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: What would a decisive Steelers victory over a Cincinnati Bengals team with a backup quarterback mean after a trio of rough outings?
The Steelers are 11-2 and have the second-best record in the league. Suffice it to say that fans are absolutely livid at their team and miserable in general about the entire season. I kid, of course, but the Steelers have already secured a postseason berth with more to come.
With that say, they have obviously had their share of problems lately, having lost their past two games, and having played relatively poorly in their last three, being held to under 20 for three straight games after scoring at least 24 in their first 10 games.
So what if they come out today and dominate the Bengals? Obviously, it’s better than the alternative, but what does it say about the team? Nobody is going to be convinced that they’ve suddenly righted the ship by taking down one of the lowest teams in the league who don’t even have their quarterback, but it has to mean more than nothing.
It goes without saying that skeptics will be more interested to see how they do against the Indianapolis Colts and the Cleveland Browns in the final two games of the season, a pair of teams that appear to be headed to a postseason berth.
