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Brooke Pryor, ESPN Staff Writer
PITTSBURGH — With their last playoff victory coming in 2016, Pittsburgh Steelers owner and team president Art Rooney II acknowledged Monday that there’s a growing sense of urgency to end the drought.
“We’ve had enough of this,” Rooney said. “It’s time to get some wins, it’s time to take these next steps.”
The leader for those next steps is clear, Rooney said, as he voiced his support for coach Mike Tomlin.
“The players still respond to Mike and that’s number one,” Rooney said. “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, still feel good about Mike. Obviously if I didn’t, [we] would make a change but if we didn’t think Mike was able to lead us to a championship, he wouldn’t be here and that’s why he is here.”
In his end-of-season news conference, Tomlin said he expected to work out an extension in the offseason. Rooney didn’t give an update on the timeline for getting that done.
And while Rooney said he didn’t necessarily see a 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.
“Certainly, there’s a resolve there and a determination there,” Rooney said of Tomlin. “And I think I said before, I think all of us that have been around for a little while are anxious to take this next step — and getting a little impatient — and we need to see the kind of improvement we all want to see. Mike believes that as firmly as anybody else in the building.”
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 still feel good about Kenny Pickett and his future, but he knows he needs to work hard to take the next step,” Rooney said. “And we’ve talked about that, and one of the things I think we liked about Kenny in terms of his career at Pitt was that how hard he worked, and he took a step every year. So, we’re looking for that to happen here.”
Statistically, Pickett regressed in a second season that was riddled with injuries and saw offensive coordinator Matt Canada fired midseason. 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, 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.
Rudolph is a free agent, but like Tomlin, Rooney expressed a desire to bring him back into the fold this offseason.
“He did show what we’re capable of on offense, and the personnel we have here right now,” Rooney said. “So that’s encouraging. I don’t know that we’ve seen [Rudolph’s] ceiling yet. We drafted him high for a reason and felt like he had a lot of ability and so I think we saw that. So, he’s probably going to have some options, so it’s going to be a question of whether he wants to come back and whether we can make a deal to get him back.
“But that being said, I still feel good about Kenny and his ability to develop as well.”
Figuring out the quarterback situation will be the top priority of the Steelers’ next offensive coordinator. The team is in the process of making that hire, Rooney said, anticipating that it will get done “sooner rather than later.” So far, the team has interviewed three candidates: former Carolina Panthers offensive coordinator Thomas Brown, former Atlanta Falcons head coach Arthur Smith and current Houston Texans quarterbacks coach Jerrod Johnson.
“We have an idea of what we want the Steeler offense to look like,” Rooney said.
“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, somebody that believes in that and comes in and can work with this roster, do what’s kind of already built here in terms of the roster and some of the skill sets that we have. I think that’s what we’re looking for.”