Steelers facing adjustments in personnel and attitude
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Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward on his team's failure to reach the playoffs: "It's all our own fault. We have no one to blame or finger-point. If we take care of business in November, we wouldn't be in this position."
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MIAMI -- A day after their season ended with even more disappointment, the Steelers will begin the process of determining what went wrong to derail a campaign that once looked to be on the right track and why they missed the playoffs following a Super Bowl for the second time in four years.
Though they closed the season with three consecutive victories and a 9-7 record, there was no room for satisfaction or sense of accomplishment Sunday in the locker room in Land Shark Stadium, even after a 30-24 victory against the Miami Dolphins.
Instead, there was only the cold, stark realization that a season that showed so much promise after a 6-2 start had disintegrated with a five-game losing streak that began in November against the Cincinnati Bengals and reached its ignominious bottom with a dispirited and disinterested performance on a bitter-cold December night in Cleveland.
"It's all our own fault," said wide receiver Hines Ward. "We have no one to blame or finger-point. If we take care of business in November, we wouldn't be in this position."
When it was all over Sunday afternoon, even before the Steelers were officially eliminated from the playoffs with victories by the Baltimore Ravens and New York Jets, Pro Bowl linebacker James Harrison, one of their star players, sat at his locker and forecast a measure of sweeping change in the offseason, both on the field and among the coaching staff.
And, unlike the last time this happened, following an 8-8 finish in 2006, those changes won't be because of other teams hiring away their assistant coaches.
"I think there are going to be a lot of changes, I really do," Harrison said. "It's going to be a little of both. We'll see."
But Harrison, one of two Steelers named last week to the AFC Pro Bowl team, intimated that there needs to be another change next season, as well -- in the attitude of some players. He said the Steelers appeared more interested in personal goals than team goals this season.
"I think at times we played as a team and, at times, we played as individuals," he said. "Sometimes it may have seemed that some individual things were more important than actually the whole concept of the team."
First Published January 5, 2010 12:00 am
