Madden Monday: Steelers win in Baltimore not a layup even against backups; discussing trading Jake Guentzel
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As Mark Madden wrote last week here at TribLive, 2023 wasn’t a good year in Pittsburgh sports. He couldn’t even do a “best of Pittsburgh sports” column for the year because there was no “best.”
But at least the Penguins and Steelers are finishing strong.
The Steelers have won two in a row and have kept their dim playoff hopes alive going into the final week of the season. The playoff scenarios for the Steelers qualifying are many. But the most clear path is if the Steelers win and the Bills or Jaguars lose.
On paper, beating the Baltimore Ravens on the road looks like a tall task for the Steelers in Saturday’s regular season finale. However, the Ravens have already locked up the No. 1 seed in the AFC. They have nothing to play for, so they might rest a bunch of starters.
In anticipation of that, BetRivers has the Steelers as a 3.5-point favorite. Yet, Madden isn’t expecting a Steelers victory.
“If you made me pick right now, I think they probably will lose to Baltimore because that’s the only way the story makes sense now,” Madden said in this week’s “Madden Monday” podcast. “I am not sure they are just going to play their backups. That’s a slippery slope when you get the bye and rest everybody. Then those guys ain’t played no football for two full weeks. Then they’ve got to come in cold to play a good opponent in the divisional round. So I don’t know what I’d do if I were John Harbaugh, I definitely sit Lamar Jackson. I wouldn’t take a chance with him. But the other guys? I might play a lot of them at least for a while.”
Even if the Steelers do improve to 10-7 and qualify for the playoffs, Madden doesn’t think this late postseason push should cloud opinions of the corner they were painted in by losses at home to New England and Arizona earlier in the year.
“Instead of looking at how they’ve rallied and certainly wallowing in the glory of the resurrection of Mason Rudolph, I just look at them losing consecutive home games to Arizona and New England when each came into the game with two wins. How does that happen? And even as we canonize Mike Tomlin for having yet another winning season and never having had a losing season — this is now 17 years in a row — we act like he wasn’t coach for those two games,” Madden said. “And like he’s not responsible for waiting almost two years to finally play who has turned out to be the best quarterback on his roster (Rudolph) since Ben (Roethlisberger) retired. It’s just this contradictory type of thing. We ignore the bad and embrace the good.”
On the Penguins front, they have won seven of their last nine games after a 3-1 win over the New York Islanders on New Year’s Eve. But Madden isn’t giving up on the idea of potentially trading Jake Guentzel
“If I am not in first or second place in the division when the (trade) deadline starts nearing, if I’m not feeling that I’m going to win a first-round playoff series, I’ve got to trade him, even if I’m solidly in the playoffs,” Madden said. “Because otherwise he walks (in free agency) and you will have gained nothing. And I know Sid will wet his pants. I know the fans will be mad. But I think he’s going to want a seven- or eight-year contract and I can’t give him that.”
Madden has a replacement target in mind as well.
“If I’m going to give somebody a seven- or eight-year contract, instead of giving it to Guentzel for seven or eight million a year, I give it to (William) Nylander from Toronto for $11 million a year,” Madden said.
In the rest of the podcast, Madden explains why that move would make sense, we get into the Penguins goaltending a bit, and we look at how the Steelers running backs helped win the game in Seattle.