns also finished tied for 13th in the NFL in points allowed at 21.3 per game, including allowing 29 points per game on the road. So, their "great" defense didn't exactly travel well.
In scoring defense overall, the Browns were the third-best defense – in the AFC North. Baltimore led the league at 16.5 points per game, while the Steelers were tied for sixth at 19.1 points per game.
In terms of takeaways, the Browns were tied for fourth with 28, one more than the Steelers, who had 27. The Ravens and Giants tied for the league lead with 31 each.
How about sacks? The Browns finished sixth there with 49, two more than the Steelers, who had 47. But that also was 11 fewer than Baltimore's league-best 60.
The second part of the argument was Garrett's "metrics" were better than those of Watt according to Pro Football Focus and Next Gen Stats.
But the metrics are a copout.
No matter how many made-up stats people design for "measuring" a football player's effectiveness, they shouldn't override a player's actual production.
And Watt had more sacks (19 to 14), tackles (68 to 42), tackles for a loss (19 to 17), interceptions (1 to 0), fumble recovers (3 to 1) and quarterback hits (36 to 30). They both forced four fumbles. Over the final seven weeks of the regular season, Garrett had 12 tackles and one sack. He had three more tackles and no sacks in Cleveland's playoff loss to Houston.
True that it was three more tackles and the same number of sacks as Watt had in the postseason, but Watt was injured for the Steelers' playoff loss at Buffalo.
Over the final seven weeks of the season, Watt had 21 tackles and 7.5 sacks.
Watt was better in every statistical category than Garrett this season. And he became the first player since sacks became an official statistic in 1982 to lead the league three different times.
Watt and Garrett are both great players. They're both on a Pro Football Hall of Fame course in their careers.
But there's a reason why the NFL doesn't use made-up analytics to track how effective a pass rusher might be. We have real statistics that track that. They're called sacks, tackles for a loss and quarterback hits. And Watt was better across the board in those areas.
This isn't a Troy Polamalu vs. Ed Reed argument. In that instance, Polamalu played strong safety, while Reed was a free safety. They were asked to do different things for their respective defenses.
Watt and Garrett are largely asked to do the same things. In fact, Watt, who drops into coverage a handful of times each game, is actually asked to do more.
Both are deserving finalists for the AP NFL Defensive Player of the Year Award. But Watt was better.
• Not only is Watt among the finalists for AP Defensive Player of the Year, but cornerback Joey Porter Jr. is among the five finalists announced this week for Defensive Rookie of the Year.
And in a way, Porter will always be tied to Tom Brady.
How so?
Steelers GM Omar Khan pulled off a heist of a trade at the deadline in 2022, when he shipped wide receiver Chase Claypool to the Bears for their second-round draft pick.
That pick turned out to be the first selection in the second round, which because the Dolphins had been stripped of their first-round pick for tampering with Brady, wound up being the 32nd pick in 2023.
That the Dolphins lost their first-round pick and didn't get Brady would typically be the biggest story to come out of that deal. But that might pale in comparison to the Steelers getting Porter for Claypool in what would be a straight-up deal.
In 10 games in Chicago, Claypool caught 18 passes for 191 yards and one touchdown before being shipped to Miami for a seventh-round pick midway through the 2023 season.
Claypool caught four passes for 26 yards in 9 games in Miami.
Porter, meanwhile, wound up being a cornerback who traveled with the opposing team's best wide receiver over the course of the second half of the season. And despite that, he posted a minus-16 EPA allowed, the fourth-best of any rookie corner in the Next Gen Stats era.
So, with everything that happened, the Dolphins essentially traded first- and seventh-round draft picks for Claypool and the Bears received a seventh-round pick, while the Steelers got a shutdown cornerback in Porter. And they still didn't land Tom Brady.
• The Steelers will pick 20th in this year's draft. Had they lost their final three games to finish 7-10, as some wanted them to do, they would have been picking 12th in the draft.
That might sound like a huge difference, but it's really not.
In the past 10 drafts, the players selected with the 12th-overall pick were running back Jahmyr Gibbs, wide receiver Jameson Williams, linebacker Micah Parsons, wide receiver Henry Ruggs, defensive end Rashan Gary, defensive tackle Vita Vea, quarterback Deshaun Watson, defensive tackle Sheldon Rankins, defensive tackle Danny Shelton and wide receiver Odell Beckham.
There are some good players in that group. Parsons could even be considered a great one. But there are some misses, as well.
Players selected with the 20th pick over the past 10 drafts include wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba, quarterback Kenny Pickett, wide receiver Kadarius Toney, defensive end K'Lavon Chaisson, tight end Noah Fant, center Frank Ragnow, offensive tackle Garrett Bolles, linebacker Darron Lee, wide receiver Nelson Agholor and wide receiver Brandin Cooks.
There are a couple of additional misses at 20, but there also were some good players taken at those spots, too. Ragnow, for example, might be the best center in the NFL.
And those picks at 20 don't take into account who was still available in some instances.
For example, when Chaisson was the 20th pick by the Jaguars in 2020 – a questionable pick at the time for a player with very little college production – Minnesota took Justin Jefferson two picks later, while San Francisco got Brandon Aiyuk. Green Bay selected quarterback Jordan Love at 26.
Every draft has its hits and misses. Point is, it's much better to make the playoffs and deal with the consequences of that – especially if you trust that your people will get things right in the draft.
• In each of the past 13 NFL seasons, either Brady or Patrick Mahomes has played in a conference championship game. In some cases, both were playing.
That's why when some talk about the Steelers "wasting" former quarterback Ben Roethlisberger's time with the team, it seems a little short-sighted.
Roethlisberger played in five AFC Championship games. That's tied for fourth on the NFL's all-time list for quarterbacks in conference championships.
• Dale Lolley is co-host of "SNR Drive" on Steelers Nation Radio. Subscribe to the podcast here: Apple Podcast | iHeart Podcast
Brady is first with 14 such appearances. The next-closest Steve Young, Joe Montana and Roger Staubach all have seven appearances. Former Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw is among those who have six appearances.
As for Roethlisberger's three Super Bowl appearances, Roethlisberger is tied for fourth on that list, as well. Brady also leads that one with 10 appearances. John Elway is second with five. Only nine quarterbacks, including Bradshaw, have more Super Bowl appearances than Roethlisberger.
It's unfortunate for Roethlisberger – and the Steelers, for that matter – that the past 20 seasons in the AFC have been dominated by Brady and now Mahomes, who has already appeared in three Super Bowls and five conference championships.
But, as the Steelers showed in the Brady era, just because that kind of talent is in the conference doesn't mean you still can't have success.
Winning playoff games is difficult. Prior to 1972, the Steelers had never won a postseason game. And their first victory, as we all know, took an Immaculate ending to occur.
The Steelers would go 14-4 in postseason games during the 1970s. They went 2-4 in the postseason during the 1980s. In the 1990s, they were 5-6 in the postseason. The first decade of the 2000s saw them go 10-4. From 2010 through 2019, they were 5-6 in the postseason. And finally, they're 0-3 in this decade.
The commonality they had in both the 1970s and 2000s was great quarterback play paired with a strong defense.
They're winless in their past six playoff appearances. Nobody likes or accepts that as being OK.
But getting to the postseason is only half the battle. The really difficult part is winning those games.
