Madden Monday: Steelers 'a bad team that thinks they're good'; Penguins' power play stinks and may get worse

Simply put, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 24-10 loss to the Arizona Cardinals was horrible. Top to bottom.

Mike Tomlin’s team played poorly at home against a lousy team and damaged their playoff hopes as a result.

In this week’s “Madden Monday” podcast, Mark Madden of 105.9 The X and TribLive suggests that the most alarming thing about the defeat is that the players in the locker room may not have a grasp of how rotten that defeat truly was.

“They are the worst kind of bad team. They’re a bad team that thinks they’re a good team. They don’t have an underdog perspective. They don’t scrap and claw. As a result, they just (stink). There’s nothing about the Steelers to like,” Madden said. “The offensive line stinks. The wide receivers are divas who don’t produce. They totally forgot about Pat Freiermuth (on Sunday). They’ve just gotten everything wrong — especially offensively.”

In Madden’s opinion, the Steelers’ biggest problem was never the deposed offensive coordinator Matt Canada. It was quarterback Kenny Pickett.

“He was just a scapegoat,” Madden said of Canada. “I said that dating back over a year into the past, and now it’s being proven true. Kenny Pickett stinks. That’s the problem. He absolutely stinks. He has started 24 games. He’s thrown multiple touchdowns once, had a passer rating of over 100 once, thrown for over 300 yards once, and, as of today, he has left games injured a total of four times. That’s the problem. They drafted a bum in the first round as a quarterback, and no one wants to accept that.”

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Madden doesn’t think Tomlin should escape criticism either.

“You have Diontae Johnson dancing when he scores a touchdown to cut it to a 14-point deficit with under five minutes left against a 2-10 team. Everything that’s going on speaks poorly to Tomlin. The team is a disorganized mess,” Madden said. “Nine penalties (Sunday). They had 12 men on the field once and 10 men on the field another time. You’ve got the total lack of discipline exemplified by what Diontae did. Three penalties on special teams, and all by the special teams captain (Miles Killebrew), no less. And people just don’t see that Tomlin was doing a terrible job again. His poor performance is hiding in plain sight.”

As for the Penguins, Madden is alarmed by them too. He’s especially irked by the power play. It was 0-4 against the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday. It’s clicking at just 10.9%. Only three teams are worse than that in the NHL this season.

“They’re not going to make the playoffs, and they’ll miss because of the power play,” Madden predicted. “The power play is not going to get fixed. They are not doing what needs to be done, which is to put Sid in the right circle. They’re not simplifying it, and they are putting (Evgeni Malkin’s) feelings — because he’s the only guy who will get a boo-boo face if he doesn’t play where he wants to on the power play — and they’re just gonna let him stay there forever where Sid should be until it just even falls apart more than it has. If that’s possible.”

Madden and I also talk about how ugly Thursday’s Steelers-Patriots game might be, the college football playoff and the final Kiss shows in New York City.