The Pittsburgh Steelers were the last remaining unbeaten team for several weeks before the Washington Football Team finally took them down. To hear them talk about it, however, it sounds as though their opponents made more of their unbeaten status than the players on the field did.
Of course, you want to win every game you play in—everybody does, generally speaking—but nobody really goes into a season with a concrete goal in mind of going undefeated. The goal is to win the Super Bowl, and winning as many games as possible is in service to that goal.
“I won’t necessarily say that you don’t think about undefeated records and all that, but it’s just one week at a time”, Cameron Sutton told reporters yesterday about the distinction. “Obviously, we know we have a big goal, a big vision and everything, but if we don’t take care of our business week in and week out, we won’t even get the see that opportunity”.
“It’s not about Super Bowls, it’s not about playoff berths, it’s not about none of that”, he went on. “All that stuff comes within what we’re doing, week in, week out. If we’re not taking care of course business on the field to get the result that we want to, we can’t live up to these high expectations that we have for ourselves and for this organization”.
Basically, this is the long-winded version of New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick’s “we’re on to Cincinnati”, which he’s probably feeling right now following last night’s loss to the Los Angeles Rams, which has seen him take a step closer to recording his first losing season in decades.
“We’re worried about Buffalo this week. If anybody’s telling you anything different, they’re in it for the wrong reasons”, Sutton said, though I don’t believe I have seen anybody on the Steelers saying anything specifically about being upset about losing the unbeaten streak.
It is the things that go along with it, of course. While they still retain a hold on the first seed, they are now tied in record with the Kansas City Chiefs, and if they lose another game—even if Kansas City does, too—they will probably fall to the second seed.
The AFC North isn’t secured, either, as the Cleveland Browns are only 9-3, two games back, and the Steelers have to travel there for the second finale. If Pittsburgh, for example, loses to the Cincinnati Bengals somehow, things could get interesting.
