I beg you, don’t commit me. At least not yet. But the Steelers may be in line to have a strong back half of the season.
Yes, this season! The 2022 one! The one we’ve all watched. The one that’s featured an offense that ranks among the worst in the NFL, and a defense that’s been wildly inconsistent.
But here, on November 9, I will confidently say that the Steelers have at least five wins left in them this season.
The Twitter masses are stirring as we speak.
The Steelers, at 2-6, look destined for a top 10 pick. Maybe top 5. They’ve traded away a key offensive player (Chase Claypool) for a draft pick. They’ve committed to their struggling rookie quarterback, perhaps admitting that the growing pains will be understood during this season, as the team looks to the future.
However, the back half of the schedule is certainly light, and full of winnable games for this team that should gel more as the season goes.
It starts Sunday against a Saints team coming off a 27-13 home loss to Baltimore. New Orleans is 3-6, and questions abound about the job the their head coach, Dennis Allen, has done. He’s now 11-34 in his coaching career.
After that, it’s a matchup with the Bengals, a team that TJ Watt — who appears ready to return this Sunday — wreaked havoc against in Week 1 as the Steelers topped Cincinnati, in overtime, 23-20.
Both of those meetings are home games for Pittsburgh, which is coming off a well-timed bye week.
Then they hit the road for games in Indianapolis (on Monday Night Football) and Atlanta.
The Colts just fired head coach Frank Reich, hired a TV analyst with no NFL coaching experience as the interim head coach, are 3-5-1 in a mundane AFC South, and have turned to Sam Ehlinger as their starting quarterback.
The Falcons, thought to be one of the NFL’s worst teams entering the season, have been able to tread water in an NFC South that has no teams even at .500 at the midway point. But Atlanta is 4-5, and has one of the worst defenses in football.
Of those four games, the Steelers could go 3-1, putting them at 5-7, and perhaps included in the ‘In The Hunt’ part of the NFL standings graphics paraded out by TV networks each Sunday.
The Steelers welcome the Baltimore Ravens to Acrisure Stadium on December 11. Baltimore appears to be the class of the AFC North, at 6-3. But the Steelers have found a way to limit Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson in the past. The former MVP is 2-3 all-time against the Steelers and has passed for four touchdowns and six interceptions in those games. He’s been sacked 16 times by Pittsburgh, has never rushed for a touchdown against the Steelers, and has averaged just 4.6 yards per carry, well below his career average of 6.1.
Those two teams meet again in Baltimore on New Years Day.
Before that, the Steelers take on the Panthers — a team that has also fired its coach this year and is 2-7 — and the Raiders — a group that, at 2-6, may very well to do the same this season.
Pittsburgh closes the year at home against the Browns, which will have quarterback DeShaun Watson back, but may very well be out of the playoff hunt.
This Steelers season might tank — not intentionally, of course. The offense may never come together this year. The defense, even with Watt back, may not be able to come close to replicating the season opening performance.
Perhaps this team is destined to stink.
But consider this. Pittsburgh’s opponents, to this point, have a combined record of 43-26. Their remaining opponents have a combined record of 34-44-1. Their remaining opponents also average 22nd in the NFL in points per game allowed and they do not face a team with a defense ranked in the top 12 in points allowed. And the Steelers have been closer than maybe some want to admit. Games against the Patriots, Jets and Dolphins all came down to a couple of missed plays here and there.
The schedule, without a doubt, gets easier. Pittsburgh currently faces the sixth-easiest remaining strength of schedule in the league. And the Steelers should play better. Ultimately, they’ll likely pull themselves into mediocrity again, good enough to not finish in the gutter, but bad enough to not be considered a real contender.
We’ve seen it before. In 2013, the Steelers started 2-6, but finished 6-2 to avoid a losing season — something that has never occurred under Mike Tomlin. Stop me if you've heard that stat before.
While there’s a valid argument as to if that’s what’s best for the franchise going forward, an 7-10 or 8-9 finish — and perhaps even better — is not totally farfetched given the road ahead, no matter how disastrous the front half has been.