Tim Benz: Sorry, ESPN. There’s no such thing as an ‘overrated’ 10-0 NFL team.
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ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith put a burr under the saddle of Steelers fans Monday. On his “First Take” program, Smith was asked if he’d “lean towards calling the Pittsburgh Steelers underrated or overrated.”
Smith — who often professes his fondness for the Steelers —said if he had to choose only one option, it’d be “overrated.”
Let’s be honest, that’s an overly nuanced, unnecessarily convoluted way to force an “either-or” hot take. Something, to his credit, Smith has gleefully done for years to the tune of tens of millions of ESPN’s dollars.
So, sure, why not say it? The only unbeaten team in the NFL is “more overrated than it is underrated.” That’s an answer that moves the needle.
He suckered me into this clap back. I bit. He wins.
The more reasoned answer is to say, “Just don’t rate them. It’s the NFL. Why bother? It’s not the College Football Playoff standings.”
In the NFL, you can rate whoever you want, however you want in November. At least we know there is a regimented, clearly structured playoff (and scheduling) formula that will determine which team wins the Super Bowl in February.
So I’m not going to bother getting my proverbial Black-and-Gold knickers in a twist over Smith’s stance and pound out some sort of Le’Veon Bell-esque diss track rebuke.
I will fire back at Smith’s premise, though.
If you click the link and absorb Smith’s reasoning, the whole foundation of his argument is that you have to call the Steelers “more overrated than underrated” because he doesn’t think the Steelers would be able to beat the Kansas City Chiefs (9-1).
OK. That’s fair.
If they played this Sunday, I’d pick Kansas City as well. They are the defending NFL champions. They have the league’s best quarterback in Patrick Mahomes. They have a diversity of weapons that could likely outlast a battle of haymakers against the Steelers defense.
It’d be a good game. Right now, I think the Chiefs would win. Let’s see what it looks like if they square off in the AFC Championship Game.
Until then, I don’t know how you hold the Steelers responsible for the NFL scheduling formula. It’s not their fault they can’t prove they are better than the defending Super Bowl champions until the postseason. And until that moment occurs, any comparison between the Steelers and Chiefs at this point strikes me as nothing more than a hunch as to who you think would win a hypothetical game.
A hypothetical game with no clue as to what the health, weather or fatigue factors would be going into the contest.
If the Steelers are “rated” No.1, and Smith thinks they should be No.2 because he thinks K.C. would win if they played, that’s not a matter of the perception of the Steelers being too inflated.
Smith is merely saying he doesn’t like the matchup against Kansas City. That’s a totally different conversation.
But I don’t know how it’s possible to overrate an NFL team at 10-0 when only 17 other clubs in the history of the Super Bowl era have done that.
Theoretically, that could happen if such a team played an absolute dog-meat schedule. The Steelers haven’t exactly played a murderers’ row of opponents. But they beat the Ravens and Titans on the road when they were a combined 10-1 at the time of the matchups. In back-to-back weeks. And they trounced a 7-3 Cleveland Browns team 38-7.
Sure, they eked out those wins against the Ravens and Titans. They had a close shave against a bad Dallas Cowboys team (3-7). They needed a second-half comeback against the Houston Texans (3-7), too.
Do we dock the Chiefs points for nearly losing to the Raiders a second time on Sunday night? They needed overtime to beat the Los Angeles Chargers (3-7). They only beat the Carolina Panthers (4-7) by two points (33-31).
Yes, the Steelers just skated through the 1-9 Jaguars in Jacksonville 27-3. So what? The Chiefs got the good fortune of pounding the 0-10 New York Jets 35-9.
I could do this old-fashioned, BCS-style, tit-for-tat scheduling stuff all day if you want, folks. But let’s not. Thankfully for the Chiefs and Steelers, this is just coffeehouse banter and not a legit way to decide an argument as to who should be in a championship playoff format.
Maybe the greater point of what Smith is getting at is that the Steelers offense can’t sputter through 30 minutes of games without scoring when Mahomes’ offense is about to trot on the field. He’s unlikely to give the Steelers the kind of breathing space the likes of Jake Luton, Garrett Gilbert and Jeff Driskel have.
And the times when those quarterbacks did some damage to the Steelers defense? Mahomes would do much worse. We all get that.
But therein lies the difference between somebody on TV saying, “I’ll pick K.C. over the Steelers” and suggesting the Steelers “overrated.”
Even the most ardent Steelers fans shouldn’t get their dander up over someone making that hypothetical pick. I’ve got to see the Steelers beat Mahomes and company to believe it myself.
“Overrated” sounds a lot more dramatic than, “I think No. 2 in the standings may actually be better than No. 1.” Smith and ESPN know that, which is why they framed the segment the way they did.
So the next time another show does exactly the same thing, don’t bite the hook as hard as I decided to do here.
Just understand this — a 10-0 NFL team can always lose to a 9-1 club. But, sorry, Stephen A., a 10-0 NFL club can never be overrated.