PITTSBURGH -- To win Super Bowl LVII, the Kansas City Chiefs had to score 38 points -- a mark they eclipsed three times in the regular season -- to get by a Philadelphia Eagles team that racked up 35 points.
The Pittsburgh Steelers, by contrast, never scored more than 30 in any game during the 2022 campaign.
Not only that, but the Steelers scored 29 touchdowns last season, tied for second fewest in the NFL. Meanwhile, the Chiefs and Eagles doubled that output with 61 and 59 touchdowns, respectively.
The Steelers aren't the Chiefs or the Eagles. That's not going to change before the 2023 season begins in seven months, and it's likely the Steelers will not imminently transform into the kind of high-flying offense that has become more prevalent in the last several years.
But if there's a lesson to be learned from the 2022 playoffs, it's that the Steelers need to score more points to move from a fringe playoff team to a solid contender as they continue to evolve in the post-Ben Roethlisberger era.
"We talked about the areas of improvement, and I think there are some good ones," Steelers president Art Rooney II said recently, "but we didn't score enough points is the bottom line. In particular, not great red-zone efficiency. So, I think those are a couple things that I would identify that we clearly have to get better at."
The Steelers finished the year ranked 22nd in red zone efficiency, scoring touchdowns on just 51.92% of their trips. That ranking slightly dipped from the 2021 campaign in which the Steelers scored touchdowns 54.72% of the time.
"That's kind of the final frontier," offensive coordinator Matt Canada said of the red zone in Week 17. "We've been talking about that. ... We get into that area, we've got to go score points. It's got to happen. We can talk about it, rep it, we're certainly doing those things. Being young is not an excuse. None of that. We've got to produce those, things have to happen, but I think we're getting closer. We're making more of them, but we just have got to get them all."
The Steelers' future offensive success isn't just about converting in the red zone. It's also about how they're getting there. The Steelers averaged 9.3 plays per scoring drive (touchdown or field goal), the highest rate by any team in the past 45 seasons. By contrast, the Chiefs averaged 7.6 plays per scoring drive in the Super Bowl, while the Eagles averaged 10.2. Though the Eagles dominated the time of possession 35:47-24:13, the Chiefs' ability to score fast coupled with their offensive efficiency in the second half helped engineer the comeback victory.
For faster scoring drives, the Steelers need more chunk plays. Last season, they ranked tied for 21st with 97 explosive plays, which include rushes of at least 10 yards or passes of at least 20. While the Steelers improved their rushing offense to 16th in the league with 121.9 rushing yards per game, up from 91.1 a year ago, the passing offense took a step back after the retirement of a future Hall of Fame quarterback.
The team also traded away one more veteran receiver in 2020 second-round pick Chase Claypool just prior to the deadline in exchange for the Chicago Bears' 2023 second-round pick, No. 32 overall. The Steelers were 24th in the league in passing yards per game, averaging 200.6 yards, a dip from their 2021 average of 221 yards per game. The team also scored only 12 passing touchdowns to 16 rushing.
"I think the best teams can do both," Rooney said. "Being a team that's tough to defend means you can do a lot of things right. I think what we're looking for is to be balanced. I think we need to improve on the passing game for sure. We need to see more yards after catch from our receivers. Obviously, we need to be better in the red zone. So, definitely some places we need to improve on to score more points is the bottom line."
In 2022, with a young core of players like Pickett and wide receiver George Pickens, the Steelers opted for a more conservative game plan than in years past, prioritizing ball security over splash plays. But the Steelers will enter 2023 with Pickett installed as the starting quarterback for a full offseason and a young core of talented playmakers around him. With players like Pickens, Diontae Johnson, Pat Freiermuth and Najee Harris on the roster, coupled with the 7-2 finish after the bye week, there's reason for offensive optimism.
"The way that we finished the season, the way we came out of the bye week, I think we should be really proud of ourselves," Harris said after the Week 18 win against the Browns. "We can just see how our future is. We're young, but we're also really talented, and I think that for us to come together through all that adversity that we had early on in the year, for us to finish out the season the way we did, man, that should be motivation for us. We should be hungry for next year."
The team prioritized continuity for Pickett and the offense in retaining Canada for another season, believing that his offense can evolve in its third season after back-to-back years working in conditions that didn't allow Canada to fully open up his playbook.
It's a gamble, especially as division rival Baltimore announced the hire of former Georgia offensive coordinator Todd Monken to lead the Ravens' offense on Tuesday. Monken guided aggressive offenses with the back-to-back national championship Bulldogs (501.1 yards, 40.7 points per game in 2022) and in previous NFL stints as OC of the Browns (career-high 3,827 passing yards for Baker Mayfield in 2019) and the Buccaneers (No. 1 in NFL total offense in 2018).
The Steelers are an old-school organization, often sticking to the principles of defensive smash mouth, trench-warfare football. But the NFL is moving away from that style, trending more toward a pass-happy league with its best teams collecting offensive skill players like infinity stones.
The Steelers aren't typically an organization that jumps on a new trend, but this one might be here to stay. Are the Steelers?