Steelers announce Kenny Pickett is their guy, but with a big catch

Nobody wants to go 9-8 next year more than Mike Tomlin. Under his watch, the Pittsburgh Steelers will win at least nine games a year, like clockwork... That should be seen as a good thing, but celebrating mediocrity never is. Nine wins a year will have the Steelers playoff viable, but never a serious threat to do much of anything in the AFC playoffs. They are forever stuck in the awful middle.

After storming off the podium earlier this week in the Wild Card loss to the Buffalo Bills, Tomlin is back for another year, baby! He may be a future hall-of-fame coach, but things are growing stale in the land of Heinz ketchup. Tomlin reaffirmed that he isn't going anywhere, as well as who QB1 is in the Steelers building. His undying faith in Kenny Pickett will have disastrous consequences for everyone involved.

The only reason the Steelers made the playoffs this past year was low-key catching ligthning in a bottle with quarterbacks coach Mike Sullivan calling plays and perennial backup quarterback Mason Rudolph playing like he had nothing to lose. This was the best Rudolph has looked in a Steelers uniform since putting it on out of Oklahoma State. Pickett is little more than The Fake Slide King.

Tomlin said that Pickett will be the Steelers' QB1 next year, but with competition! Good grief, man...

Even if the Steelers were to draft someone later in the first round like Bo Nix out of Oregon or Michael Penix Jr. out of Washington, Tomlin's win-at-all-costs nature will totally undermine their development.

Mike Tomlin's belief in Kenny Pickett may lead to his undoing in Pittsburgh

I hate that it is going to end like this, but it probably will. Tomlin is not going to ride off into the sunset like his predecessor Bill Cowher did nearly two decades ago. It was a different time back then, but Cowher's increased likability on the CBS studio set helped get his borderline hall-of-fame case across the finish line. Tomlin may think he is building his, but he is tearing down his own foundation.

No, this isn't like Dabo Swinney straight-up refusing to use the transfer portal at Clemson in college, but the intensity in which Tomlin burns causes more fires internally than it does light up the locker room for everyone to see. Adversity might as well be currency inside the Steelers' organization, legal tender to be used in exchange for goods and services. Unfortunately, that tender is actually ... tinder.

Maybe this vote of confidence will light a fire inside Pickett instead of being the boy who destroyed the world? The Steelers' world that is. As yinzers sing the sorrow this time around next year, the greatest disappointment will be the leaving song Pickett and Tomlin will sing in unison: What follows me as the whitest lace of light will swallow whole. Gift-wrapped in silver, whilst all wrapped in cold...

Competing competitively in competitions does nothing for me. Go empower a better quarterback.