Tim Benz: Despite negative hysteria or positive hyperbole, Steelers are right where they should be
Share this post:
For all the hyperbole and hysteria over how the Pittsburgh Steelers have performed this year, a funny thing has happened on the way to the second half of the schedule.
The Steelers are precisely where they should be. In fact, they’ve even bought themselves a little cushion.
Yes, folks, at 6-3, your Pittsburgh Steelers have become the NFL’s ultimate contradiction nine games into the 2023 season.
They do nothing but win nail-biting, one-score, 60-minute rock fights.
Or they get blown out 30-6.
“Whatever it takes to win,” center Mason Cole said after Sunday’s 23-19 victory over the Green Bay Packers. “There are no pictures on the scoreboard. All that matters is winning games. We don’t care how we get ‘em, so long as we get ‘em.”
The offense looks archaic and barely junior college level for three quarters. Then, they usually get it together and perform great in the final 15 minutes.
The defense allows too many big plays per game and often sees the opposing QB driving toward their end zone in the waning seconds. Then they intercept the ball at the goal line or get a strip sack to negate the threat and end the game.
The coaching staff has made some questionable playing time decisions and, until recently, can’t come up with a game plan that looks functional on offense for the first 45 minutes every week. Yet it has managed to navigate around numerous injuries and emerge victorious six out of nine times this year.
It’s been quite the circuitous route to be exactly where this franchise should’ve expected to be at the start of the season.
Well, unless you were one of the people who saw the Steelers offense carve up second- and third-stringers in the preseason and started making Super Bowl plans. But people like that who were on the lunatic fringe aren’t the people I’m talking about.
I mean the level-headed members of the Steelers fan base who saw the team as a nine or 10-win outfit — a team good enough to perhaps make the playoffs but unlikely to do much damage if they got there.
More sports
• With 6-3 record, Steelers brace for back-to-back trips against AFC North opponents
• Pitt pulls away from Florida Gulf Coast for home victory
• Penguins defenseman Ryan Graves: ‘There’s definitely more improvement to make’
If you were in that pool of Steelers fans, aren’t we looking at a team that is exactly where we expected it to be by the halfway point of the season?
Furthermore, isn’t the team exactly where it needed to be by this point in the season?
• The Steelers got to 3-2 at the bye. Sure, the blowout loss in Houston was a gut punch, as was the 30-7 defeat in the opener to San Francisco. But those teams are two clubs who woke up Monday in a playoff spot, as were the Baltimore Ravens and Cleveland Browns (two divisional opponents the Steelers beat over the first five weeks).
• Coach Mike Tomlin’s team won three of four coming out of the bye against non-divisional foes, with the only defeat coming to the Jacksonville Jaguars, a team currently sitting atop the AFC South. All three wins came against teams (the Rams, Titans and Packers) that are currently out of the playoffs.
• Nine games in, the franchise is 6-3 overall, 4-2 at home, 2-0 in the division and 4-2 in conference play.
If you had been offered that result 10 minutes before kickoff of the season opener, you would have signed up for it in blood. I would have. I bet Tomlin would have too.
“We knew we had three straight at home. We didn’t get the Jaguars’ one. So we knew we had to get the next two,” linebacker Alex Highsmith said Sunday. “We did that. It’s a gauntlet for these next couple games, so we have to continue to get better.”
Now, look, I get it. It’s hard to keep that kind of perspective in focus when the Steelers also have a minus-26-point differential, have looked non-competitive twice in losses, and feature an offense that is 28th in yards, 26th in points and 29th in passing.
But before we go renaming the NFL Coach of the Year award after Tomlin (which ESPN’
Because they aren’t. The Steelers are in exactly the spot they should be for a team that was supposed to be in the nine- to 10-win range. And if they split their eight remaining games (which features four tough ones against AFC North foes and a trip to Seattle that has proven troublesome over franchise history), that would be 10-7.
Anything better than that? Then, yeah, I’ll listen to the Coach of the Year stuff for Tomlin.
Or maybe I’ll ask, “If he’s got a team good enough to win 11 or 12 games, what would this season have been like if he could’ve schemed up a better offense or picked a better successor to Ben Roethlisberger at quarterback than Kenny Pickett or Mitch Trubisky?”
Of course, guys like Greenberg will tell you that was the fault of Art Rooney II or Kevin Colbert because, for national media types, Tomlin can do no wrong. Ever.
If Tomlin’s group sweeps through the next two games in Ohio against the Browns and Bengals, I might start to believe him.
Then again, if they end up getting swept, I’m not going to scream from the rooftops for Tomlin to get fired either, because — even at 6-5 — the Steelers will have positioned themselves in a competitive spot with games against lesser opponents in the Patriots, Colts and Cardinals remaining.
That should be enough to get this team to nine wins with two more divisional games (Cincinnati at home, Baltimore on the road) around the holidays, as well as the trip to Seattle.
“Every game from this point forward gets bigger. You start running into division opponents. You’re fit to go on the road for two weeks. We’ve got a good division. Y’all see it. It ain’t no secret. This (6-3 start) was big for us. But we’ve got to get in this film and get ready for a big game this week,” linebacker Elandon Roberts said after the win over Green Bay.
My guess is, based on everything we’ve seen this year for the Steelers, their playoff hopes probably will come down to winning a ninth or 10th game on Jan. 7 in Baltimore, with a tie game in the fourth quarter.
Because that’s just where this team always lives.
And if we’ve come to expect anything easier, maybe that’s on us for not seeing the evidence that has been right in front of our faces for the first half of the season.