For the bulk of the 2022 NFL season, it looked like a 15-year tradition was coming to an end. Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin was staring down the first losing record of his career.
His Steelers were a disheveled mess. Mitchell Trubisky wasn’t the bridge between a retired Ben Roethlisberger and the team’s future. Rookie Kenny Pickett played like an overexcited golden retriever had run into the huddle. TJ Watt was injured and a formerly elite defense fell off. Pittsburgh was 2-6 and staring down what could have been its worst season since 1969.
Instead, the Steelers finished the season 9-8, one tiebreaker away from a third-straight playoff berth.
Tomlin’s strength has been his ability to keep his house upright with bubble gum and duct tape despite an ongoing earthquake under his feet. He shouldn’t have sniffed the playoffs with late-stage Ben Roethlisberger soft-tossing throws downfield and checking down at every opportunity; he made it in back-to-back years. He wasn’t supposed to do much beyond fluff his team’s draft stock with Trubisky and a shaky young QB from the worst rookie class of quarterbacks in two decades. He wound up a late Miami Dolphins rally away from taking that team to the postseason.
How did this happen?
The most obvious answer is that Watt returned and the Pittsburgh defense slammed shut. The Steelers were 7-3 and allowed 16.9 points per game when the reigning Defensive Player of the Year was in the lineup. They were 2-5 and gave up 22.1 points per game when he was sidelined. Pittsburgh forced five turnovers in seven games without Watt and 18 in the 10 he played.
Watt is a rising tide that lifts his entire defense. That alone can’t fix a team — the Denver Broncos were miserly in 2022 but remained a disaster thanks to broken Russell Wilson and an offense that couldn’t do anything right. That would have been the Steelers’ fate if not for a few important changes.
First, Tomlin dialed down the volume on Pickett’s throws. The rookie was willing to throw big passes, but was also wildly inefficient; he threw eight interceptions in his first five games. Defaulting to a run-heavy offense, even with a beleaguered offensive line, helped create space downfield for a quarterback who’d struggled to read coverages to start his career. After throwing the ball 38 times per game in his first four starts, Pickett averaged only 31.9 in his final seven full games of 2022.
It would have been tempting to backslide to what had worked in the past, but Pittsburgh opted for something different. Rather than slide back to the short-game passing of Roethlisberger’s last days, Tomlin used his Week 9 bye to change up the offense. The Steelers decreased the quantity of their throws and increased the quality.
Pickett’s average target distance rose from 6.8 yards downfield to 7.6 (Roethlisberger, for comparison, maxed out at 6.9 over his last two seasons). His expected points added per play — a measure of a quarterback’s value compared to what decades of statistics suggest an average QB would do — grew from -0.101 to 0.084. In short, he was throwing less but making more valuable throws, giving his offense enough leeway to win games.
Over the final half of the season, Pickett only threw five touchdown passes but, most importantly, balanced that out with just one interception. Advanced stats paint him as a top 15 quarterback in that time frame — roughly as efficient as Tom Brady or Geno Smith despite the lack of counting stats.
Pickett leaned into young teammates like George Pickens and Pat Freiermuth and provided the competence needed for Tomlin to succeed. This was a boon for Harris and the team’s run game as well; without safeties locked in on whatever what happening in the Pittsburgh backfield the Steeler run game leveled up. Harris averaged 13.5 carries and 45 yards per game on 3.3 yards per carry before the bye. From Week 10 on, those numbers improved to 17.6 carries, 74 yards and 4.2 yards per carry.
Granted, that end run wasn’t especially challenging. Only one of the Steelers’ final six opponents qualified for this winter’s playoffs. That was a Lamar Jackson-less Baltimore Ravens team who still managed to split the season series with their rival. After beating the Bengals in a chaos-filled opening day, Pittsburgh’s best win was against that underwhelming Ravens squad.
Even so, 2022 was a reminder Tomlin specializes in doing more with less. He can adjust on the fly. He finds ways to develop players in a franchise that priorities homegrown talent arguably more than any other in the league. He can apply a throwback philosophy and win in an NFL that values passing more than ever.
Tomlin isn’t in the running for the NFL Coach of the Year award. He isn’t on the short list of candidates at sportsbooks, landing somewhere behind Kevin O’Connell and his +10000 odds. But 2022 is one of his finest performances, a passable album composed for an orchestra filled with kazoos and milk carton ukuleles. The Steelers didn’t make the playoffs this winter. The fact they were even in the discussion is stunning — and a testament to what Tomlin can do.
