While many have pegged the Pittsburgh Steelers to be a potential contender and dark horse in the AFC North, former NFL running back and current analyst Maurice Jones-Drew isn’t buying it. During an appearance on NFL Total Access this week, he shot down the notion that the Steelers were dark-horse contenders to win the division.
“No. The reason being is it’s not about the defense,” Jones-Drew said. “It’s on their offense. They have to score more points.”
While recognizing the Steelers made moves to improve the offense and development should come for Kenny Pickett and the team’s young receivers, he believes the AFC North is just too difficult.
“This is the problem. They are in the toughest division in football. You have the Cincinnati Bengals, the Baltimore Ravens and the Cleveland Browns, and they have all gotten better,” Jones-Drew said. “This is a tough division, and if any team could do it and a team that I wouldn’t go against would be Mike Tomlin and the Pittsburgh Steelers, but it’s probably the toughest division in football right now and it’s going to be hard to win game in, game out.”
The general public is high on Pittsburgh, with the Steelers being the most-bet team to win the division on BetMGM. But it’s going to be tough to compete with the likes of the Bengals and the Ravens if Pittsburgh’s offense doesn’t get going.
Given that’s Jones-Drew’s biggest concern, it’s fair for him to believe the Steelers don’t have a shot at winning the division. But there’s certainly a scenario where Pickett takes a leap in his second season and the offense puts enough points on the board to complement the defense. If the Steelers offense can average somewhere around 23 points per game, the defense is good enough for Pittsburgh to win enough games to take the division.
It’s not going to be easy, but it never is in the AFC North. Pickett needs to improve his play from last season and play more like the quarterback he was in the second half of the year. Getting Diontae Johnson more involved could lead to nice seasons out of him and second-year WR George Pickens.
If the offense doesn’t step up and Pickett can’t elevate his play — and the Steelers have to win games because of their defense without help from the offense — then winning the division probably won’t happen. But the offense stepping up and doing enough that the Steelers can win 10 or 11 games and find themselves at the top of the division is plausible, and there’s potential that this could be one of Pittsburgh’s best seasons in recent history.
