{"id":669919,"date":"2026-05-28T10:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T10:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/669919\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T10:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T10:36:09","slug":"we-was-cooked-eric-ebron-explains-what-caused-steelers-2020-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/669919\/","title":{"rendered":"‘We Was Cooked’: Eric Ebron Explains What Caused Steelers’ 2020 Collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pittsburgh Steelers suffered another disappointing end last season, failing to win a playoff game again. They haven\u2019t won a postseason game in almost a decade, although they\u2019ve had some solid chances. That includes the 2020 season. The Steelers went 12-4 that year, winning the AFC North. However, they should\u2019ve been better. Pittsburgh started the season 11-0,<\/a> but the team collapsed down the stretch, losing four of its final five games. Former Steelers tight end Eric Ebron recently explained why that happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe was snapping,\u201d Ebron said on the Raw Room podcast.<\/a> \u201cWe had a meeting. Ben [Roethlisberger] called all the starters into the meeting. He was like, \u2018Fellas, my knees is getting bad. I\u2019m not gonna be able to get up under center.\u2019 I go, \u2018We\u2019re one-dimensional.\u2019 We\u2019re about to run from shotgun and pass from shotgun. Makes it very obvious for the defense\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cWe turn one dimensional, I\u2019m like, \u2018Cool, we kind of been shotgun the whole time. We should be straight, right?\u2019 We forget these [other players] get paid, too. They figured out we went one-dimensional and Ben wasn\u2019t getting under center? They started sending everything. Realized [Roethlisberger] couldn\u2019t move. We was cooked.\u201d<\/p>\n

That makes a lot of sense. Roethlisberger was 38 years old that season, and Father Time was catching up to him. He missed almost the entire 2019 season due to an elbow injury. His stats look good on paper with Roethlisberger throwing for 3,803 yards, 33 touchdowns, and 10 interceptions in 15 games.<\/p>\n

However, Roethlisberger clearly wasn\u2019t the same player. He couldn\u2019t push the ball downfield as well as he used to. The Steelers\u2019 passing offense was already limited because Roethlisberger couldn\u2019t operate from under center. It also mostly only threw the ball short. While Roethlisberger still took some shots, they were few and far between.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Steelers\u2019 offense limped to the finish line, getting stifled by the likes of the Washington Football Team and Joe Burrow-less Cincinnati Bengals. It was a total disaster, and it only got worse in the playoffs.<\/p>\n

The Steelers allowed the Cleveland Browns to make the postseason, sitting many of their starters in the final week of the season against their division foe. The Browns paid the Steelers back by blowing them out in the playoffs. The final score was 48-37, but it was worse than that, with Pittsburgh trailing by 28 to end the first quarter.<\/p>\n

That season felt like Roethlisberger\u2019s last real shot at competing for a championship. However, his body was already too beaten up at that point. His physical limitations also ended up holding back the Steelers\u2019 offense.<\/p>\n

The Steelers find themselves in a similar spot<\/a> going into the 2026 season. They\u2019ve got a quarterback past his prime under center, but they\u2019re hoping he has enough left to help them compete for a championship. Hopefully, they don\u2019t make the same mistakes that they did in 2020.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pittsburgh Steelers suffered another disappointing end last season, failing to win a playoff game again. They haven\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[58456,292410,349,1321,292411,99],"class_list":["post-669919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-ben-roethlisberger","tag-eric-ebron","tag-nfl","tag-pittsburgh-steelers","tag-raw-room","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}