Now that the book has closed on the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2022 season, the time has come for some retrospectives. If we think back to where we were a year ago, Head Coach Mike Tomlin guided the team to a 9-7-1 record with a playoff loss, Ben Roethlisberger rode off into the sunset, General Manager Omar Khan took over for Kevin Colbert and the Steelers were left with picking up the pieces heading into the draft.
And there were a lot of pieces to address. With all those missing pieces, a historically low level of success was expected across the board for the Steelers heading into the 2022 season.
Steelers' Ben Roethlisberger (#7) walks off the field for the final time after losing to the Kansas City Chiefs in the 2021 Wild Card round in Kansas City, MO. | Photo Credit: Jay Biggerstaff/USA TODAY Sports
Let’s fast forward to training camp, where Mason Rudolph, Mitch Trubisky and Kenny Pickett were duking it out for the starting quarterback spot. Meanwhile, the receiving corps was trying to find out their cohesion and building chemistry with the new faces at quarterback. Amongst all of this was the reconstruction of the offensive line, which in 2021 was a patchwork effort to barely help Roethlisberger run Offensive Coordinator Matt Canada’s ineffective quick-pass offensive scheme.
After vowing to create a more aggressive and more physical offensive line in 2021, former Offensive Line Coach Adrian Klemm left for the University of Oregon and Pat Meyer took over the offensive line duties. With this season's dust now settled, was it Meyer’s offensive line group that deserves more appreciation for the offense’s success after the bye week?
After a failed attempt in 2021 to build an offensive line with a mix of veterans and rookies, Tomlin and Khan went back to the free agency pool to add a pair of key pieces for 2022. Those pieces came in the form of Center Mason Cole and Right Guard James Daniels. After it was all said and done, the official starting lineup came to be Dan Moore Jr., Kevin Dotson, Cole, Daniels and Chukwuma Okorafor.
Then 18 weeks later, this group remained as the only offensive line to play all five starters each week. To be a bit more exact while accounting for in-game injuries, the group played a total of 99.2 percent of the season’s total snaps together. This is something the Steelers haven’t seen in years. As one member of the Steelers describes, this group was the catalyst behind the team’s remarkable turnaround after the bye week.
The Steelers' Kevin Dotson (#69), Mason Cole (#61), and James Daniels (#78) protect Kenny Pickett (#8) against the New Orleans Saints in Pittsburgh, PA. | Photo Credit: Jordan Schofield/SteelerNation (JSKO_PHOTO Twitter)
As a nine-year veteran with the Steelers including a pair of Super Bowl wins with another Super Bowl appearance, Max Starks is very familiar with what makes an NFL offense successful and not-so-successful. Starks remains close to the organization as the radio sideline reporter for the team and had an up-close and personal view of the team’s development from beginning to end. Earlier this week, Starks joined Alex Marvez on Sirius XM’s Late Hits to highlight what he witnessed game-in and game-out this season.
“I was there at training camp and I was like ‘woah, this offense is looking pretty bad'," Starks said. "And offensive line, you have two new additions, you bring James Daniels then you bring in Mason Cole. The offensive line does not look good, it looks bad. And I tell everybody, ‘hey, just wait until week eight. Let’s wait until week eight to see what this offensive line is going to look like,’ and you had a rough patch, two and six. But then, now you do the inverse, you go seven and two to finish out the season.”
After the final game of the season, the Steelers offensive line ranked right in the middle of the pack at 16th according to Pro Football Focus (PFF). In that ranking, PFF boasts how stable Meyer’s offensive line is and how the pass-blocking has improved, allowing 138 pressures on the quarterback on 639 pass-blocking attempts. This alone landed the group at seventh overall relative to the rest of the league. This group was vastly overlooked in most instances throughout the season, and Starks admitted how low his initial expectations were before the bye week.
“I got to see every single game on the sidelines this year and even at times, I doubted it (the offense). And for them to come and rise to the occasion, that offensive line was the only offensive line in the NFL that played all 17 weeks together, start to finish, and you saw what happened when they got in a groove together and they gelled. It takes longer for an offensive line than any other position to gain chemistry, but when they did, they started dominating time of possession and that’s why you saw the flip from two and six to seven and two, and you have to be inspired.”
The Steelers' offensive line huddles up against the Cleveland Browns in Pittsburgh, PA. | Photo Credit: Jordan Schofield/SteelerNation (JSKO_PHOTO Twitter)
Looking back to OTAs in May and training camp in the summer, the initial expectations for the Steelers were as low as they’ve been in years. From the media to the Las Vegas sportsbooks, it seemed as though everyone was writing off the Steelers’ 2022 season before it began and was already looking ahead to the 2023 NFL draft.
For a team that was expected to finish with about seven to eight wins for the season, to then sit at the doorstep of the playoffs with nine wins and a winning record under its belt speaks volumes to the resolve of the team. Tomlin was able to will his team past all of those low expectations and provide the optimism for next season that was absent a year ago. Starks admitted he was guilty of setting those low expectations early on.
“They outkicked their coverage. They superseded everything that we thought in the media, that we saw even from that second layer in, because we’re not all the way in there, we don’t get privilege to see everything that’s happening with the Steelers, but we get a better access than most, and they turned all of us doubters into believers by the end of the year. And I have to say, the future looks bright for the Steelers moving into to 2023 and 2024.”
Even without a playoff berth in 2022, there is plenty to look forward to for Steelers fans heading into the offseason. The offensive line was critical in establishing that optimism and provides a solid foundation from which to build come April.
What were your expectations for the season? How do you think the Steelers will do in 2023? Let us know in the comments below!
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