Winning a Super Bowl remains the ultimate goal but Mike Florio believes breaking another drought is good enough to make the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2025 season a success. Weighing in on the idea during a [Wednesday mailbag for Pro Football Talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlq6VH6Ysjk), Florio said the bar of a passable season should be determined by if the Steelers win a playoff game.
“For the Steelers, for Mike Tomlin, I think this whole thing is a failure unless they win a playoff game. Anything after that is gravy. They need to win a playoff game. If they don’t, all this stuff we did in the offseason, paying DK Metcalf all that money, waiting for weeks for Aaron Rodgers to come around,” Florio said, implying it wouldn’t be worth the wait without postseason payoff.
Pittsburgh, as fans well know, hasn’t won a playoff game since the 2016 season. The team has lost its last six postseason games, tied with the Miami Dolphins for the NFL’s longest active streak. Merely winning a postseason game isn’t the franchise’s gold standard but any hopes of being viewed as Super Bowl contenders starts by making it past the Wild Card round. To Florio’s point, it’s a good place for the franchise to start in its upward push.
The Steelers turned over their roster to try and achieve that goal. For the second-straight season, the quarterback room was completely revamped, [though familiar face Mason Rudolph signed back](https://steelersdepot.com/2025/03/report-steelers-bring-back-qb-mason-rudolph-on-two-year-contract/) after a one-year stint in Tennessee. Pittsburgh made the radical move of landing WR DK Metcalf, paying him $150 million despite never playing a snap for the team. And again, the team removed a problematic but talented receiver from the roster, trading George Pickens one year after shipping out Diontae Johnson.
With a veteran quarterback and steady defense, Pittsburgh figures to be in the playoff mix. Making the postseason should surprise nobody – the Steelers have done so with worse rosters. Defeating an AFC contender in the playoffs is a different story. During the team’s losing streak, it has been dispatched by some of the conference’s best. The Kansas City Chiefs in 2021, Buffalo Bills in 2023, Baltimore Ravens in 2024. All three teams remain favorites.
If the Steelers can’t get over the hump this year, it’s fair to wonder how they’re ever going to do it.