The Pittsburgh Steelers are now into the regular season, following the most unique offseason in the NFL since at least World War II. While it didn’t involve a player lockout, teams still did not have physical access to their players, though they were at least able to meet with them virtually.
Even training camp looked much different from the norm, and a big part of that was the fact that there will be no games along the way to prepare for. Their first football game of the year was to be the opener against the New York Giants.
As the season progresses, however, there will be a number of questions that arise on a daily basis, and we will do our best to try to raise attention to them as they come along, in an effort to both point them out and to create discussion
Questions like, how will the players who are in new positions this year going to perform? Will the rookies be able to contribute significantly? How will Ben Roethlisberger look—and the other quarterbacks as well? Now, we even have questions about whether or not players will be in quarantine.
These are the sorts of questions among many others that we have been exploring on a daily basis and will continue to do so. Football has become a year-round pastime and there is always a question to be asked, though there is rarely a concrete answer, as I’ve learned in my years of doing this.
Question: How long will the Steelers be able to stay undefeated?
I’m guessing that you have heard by now that the Steelers are undefeated, and that this is the first time in over 40 years that they have started a season 4-0. The last two times they managed that feat were in 1978 and 1979, and they just so happened to win the Super Bowl in both of those seasons.
The Steelers’ all-time longest winning streak to begin a season is seven games, which they accomplished in 1978. If they are going to match that, then they have a tough road ahead of them, as they have to play three of the five or six toughest teams in the AFC right now, all in a row: the Cleveland Browns, the Tennessee Titans, and the Baltimore Ravens.
It would be a huge boon, obviously, if Pittsburgh could emerge from that gauntlet with a 3-0 record to add to their 4-0, handing some of their fiercest competitors for both the division title and seeding in the AFC additional losses. It would be great if they could simply emerge 2-1.
Things wouldn’t be dire even without a winning record, however. A 1-2 record in this stretch would still leave them at 5-2, which is plenty to work with, and they would be no worse than one game back in the AFC North.
This is a tough stretch of games, including two on the road (in fact, they’ll have three games in a row away from Heinz Field after playing four consecutive games there), but they’ll be through the worst of it once they’re on the other side.
