Mike Tomlin: Playoff losing streak is my bag, not this team’s bag

Saturday night’s loss to the Ravens continued an unpleasant tradition for the Steelers.

The team’s last playoff win came in 2017 and they have now lost six straight postseason games. They have been outscored by 96 points in those games, which made their run of playoff futility a talking point during head coach Mike Tomlin’s postgame press conference.

Tomlin had said earlier in the week that the franchise’s playoff history was on him and not on the current roster. He repeated that after the 28-14 loss ended the Steelers’ season.

“I’m just assessing what transpired tonight,” Tomlin said. “As I told you guys earlier in the week, those are my bags, not this collective’s bags. And so my energy is on that group in there and what they were willing to give and the journey that we’ve been on this year and certainly it came to a disappointing end tonight.”

Tomlin’s 18-year run with the Steelers has been an enormous success. He has famously never had a losing season and the Steelers have won one of the two Super Bowls they’ve been to since he joined the franchise. The lack of playoff success has been just as undeniable as the positive marks, however, and there will likely be questions about whether the Steelers need to try something new in order to get back to where they want to go in the postseason.