The 1993 Pittsburgh Steelers looked to continue the progress made under second year head coach Bill Cowher. However, the team would take a slight step backwards, finishing 9–7 (three games behind the eventual AFC Central champion Houston Oilers). Despite that, the Steelers clinched the final wild card spot, making the playoffs for the second consecutive year. The team would lose to the Kansas City Chiefs 27–24 in overtime in the AFC Wild Card Round of the playoffs, in what is considered one of the best playoff games in NFL history even though the Steelers were on the losing end.
Notable about the season came in the second week, when the Steelers suffered a rare shutout loss to the Los Angeles Rams 27–0 in one of the team's last visit to the Los Angeles area in the foreseeable future. The day was highlighted by the emergence of Rams rookie Jerome Bettis running over the Steelers defense. Though no one knew it at the time, it would foreshadow what was to come with Bettis' career—as a member of the Steelers, who would acquire Bettis in a draft day trade with the Rams three years later.
1993 was also the season in which the Steelers began their policy of "blacking out" regular season contract negotiations. Early in the season the Steelers had reached contract extensions with Rod Woodson and Barry Foster and continued negotiations with other players. However, this led to discord in the locker room, and management felt that contract talk was taking the team's focus off of winning. At mid-season the Steelers broke off all contract negotiations, and have refused to negotiated contracts during the regular season since.
Famous quotes containing the words pittsburgh and/or season:
“The largest business in American handled by a woman is the Money Order Department of the Pittsburgh Post-office; Mary Steel has it in charge.”
—Lydia Hoyt Farmer (1842–1903)
“When we reached the lake, about half past eight in the evening, it was still steadily raining, and harder than before; and, in that fresh, cool atmosphere, the hylodes were peeping and the toads ringing about the lake universally, as in the spring with us. It was as if the season had revolved backward two or three months, or I had arrived at the abode of perpetual spring.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)