Brooke Pryor, ESPN Workforce Essayist
PITTSBURGH — With their extreme playoff victory coming in 2016, Pittsburgh Steelers proprietor and staff president Artwork Rooney II admitted Monday there’s a rising sense of urgency to finish the drought.
“We’ve had enough of this,” Rooney mentioned. “It’s time to get some wins, it’s time to take these next steps.”
The chief for the ones nearest steps is sunlit, Rooney mentioned, as he voiced his help for head mentor Mike Tomlin.
“I think the players still respond to Mike and that’s number one,” Rooney mentioned. “He still has the key characteristics that we saw when we hired him. He can keep the attention of a group of 20-year-olds for a whole season and keep them in the fight for the whole way.
“So, nonetheless be ok with Mike. Clearly if I didn’t, [we] would manufacture a transformation but when we didn’t suppose Mike used to be ready to top us to a championship, he wouldn’t be right here and that’s why he’s right here.”
In his end-of-season news conference, Tomlin said he expected to work out an extension in the offseason, though Rooney didn’t give an update on the timeline of getting that done.
And while Rooney said he didn’t necessarily see change in Tomlin’s resolve entering this offseason, he acknowledged that everyone around the organization is feeling antsy about elevating the team beyond simply making the playoffs.
“Unquestionably there’s a unravel there and a resolution there,” Rooney said of Tomlin. “And I feel I mentioned ahead of, I feel all folks which have been round for a minute past are worried to remove this nearest step — and getting a minute impatient — and we want to see the type of development all of us need to see. Mike believes that as firmly as anyone else within the construction.”
The key to those next steps, Rooney said, is improving the quality of quarterback play. Though he voiced support for 2022 first-round draft pick Kenny Pickett, Rooney acknowledged that Pickett has to improve in the 2024 season.
“We nonetheless be ok with Kenny Pickett and his day, however he is aware of he must paintings hardened to remove the nearest step,” Rooney said. “And we’ve mentioned that, and one of the crucial issues I feel we preferred about Kenny in relation to his occupation at Pitt used to be that how hardened he labored, and he took a step each and every hour. So, we’re searching for that to occur right here.”
Statistically, Pickett regressed in a second season that was riddled with injuries and saw offensive coordinator Matt Canada fired mid-season. As in his rookie season, Pickett started 12 games, but his completion percentage dropped from 63% to 62%, and his QBR slid from 53.6 to 38.4. He also threw just six touchdowns to four interceptions in 2023.
Meanwhile, longtime backup Mason Rudolph gave the Steelers a taste of what an offense with steady quarterback play could look like in the final four games of the season, including the loss to the Buffalo Bills in the wild-card round. With Rudolph at quarterback, the Steelers averaged 24.5 points per game, well over their season average of 17.9 points per game.
Rudolph is a free agent, but like Tomlin, Rooney expressed a desire to bring Rudolph back into the fold this offseason.
“I feel he did display what we’re in a position to on offense, and the team of workers we now have right here at the moment,” Rooney said. “In order that’s encouraging. I don’t know that we’ve perceivable [Rudolph’s] ceiling but. We drafted him prime for a reason why and felt like he had a batch of skill and so I feel we noticed that. So, he’s more than likely taking to have some choices, so it’s taking to be a query of whether or not he needs to return again and whether or not we will manufacture a trade in to get him again.
“But that being said, I still feel good about Kenny and his ability to develop as well.”
Understanding the quarterback status would be the govern precedence of the Steelers’ nearest offensive coordinator. The staff is within the procedure of constructing that rent, Rooney mentioned, expecting that it’s going to get accomplished “sooner rather than later.” To this point, the staff has interviewed 3 applicants: former Carolina Panthers offensive coordinator Thomas Brown, former Atlanta Falcons head mentor Arthur Smith and Houston Texans quarterbacks mentor Jerrod Johnson.
“I think we have an idea of what we want the Steeler offense to look like,” Rooney mentioned.
“Start with that, and we have a certain roster mix that leads to, you can’t completely change your roster overnight, so you kind of have to have a coordinator that feels like they can work with this roster and be successful with it.
“So, any person that believes in that and is available in and will paintings with this roster, do what’s more or less already constructed right here in relation to the roster and one of the talent units that we have got. I feel that’s what we’re searching for.”
