2004 Pittsburgh Steelers season

The 2004 Pittsburgh Steelers season was the franchise's 72nd season as a professional sports franchise and as a member of the National Football League. It would be the first season the franchise would have under quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. He would play 18 seasons as a Steeler, a franchise record.

The team looked to come back after a disappointing 6–10 season the year before, which saw the team go through the entire season without winning consecutive games.^[1]

The team finished with a 15–1 record, topping the 14–2 team record from 1978 and joined the 1984 San Francisco 49ers, the 1985 Chicago Bears, and the 1998 Minnesota Vikings as the only teams in NFL history to that point since the league adopted a 16-game schedule in 1978 to finish with such a record. This also made the Steelers the first AFC team to achieve a 15–1 record, a conference-best at the time (the 2007 Patriots would surpass that by going a perfect 16–0); they are also the only AFC team to do so. Along the way, the Steelers ended the New England Patriots NFL-record 21-game winning streak in Week 8, then defeated their cross-state rival the Philadelphia Eagles the following week to hand the NFL's last two undefeated teams their first losses in back-to-back weeks, both at home.

The season was highlighted by the surprising emergence of rookie quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, the team's top pick in that year's draft. Originally intended to sit behind veteran Tommy Maddox the entire season, plans abruptly changed when Maddox was hurt in the team's Week 2 loss to Baltimore. Surrounded by talent, "Big Ben" went an NFL-record 13–0 as a rookie starting quarterback before being rested for the final game of the season, shattering the old NFL record (and coincidentally, also the team record) of 6–0 to start an NFL career set by Mike Kruczek filling in for an injured Terry Bradshaw in 1976.

The Steelers hosted the AFC Championship for the fifth time in eleven years. However, for the fourth time in that same span, the Steelers lost at home one game away from the Super Bowl, and, like in 2001, lost to the Patriots in a rematch from Week 8.^[2]

The 2006 edition of Pro Football Prospectus^[3] listed the 2004 Steelers as one of their "Heartbreak Seasons", in which teams "dominated the entire regular season only to falter in the playoffs, unable to close the deal." Said Pro Football Prospectus, "In the playoffs, Roethlisberger hit an inconvenient slump, just like the Pittsburgh quarterbacks who came before him.^[4] He threw two killer interceptions against the Jets, but the Steelers were bailed out when Jets kicker Doug Brien missed a game-winning field goal. The next week against Pittsburgh, head coach Bill Cowher was clearly worried about Roethlisberger, letting him throw only once on first or second down in the first quarter. By the time the offense opened up, the Patriots were beating the Steelers by two touchdowns. A Roethlisberger interception was returned 87 yards for a touchdown by Rodney Harrison, and the game was effectively over. For the second time in seven years,^[5] a 15–1 team had failed to make it to the Super Bowl." This was the first of, through the 2023 season, 20 consecutive non-losing seasons for the Steelers.