By Clark’s count, it’s the ultimate three-and-out
Three games remain in what has become a meaningless, worthless season for the Steelers.
There was so much hope when it began, but it faded quickly, as the team lost its first four games to drop into a rut it never truly escaped.
Three more meaningless games, the only carrot being the slimmest of slim chances of reaching the playoffs.
But there is plenty to play for. Steelers safety Ryan Clark, for one, wants just to play. He knows that, without a contract beyond this season, his days here are numbered.
“Everybody’s time comes,” Clark said. “For me, I just want to enjoy it, keep playing.”
Clark may get a final contract from some team, but he’s pretty sure his playing days with the Steelers are numbered. He had plenty to say after Sunday’s 34-28 loss to Miami about this team and this season, with an eye toward the future.
Do the Steelers need a personality remake?
“I don’t think so,” Clark said. “I think the personality is good. It’s the same personality that we’ve always had, but we just haven’t made plays. We have a lot of good young talent on this team, young talent that is playing well. You have to use that with some of the older guys that we have. We talk about it all the time, about this team being so old, but it’s really not. There are a lot of new faces, a lot of young guys here. We also have a great leader in coach (Mike) Tomlin. He knows what he’s doing, he coaches well, he makes good decisions, he motivates people.
“The foundation of this organization is fine, we’ve just got to win. To win, players have got to make plays. No matter what. You talk about coaches and organizations, but players play on Sunday. So when we lose, it’s on us, on us not doing the right things, not executing.”
Clark doesn’t buy the popular theory about the 0-4 start spelling doom for this team from the beginning.
“You can point to a lot of situations where if we make some more plays in certain games, 0-4 wasn’t insurmountable,” Clark said. “Two or three weeks ago, 0-4 wasn’t insurmountable, but it leaves a very small margin for error when you lose the first four games of the season. If you lose four games, you probably have to have a four-game winning streak to at least, you know, even it out. But we weren’t able to accomplish that.”
So what’s left for these Steelers this year? Even Clark, a guy coming up the fairway on No. 18, can’t come up with a definitive answer.
“I don’t know,” Clark said when asked what’s left to salvage from this season. “Football players don’t play salvage games. We enjoy winning football games. Every time you have an opportunity to win a football game, whether you’re 0-12 or 12-0, you want to win it. There has never been a team that loses a game and says, ‘Oh, it’s all right because we won the week before.’ We hate losing, so for us it’s just about trying to win a game. We’re going to approach it the same way we always do.”
As bad as this season has spiraled, the Steelers must win their remaining three games just to get back to the 8-8 finish they experienced last season. Clark was part of that team, too, so he knows what he is talking about.
“Nobody wants to be considered losers, so, yea, we would like to avoid a losing season,” he said. “It’s not going to be our rallying cry. We’re not going to write songs about it. We’re just going to go out here and continue to try to play.”
Because that’s what players do.