Steelers exit interviews; Holmes, Hartwig believe Bruce Arians will be retained

By Dale Grdnic

PITTSBURGH -- For those Pittsburgh Steelers interviewed Monday after their final team meeting with Coach Mike Tomlin, there were various reasons the club followed a Super Bowl season with an underwhelming, 9-7 non-playoff year.

However, one aspect rang true from center Justin Hartwig, wideout Santonio Holmes, outside linebacker LaMarr Woodley and inside linebacker James Farrior. The Steelers were competitive with every team on their schedule, but they just weren't able to finish games. Five times, the club lost fourth-quarter leads.

"I really can't put my finger on everything that went wrong,'' Hartwig said. "All the games were so close, and that's something that I've noticed since I've been with this team. All those games that we won last year, those close games, we didn't win those this year.

"And I think that was the difference. We didn't finish the games. I don't think you can put your finger on one thing or that there was one guy or if we would have done one thing better then we would have had a better record. It's hard to do that, but as a team we just didn't finish games the way that we did last year.

"Some people might say that with a couple things happening differently, we would have been 7-9, but I look at it that if we win one more of those games we're in the playoffs right now,'' Hartwig added. "I think our team is capable of beating anybody. Certainly, we have the personnel to do that. But things didn't fall our way this year.''

One might believe the Steelers' defense, which nearly was No. 1 in every category in 2008-09, was hampered with end Aaron Smith and safety Troy Polamalu missing the majority of the games with injuries. Farrior agreed.

"It definitely was a disappointing year for our defense as a group,'' Farrior said. "We definitely feel like we didn't do a lot of things well at the end of the games, and we cost our team those games. We didn't play as well as we could have plays, and there were plays that we left on the field that cost us games.

"And with Aaron Smith and Troy out, those basically are our best two players on defense. So, having those two guys out really affected us. It was tough on us, not having those two impact players out there. And it really affected us in the way that we played.''

Woodley had a somewhat different viewpoint.