The manner in which this 2023 Pittsburgh Steelers team is winning and losing, and all the frustrations that have come from it, certainly isn’t the first time the Steeler Way has been in question.
Look back at when the Steelers truly started going downhill. They made the playoffs in the 2016 season and reached the conference championship game. The following year, the Steelers lost their patriarch, Dan Rooney. They haven’t won in the postseason since then.
From the time he was given complete control of the franchise in 1975 until his death in 2017, players looked up to Rooney. They wanted to grind and win for him and the Black and Gold. For decades, the Steelers were a team everyone wanted to play for.
But cultural issues began in earnest when a 2017 rift between star running back Le’Veon Bell and Pittsburgh, primarily Ben Roethlisberger, ended in divorce after a Bell’s season-long holdout in 2018.
Antonio Brown went off the rails during Bell’s holdout and, in 2019, left for the greener pastures of the Oakland Raiders after several headline-making incidents.
The Steeler Way, at least a portion of it, seemed to be eroding. And it’s only gotten worse this season with some of the younger players not truly understanding what it means to be a Steeler and representing the organization as such.
Roethlisberger, whom Bell and Brown both blame for playing a role in their wanting out of Pittsburgh, had this to say about the highly debated topic.
“It just feels like [certain guys aren’t in it for the team, they’re in it for themselves]. It just feels like something that’s kind of been lost on this team a little bit,” Roethlisberger said on the Dec. 11 episode of his “Footbahlin” podcast. “It feels like ‘the Steeler Way’ is just not [there]. … Maybe the tradition of the Pittsburgh Steelers is done. Maybe it needs to be formed a new kind of way. I don’t know.”
93.7 The Fan’s Paul Zeise argues that the Steeler Way isn’t the way anymore because it’s a different generation of players. And it’s not a Steelers-only issue, it’s leaguewide. What was once about winning is now about publicity and money.
“… The whole idea of culture, of winning culture, of winning being a valued thing to most of these young guys, it’s gone,” he said on the Dec. 14 “Paul Zeise Show.”
Zeise pointed to how, decades ago, playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers was all about winning. And for a while now, it’s been all about money and exposure.
“It’s all about getting my bag. Gotta get my bag. Wanna get mines. Want to get my hits on TikTok and want to get my hits on snapface and Instagram and all this other stuff. That’s what it’s about.”
“Twenty-five years ago, guys played because they love the game. Twenty-five years ago, winning actually mattered,” he said. “Now, not so much. And the younger we get, and the more generations we get — and I hate to use it because it’s a cliche, but the further deeper and we get into the whole everybody-gets-a-trophy culture, guess what, the less of a winning culture we’re going to have.”
No matter how the Steelers have lost their way, it’s hard to see an end in sight. And for the generations of fans who lived when it was an honor to play for the Pittsburgh Steelers, it’s a sad time.
.@PaulZeise says there is no more "Steeler way" and it's more than just the Steelers, it's a league-wide thing.
LISTEN: https://t.co/kgPjFdOQwP pic.twitter.com/5DdBjLH4n7
— 93.7 The Fan (@937theFan) December 15, 2023
