Steelers News: An inside look as to how the Steelers 2019 season didn’t collapse

The Pittsburgh Steelers 2019 season is officially over. After finishing the year 8-8, the Steelers, and their vast fan base, has another long offseason awaiting them. Just because the games are done doesn’t mean we stop providing you with features, commentary and opinions to tide you over throughout the offseason!

Today in the black-and-gold links article we take a look at how although the Steelers’ 2019 season should have collapsed early in the season...it didn’t.

Let’s get to the news:

• The Pittsburgh Steelers showed their resiliency throughout the 2019 season, and there was a reason why the season didn’t show a team just folding.

WHY THE STEELERS DIDN’T JUST FOLD

By: Tyler Dunne, Bleacher Report

Each week, each player is reminded what’s expected. The standard, as they preach around here, is the standard. As soon as any Steelers player exits the locker room, he sees photos from the previous week’s game lining the hallway. Through the double doors, into the main lobby, there’s a collage of Steelers greatness past plastered on a wall.

The Super Bowl is the bar. Period.

So, here is Bud Dupree. A man accepting that reality.

After taking his daily stroll past those images, the Steelers edge-rusher turns right into the cafeteria, where a skillet sizzles and a few teammates are picking up food to go. He sets down his backpack and then his phone with its faded-red case and cracked screen. It’s 3:45 p.m. on a Thursday. He leans forward in a Jordan brand hoodie and reels off the absurdity in Pittsburgh.

The stars who left. The injuries. The tragedy. It all brought this Steelers team closer together, he begins, and all made them view Mike Tomlin as more than a coach. Rather, a true “mentor.” A father figure.

Then, Dupree is suddenly and seamlessly reliving his own past 12 months. Right here, he realizes just how closely his rise mirrors the Steelers’ rise in a season that should’ve cascaded into chaos long ago.

To read the full article, click HERE (Free)

• How bad was the Steelers’ offense? Yeah, it was bad.

Steelers 2019 offense among most impotent for franchise over past half-century

By: Chris Adamski, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

We knew the Pittsburgh Steelers offense this past season was bad. But how bad? One of the worst since the 1970 AFL/NFL merger.

Without Antonio Brown (traded), Le’Veon Bell (free agency) and Ben Roethlisberger (injury in Week 2), the Steelers finished 30th in the NFL in yards (276.8 per game) and 27th in points (18.1). Never before had a Steelers team finished worse than 28th in the NFL in yardage, and only once had one finished lower than 27th in points.

Of course, accounting for expansion, it’s more accurate to say the Steelers finished with the NFL’s third-worst offense and scored the league’s sixth-fewest points. Since 1970, the only Steelers teams to rank lower relative to the rest of the league were the 1989 Steelers (dead last in yardage) and the 1998 Steelers (third-worst in points).

To read the full article, click HERE (Free)

• A players wants and desires can be two completely different things.

Javon Hargrave wants to return to Steelers, seems resigned to fact he probably won’t

By: Chris Adamski, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

At one point during what was a reflective Sunday for Javon Hargrave, the defensive lineman whose fourth NFL season had ended moments earlier slipped up while speaking to media in the M&T Bank Stadium visitors’ locker room.

Asked about the Pittsburgh Steelers’ outlook for 2020, Hargrave’s initial choice of pronoun spoke volumes – so much so that Hargrave seemed to recognize the weight of it and quickly corrected himself.

“Of course,” Hargrave said, “I just know they are going to – well, it’s going to be a back bounce season for us next year.”

From Hargrave’s perspective, will the 2020 Steelers be “they” or “us”? The answer might not be known definitively until March.

Hargrave is tagged for unrestricted free agency, arguably the Steelers’ second-most valuable UFA-to-be behind only Bud Dupree.

But with the Steelers lacking much salary-cap space and likely looking to prioritize shoring up the offense, and with Hargrave being roughly a half-the-defensive-snaps kind of player, the odds would seem to be against the Steelers bringing him back at the salary Hargave will likely command on the open market.

“I don’t know,” Hargrave said when asked if the Steelers seemed interested in negotiating a longterm contract. “I guess we will see in these next few months how it is and how it’s going to go.”

To read the full article, click HERE (Free)

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