Jim Rooney is the brother of Pittsburgh Steelers president Art Rooney II. He recently wrote a book about their father, the late Dan Rooney, who also served as the Steelers president and owner of the franchise.

As part of a media tour for the book, “A Different Way to Win,” Jim Rooney appeared on a podcast hosted by former NFL player Ross Tucker. At one point, Tucker asked Rooney to address complaints from Steelers fans about the recent lack of playoff wins for the franchise under head coach Mike Tomlin.

What followed was a two-minute monologue from Rooney that should serve as a sobering reality check of how far the bar of expectation for the organization has fallen.

Jim Rooney on the Steelers struggles in the playoffs, future of Mike Tomlin. #Steelers #NFL pic.twitter.com/ZMUrS5FEUj

— Steelers Depot 7⃣ (@Steelersdepot) January 22, 2025

To be fair, this Rooney is not listed as a part of the ownership group. But his name is still “Rooney,” and his comments are likely a window into how the family is viewing the franchise’s current state of affairs.

Here’s a transcript of Rooney’s response to Tucker. We’ll interrupt along the way to interject some commentary to balance out the spin over what has gone wrong with the team since it last went to the Super Bowl in 2010-11.

Jim Rooney: “It’s an organization issue, not just Mike. I think all of us are responsible for the outcomes. I think we take responsibility.”

• I agree with the first part. Everyone in the organization deserves blame for the Steelers’ failure to win a postseason game since 2016. I question, however, what “responsibility” anyone is taking.

Unless you are an offensive coordinator, of course. Every time the team wants to make it look like they are addressing their failures, they fire an offensive coordinator in hopes that the fanbase thinks everything has been that guy’s fault (See: Haley, Todd/Fichtner, Randy/Canada, Matt/Arians, Bruce).

Rooney: “I don’t want to get into excuse-making, but the reality is, we outperform the NFL mean at a greater rate than just about any team for the last 25 years. Another team that has been in that category in terms of outperforming that mean has been the Ravens. There’s no other team that has been as successful and has a division rival that has outperformed the mean. So when you look at the challenges we face, if this was a boxing match, and you were judging the competition, not just looking at the winning percentage, you would have to say that we have performed in a harder circumstance than most, and we’ve outperformed them.”

• First off, anytime someone says, “I don’t want to get into excuse-making,” they are about to make some excuses. These were some whoppers from Rooney.

He is right in one sense. Over the past 25 years, the Steelers have had 255 wins. Only the New England Patriots (270) have more. The Ravens are fourth with 244.

However, the other two teams in the division are Cincinnati and Cleveland. The Bengals are 20th with 189 wins since 2000. The Browns are last with 139.  

Furthermore, for as much of a hindrance as Rooney is suggesting the Ravens have been, prior to their two late-season losses to Baltimore this year, the Steelers had won eight of nine games against them. Also, the Steelers won three of the five postseason matchups between the teams since 2000.

So, Baltimore hasn’t been the roadblock that Rooney is portraying.

And why are we going back to 2000? Because it’s more convenient to make a point?

The issues atop everyone’s minds are the eight-year playoff-win drought and the fact that the Steelers have failed to win a playoff game in 12 of the past 14 seasons.

I’d also stay away from the boxing analogy. The exact problem is that the Steelers used to be Mike Tyson. Now Rooney is telling us why we should be happy that, since 2011, they have been Tony Tubbs.

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Rooney: “I understand no one wants to lose playoff games. The goal is to win the Super Bowl. You have to get to the playoffs, which we do well. You have to win playoff games, which we haven’t. The other excuse I’ll make there is, look, we’ve lost some bad playoff games. But we also lost to three guys that have some pretty unique names: (Peyton) Manning, (Tom) Brady and (Patrick) Mahomes. That’s the playoff route we have to go through to get to those wins.”

• OK …

1) I thought we weren’t making excuses.

2) Seven of 16 teams in each conference make the playoffs these days. It’s not a big deal.

3) The team has missed the playoffs five times since the start of 2011. It has been better than the sixth or seventh seed just once since the start of the 2018 season.

4) When he started rattling off the “Big 3” QB names, I thought he was going to say “(Lamar) Jackson, (Josh) Allen and Mahomes.” Brady and Manning have had nothing to do with the eight-year playoff victory drought. And, since the Super Bowl XLV trip, the postseason losses to Brady (2016) and Manning (2015) actually came during years they managed to initially win playoff games anyway.

So, what do those two guys have to do with the conversation?

5) Since the last Super Bowl trip, you’ve also lost postseason games to Baker Mayfield, Blake Bortles and Tim Tebow.

Rooney: “If you’re going to make an argument, you should look at the facts in the matter. I think the Steelers organization (and) Mike Tomlin have outperformed any expectation you could have of any NFL team in terms of who they have to play against, what the competition looks like, etc.”

• I think I just laid out plenty of facts to advance a counterargument. Honestly, though, the only argument I’m making is that the Steelers’ standards of “expectation” have slipped. Rooney’s argument seems to be that the successes of 2000-10 were substantial enough that the shortcomings of 2011-24 should be overlooked.

Or, maybe his argument is that above average is good enough. I can’t tell. Maybe it’s both. Either way, I disagree.

Hey, it’s his family’s name on the masthead. If he wants us to associate the name “Rooney” with “above the mean,” so be it.

But for most of the previous four decades, it had been associated with excellence.

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