LANDOVER, Md. — The Commanders have been in franchise (re-) building mode for about 11 months.
The Steelers are at five decades and counting.
The lessons Washington can learn from playing against and emulating a franchise as stable and successful as Pittsburgh’s go well beyond watching the film of Sunday’s tough 28-27 loss at Northwest Stadium.
In every way, the Steelers should be who the Commanders, under new management, aspire to be. From ownership to management, from drafting to coaching, Pittsburgh rarely makes a mistake, and when it does, action is taken — decisively.
The Steelers don’t go prancing around on a private jet, playing fantasy owner, throwing money at free agents who don’t fit their team’s mentality. They don’t have scandals inside their building that warp their stated organizational values. They run the football on offense and hit you in the mouth on defense. They’ve had, impossibly, three head coaches in the last 54 years: Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin, now in his 18th season at the helm. And Tomlin, famously, has never had a losing season in any of those campaigns.
He won’t have one this season, either, as long as Russell Wilson, in his first season in the ‘Burgh, continues to belie his 35 years, as he did by hitting Mike Williams, who just got to town via trade this week, for the game-winning 32-yard score with 2:22 left to play.
FIRST TD AS A STEELER!!!!!!!!
📲 Stream on NFL+: https://t.co/COxKRnr6Mc pic.twitter.com/qaxvtHNvcM
— Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) November 10, 2024
But in Pittsburgh, it’s not about one quarterback, one play, or one season. It’s about the high standard set every season. Six Super Bowl championships tend to focus the mind and an organization. The Steelers aren’t good enough to win it all every season, of course. That’s not the point. The point is they never cheat the game, or themselves. They show up, every season, ready to compete.
“I think I, and we, just have a small picture mentality,” Tomlin said. “We don’t talk about the challenges of present day, in reference to what’s happening. We talk about the urgency of now. That stuff that’s on our resume, it’s just on our resume. There’s enough to have your attention in present day, and that’s where we stay at mentally.”
It’s why Pittsburgh was willing to gamble that Wilson still had some tread on his tires after two disastrous seasons in Denver. Like Tomlin, Wilson has spent most of his NFL career in one place, with one culture — Seattle, where Wilson won one Super Bowl and would have had another, but for one of the worst play calls possible, dialed up at the worst possible moment.
In Denver, Wilson was supposed to raise the Broncos. In Pittsburgh, they don’t need a savior, just another good football player. And Wilson was already a good culture fit, having been a centerpiece for the Seahawks, a franchise built through the drafts of John Schneider and the dynamic coaching of Pete Carroll. Wilson’s been behind in dozens of fourth quarters, with the ball in his hands, just like he was Sunday.
For most of the afternoon, he’d missed the deep shots he took against the Commanders’ defense. When he had to have it, though, on third-and-9 from Washington’s 32, he dropped the ball in the bucket to Williams, just acquired from the woebegone Jets before the trade deadline last Tuesday.
We know that Jayden Daniels can make that throw, in a similar if not exact circumstance, as Wilson did Sunday. We’ve seen it. Daniels has already made a half-dozen mind-blowing completions in his first 10 games as a pro, and that’s not counting the Hail Mary that beat Chicago two weeks ago. But can he — will he — still be able to make that throw in Year 13 of his career, like Wilson did?
So, Wilson knows the task ahead for Washington.
“Excellence is built daily,” he said. “It’s built daily. It’s the obsession with the process; it’s the obsession with adversity, too, knowing you’re going to come out at the other end of it. I think so many people, they check out when it gets a little dark and tough, and obstacles come your way. Great players, the great organizations, the great teams, they’re able to overcome obstacles, and just trust the process. It’s a journey. Obviously, this organization is one of the best to ever do it. And obviously in Seattle, we were able to win those 10 years there. It’s all about the people. … In Seattle, it was coach Carroll, and what he was able to do, and the culture he was able to build.”
Washington is just at the start of that obsession. Famously, Daniels is already at the practice facility in Ashburn … early. Tomlin knows exactly who Dan Quinn is; he played at William and Mary as a senior safety when Quinn got his first coaching job as the Tribe’s defensive line coach. The next year, they were on the same coaching staff at VMI. And Quinn coaches from the same hymnal as Tomlin.
“That’s my brother,” Tomlin said.
Washington didn’t play well enough to hold off the Steelers on Sunday, even after getting a huge break when James Pierre, one of the Steelers’ gunners on punt coverage, dropped a throw on a fake punt from Corliss Waitman that could have been a walk-in touchdown, giving Washington an extremely short (16 yards) field for a first-half TD. Daniels was a little off, even though his beat-up offensive line, down two tackles, did yeoman’s work keeping him relatively clean against the likes of T.J. Watt. The defense forced two turnovers, but couldn’t hold a 10-point second-half lead.
“I mean, I know Mike well, and this is a tough team,” Quinn said. “And I knew it was going to be a really hard fight, man. I love him. I love what he’s about. I knew it was going to be tough. We got a tough crew too, and so I wanted to make sure that we established who we are, too, and say we had to prepare for them, but they also had to make sure when we got to the game, they also had to deal with us.”
But what Adam Peters and Quinn are building is designed to transcend one less-than-stellar effort on the field. That’s why so many players stepped to rookie defensive tackle Johnny Newton in the Commanders’ locker room after Wilson drew him offside with a hard count on fourth-and-1 at Washington’s 49 with 1:02 left, a penalty that put the game away. It was a hard lesson for the second-round pick to learn, in front of a loud crowd — loud for both the home and road teams.
But such things are part of the Commanders’ learning curve. Learn. Adapt. Deal with adversity. Relish adversity. And that is a way different standard than we’ve seen around here.
“I’ve never been part of any organization, other than the one here with coach (Ron) Rivera,” guard Sam Cosmi said. “From that aspect, they’re doing a lot of things right, for sure. There’s very few things I can say or come across and say, ‘They’re doing this wrong.’ This year, they believe in us. They’re giving us all the tools to be successful. They also, they care about us. Especially AP. I mean, DQ, too. But AP, he’s very communicative with us. He’s very open with us. I’ve never been around that. And other guys are saying the same thing.”
If Quinn and Peters stay on message after this loss, then they won’t make excuses for the short upcoming week, or having to play on the road, or having to play the now division-leading Eagles. They’ll talk about the great opportunity this provides their team, still trying to assert itself, to lay down a big marker, to show that a bad finish to one game won’t bleed into the next one. The next chance is always what motivates the team that came to Northwest Stadium on Sunday, another shot to assert itself to the NFL world, just like it has for half a century.
(Photo of Russell Wilson: Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)
