The Pittsburgh Steelers made NFL history with their 21-18 loss to New England at Acrisure Stadium on Thursday night.

With the loss coming just days after dropping an ugly, sloppy affair to the Cardinals, also at Acrisure Stadium, Pittsburgh became the first franchise with a winning record in league history to lose consecutive games to teams who were at least eight games below-.500 at kickoff. 

I seriously wish the Steelers didn’t make that kind of history, and not just because making that kind of history sucks. I just think it’s going to feed into the narrative that these were the worst losses in franchise history or at least the most egregious defeats of head coach Mike Tomlin’s career.

Neither is true. Why? Because the Pittsburgh Steelers were never good enough to make the kind of history they did with their loss to New England. Sure, Pittsburgh factually made history with those back-to-back defeats at the hands of the Cardinals and Patriots, but its kickoff status as a team with a winning record was just straight-up fraudulent.

The Steelers have never passed the eye test in 2023. They didn’t pass the eye test when they were 2-2 let alone 6-3. They didn’t pass the eye test at 7-4, either. Their across-the-board stats just don’t back up their win/loss mark. In fact, according to the Steelers Pro Football Reference Page, statistically speaking, they should be 5-8 (or 5.2-7.8, to be fair). 

You might argue that the Steelers are sixth in points allowed per game at 19.2. Cool, but they’re also 28th in points scored per game at 16.2. It’s hard to call a team good when it’s allowing three more points than it’s scoring every week.

The 1984 Pittsburgh Pirates had the best team ERA in baseball (3.11), yet, they finished in last place in the National League East with a record of 75-87. However, unlike the 2023 Steelers, the Buccos’ 1984 Pro Baseball Reference Page suggests they should have finished the year 87-75. It was a weird season for those ’84 Pirates, a team that had a run differential of plus-48. Having said that, I watched that ’84 Pirates squad daily, and I can tell you it deserved the last-place record it finished with.

It was a bad team, and it would get worse over the next couple of years.

Back to the 2023 Pittsburgh Steelers. Despite what fans and the media often say when it comes to lesser opponents and always playing down to the competition, this Steelers team is the lesser competition and it has been since the opening moments of that forgettable affair vs. the 49ers at Acrisure Stadium in Week 1.

To repeat myself: It’s just not a good team. It doesn’t have nearly the level of talent that people think it does. Maybe it’s some sort of weird black-and-gold effect that puts a spell on the fans. However, I’m simply going to call it entitlement.

If you want to talk about the worst losses of Tomlin’s career, we’ll have to go back to that hellish December of 2009. Pittsburgh entered the month on a three-game losing streak, but, at 6-5, it was still in control of its playoff fate. Much like the recent stretch of games vs. Arizona and New England, the Steelers were set to face two pretty horrid teams in five days–one at Heinz Field on a Sunday afternoon, and one on the road on Thursday Night Football. What did Pittsburgh do? It dropped a heartbreaker to a 3-8 Raiders team at home and then fell to the 1-11 Browns in Cleveland.

The core of that Steelers team had won two of the previous four Super Bowls–including SB XLIII the year before–and would get back to the Super Bowl the following season. That was a fine squad that just hit a rough patch. That was a team that was too good to lose back-to-back games to opponents who had four wins between them.

It was just dumb luck that the 2023 Steelers were able to compile the kind of record that they did heading into last Sunday’s game vs. Arizona.

I’m writing this article because I want it to be found at some point in the future when fans look back on this season and bemoan the back-to-back losses to the Cardinals and Patriots. They’ll talk about how the defeats cost Pittsburgh a shot at the playoffs (most likely), and they’ll put this collapse up there with the 2009 debacle or the mess that was the end of the 2018 campaign.

But it’s just not true, not today, and it won’t be true years from now when memories get a little fuzzy.

Let the record show that the 2023 Pittsburgh Steelers, despite their record, were bad enough to lose to any team in the NFL.

And that’s why they did.