With their soul crushing, likely season ending loss to the Indianapolis Colts, the Steelers lost their third straight game this season.

An ugly, horrifying, unacceptable mark for any team that is supposedly in a position to try and win now.

But sadly, this is nothing new.

In fact, for the sixth year in a row, the Steelers have suffered a three game losing streak during the season. That dates all the way back to the 2018 season.

Though these streaks have come at different points in seasons, this has become the yearly tradition for Pittsburgh over the last six years.

Complete nosedives in the standings like these have killed several seasons in the past, and it looks destined to derail another as the Steelers plummet from 7-4 to 7-7, now last place in the AFC North and out of the playoff picture heading into Week 16.

These streaks have come with all different kinds of Steelers rosters. Some dominant on offense, some stellar on defense. Some with a Hall of Fame QB, some with a middling QB.

But the common denominator in all of these big time losing stretches has been coaching. And the one man who has been there for every single one of these consecutive streaks has been Mike Tomlin.

This deadly pattern began in 2018, when the 7-2-1 Steelers dropped three straight games to the middling Broncos, blew a 16 point lead to the Chargers, and lost to the two-win Raiders. Despite winning two of their last three to close the season, the damage of losing three winnable games was too much to recover.

That was the last season in which the Steelers had a legitimate high caliber offense. Their defense was highly suspect, and the main culprit in some of that team’s horrid losses, but from an offensive perspective, that was their greatest chance at a deep playoff run.

But instead, they were out of the playoffs entirely.

The same thing happened in 2019, although in this season, the streak came to close out the year. The 2019 Steelers are often hailed as one of Tomlin’s finest seasons. He took a team that lost Ben Roethlisberger in Week 2 and dragged them to an 8-8 season.

On the surface, it’s a great story, and even I will admit, it was some tidy work. But the end to the season is often left out of the narrative around Tomlin’s 2019 Steelers. At one point sitting at 8-5, the Steelers looked like they were going to shock the world and make the playoffs even after everyone had written them off.

That streak included a loss to the 5-9 New York Jets, and a thrashing by the Baltimore Ravens to close out the season. For the second time in a row, a late season collapse had cost the Steelers a trip to the playoffs.

Surely it wouldn’t happen a third time, right? Buckle up my friend, we aren’t even close to the end of this hell. We all tragically remember the 11-0 start in 2020, when the Steelers got off to the best start in franchise history. Some of those wins are a little suspect, and it seemed as every week passed, that dam began to loosen little by little.

The Ravens had found a way to smash it wide open in Week 12, but it was actually the Washington Football Team who exposed the Steelers, sending them into a spiral. After that first loss, the floodgates opened, and the Steelers lost three straight to fall to 11-3. They played one good half of football the rest of the season after that first loss, and finished with a 12-4 record. They did make the playoffs that season, but we don’t have to discuss that.

At least for the 2021 team, they got their three game losing streak out of the way early. After an upset win in Buffalo in Week 1, the Steelers dropped their mandatory three straight to dig themselves in a hole.

If we really wanted to get technical, we could change the terminology and say these 2021 Steelers had multiple three game non-winning streaks. After rallying from 1-3 to win the next four games, they tied the 0-10 Lions to snap their streak, and then proceeded to lose two more games.

In Ben’s farewell tour, the Steelers were a constant up and down team. With some luck and assistance, they reached the playoffs in 2021, but were promptly dismissed by Kansas City.

Last season, the 2022 Steelers also got their three game skid out of the way early. They actually one-upped the previous iterations, losing four straight games after a Week 1 win vs the Bengals on the road.

That team would be 2-6 at the bye, notably without TJ Watt since the first game, but would rally to finish, of course, 9-8. Last year’s team also missed the playoffs, and in s sick twist of irony, needed a litany of things to happen in the final week to qualify. Four teams that they lost to during the season were involved in the magical formula needed for the Steelers to get in.

In the end, only half worked out, and Pittsburgh watched the playoffs from the couch yet again.

Which brings me to this season. The Tomlin Tradition continues! After stringing together wins, albeit in unimpressive ways, to get to 7-4, the Steelers have absolutely crumbled. Losing back to back two-win teams, and then losing to the Colts, who beat them up and took their lunch money, now has the Steelers in shambles at 7-7.

The quarterback situation is a mess. An injured Kenny Pickett (back in the first of three losses) forced Mitch Trubisky into the role, but he has not been able to fix that habit of throwing interceptions. After his second against Indy, the Steelers benched him for Mason Rudolph.

Whether that means anything for the team’s upcoming is yet to be known, but at this point, should we even care? The playoffs are out of reach, and the only thing that this organization will be playing for is another 9-8 season. Whether they actually get there is hard to envision, but it’s a streak that Tomlin’s players clearly care about, and have in the past.

(Featured photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)