House Steelers

The Wound

Six titles — more than anyone. And the last one was in February 2009.

This house does not collapse. That is precisely the problem. It went 10–7, it went 9–8, it made the postseason often enough to keep hope structurally sound, and it has not won a playoff game since January 2017. Pittsburgh turned mediocrity into a nine-year institution and called it stability.

The wound was never losing. It was the flatness. And in January it finally broke.

The Men Who Beat Them

On the thirteenth of January, the day after a 30–6 defeat at home to Houston in the first round, Mike Tomlin resigned after nineteen seasons.

Understand what that means here. He had never once had a losing year. He was the third steward this house had employed since 1969 — three men, fifty-seven years, an inheritance managed rather than a job held. Stewards do not leave Pittsburgh. They are not fired here. He walked out anyway, and the most stable house in the realm suddenly had a vacancy it had no idea how to fill.

They filled it with Mike McCarthy, who is sixty-two, who grew up in this city — and who, in February 2011, coached Green Bay to a Super Bowl victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers. Over Tomlin. In the game this house still counts as the one that got away.

Then, in the spring, they signed the quarterback who won it.

Aaron Rodgers is forty-two years old, on one year and twenty-two million guaranteed, in his twenty-second and — he has said so plainly — final season. He and McCarthy took the throne together fifteen years ago by beating this house.

So the arrangement in Pittsburgh is now: the steward who beat them and the lord who beat them, in the building, running the place, in the last year either of them will do this. The man who lost that game is gone. The two who won it are the inheritance.

Nobody in this city is entirely comfortable. Nobody is turning it down either.

The Lord

Aaron Rodgers, forty-two, one year, last season. Four times the best player in the realm, at the very end of it.

The Knights

• Michael Pittman Jr. — traded from Indianapolis and extended at fifty-nine million. Someone for the old lord to throw to.

Ancient Grudges

• House Ravens. The realm’s most violent standing appointment.
• House Browns, House Bengals. Divisional, ancient, conducted in bad weather.
• House Packers. Not divisional. Just February 2011, permanently — and now deeply strange, given who works here.

What Changed This Spring

Everything at the top. Tomlin gone after nineteen years. McCarthy in. Rodgers signed for a final season. Pittman traded for, Nick Herbig extended at a hundred million. A house that spent a decade refusing to change changed all of it at once.

Prophecy

One playoff win. It has been so long that this now counts as ambition.