Bad Loss, Bad Optics, Are a Bad Sign For McCarthy’s Steelers
The Cleveland game wasn’t fatal to their season, but the team had better respond with a winning solution sooner rather than later.
PITTSBURGH STEELERS QUARTERBACK AARON RODGERS DURING A REGULAR SEASON GAME BETWEEN THE PITTSBURGH STEELERS AND THE CINCINNATI BENGALS, THURSDAY, OCT. 16, 2025 IN CINCINNATI, OH. | PHOTO BY KARL ROSER/PITTSBURGH STEELERS
The Steelers, as we were reminded last week, have a history in Cleveland.
If they don’t also have a notation in their playbook about those not learning from history being condemned to repeat it, they should add one immediately; then they should conduct a collective history lesson.
In a long-since forgotten regular-season opener back in 1990, the Steelers fell to the Browns, 13-3, and while doing so struggled mightily to comprehend new offensive coordinator Joe Walton’s massive, complex-to-the-point-of-confounding collection of X’s & O’s, as they had throughout training camp.
After directing an attack that had managed all of 210 total net yards and turned the ball over three times, quarterback Bubby Brister’s emotions degenerated from frustration into exasperation in the cramped, sweltering and pungent visitor’s locker room at ancient Cleveland Municipal Stadium.
“I’m about fixin’ to come unglued,” Brister admitted.
The Steelers ultimately went 9-7 that season, and didn’t reach the postseason.
Fast-forward to last Thursday.
This time the Steelers didn’t wait until after the game to engage in behavior that suggested they were individually and collectively losing it. Emotional outbursts between the head coach and quarterback, between the best edge rusher and the defensive coordinator, and between teammates on the sideline that erupted periodically on the way to what became a last-second, 27-24 loss to the Browns became as big a story as the Steelers losing for a fifth consecutive season in Cleveland.
ACRISURE STADIUM, TAKEN JULY 2025 by FEIXU CHEN / NEXT GENERATION NEWSROOM
Head coach Mike McCarthy and defensive coordinator Patrick Graham did their best at the outset of this week to apply perspective to what had taken place, which at the very least constituted a bad look for all involved, and at the very worst suggested impending mutiny or panic.
“Things don’t always look the way they really are,” McCarthy maintained. “So, I think the facts sometimes aren’t always present with what people think the situation is, too. I think some of those instances were that. But we have asked these players to trust us. We’ve asked them to do a lot of things that are different than what they’ve done. So, with that, you’re going to have communication opportunities that may not be exactly the way you prefer them to be. But I think today we’re better from it.”
Graham did, too.
“I think this has been a great learning experience,” he said. “I’m not trying to sugarcoat it. I’m not trying to make a bigger deal or a lesser deal of what it is. I know this, we talked about communication a lot. It’s important that we build these relationships so that when stuff gets said, whether it’s in the heat of the battle, that nobody’s sensitive.
That’s the one thing I can appreciate and I hope they can appreciate from me, nobody’s sensitive here. We deal with conflict head on and we’ll get resolution in terms of how we’re gonna go about fixing things on that field. Because that’s the most important thing, and it requires emotion.”
He added, “With the men in that room and the confidence I have in them, the confidence I have with our coaches, the confidence I have in Coach McCarthy, I think this is gonna be a small thing. We’re gonna learn from it, we’re gonna move forward and it’s gonna be constructive.”
Fair enough. But there’s also a fine line between competitive fire and chaos.
Both McCarthy and Graham sounded a little too much like they were still selling the players on the concepts, procedures and schemes that are perhaps at the very heart of all the emotional unrest that was on display in Cleveland in the first place.
If this is a team that still hasn’t gone all-in on the buy-in with the new staff, that’s a problem.
And if this is a team that’s on the same page but still succumbs way too easily to frustration, that, too, is a problem.
Winning would solve either one, but these Steelers better not wait too long to start stacking Ws.
They look like a team that needs to beat Indianapolis, not just for what Sunday’s game will mean in the standings but to preserve their collective sanity.
Because once a team really does come unglued, there’s no amount of explanation, rationalization or communication that can put it back together again.
