It’s no secret the Pittsburgh Steelers have had a bit of an unconventional start to the season. Somehow, through six games they’ve been equally inspiring and uninspiring.
On the inspiring side, they’ve had all the intangibles and then some. Every time they need one, the defense seems to come through with a big play. When the lights are shining bright down the stretch of games, Kenny Pickett seems to come through.
However, it almost doesn’t feel sustainable. It feels like a few of their wins hinged on quite a few things going their way down the stretch. In their two losses, they were decimated. One of those games was against a rookie quarterback and a Houston Texans team that few projected would make the playoffs this season.
For former NFL linebacker and current analyst Bart Scott, it isn’t sustainable at all. He had some choice words for the team, especially the offense, on Get Up on ESPN Friday.
“We know the reality of it. They’ve lucked their way, only Mike Tomlin can pull this stuff off. This offense has been garbage. This team has been garbage, they can easily be 2-4. If they didn’t have. You can’t depend on T.J. to continue to save the day and this defense to save the day.” Scott claimed. “I love Mike Tomlin, I think he’s one of the best in the business. But this is god-awful on offense. This is ineptitude at its finest.”
I’d argue Scott is at least a little bit unfair here. The offense has been bad sure, but it has shown flashes and fought through injuries to a few of their key weapons in Pat Freiermuth and Diontae Johnson. They already looked better in Johnson’s first full game last Sunday.
But, Scott does make some good points. Has watching any game from start to finish left you feeling particularly great about their 60-minute performance? This feels like a flukey start for the Steelers. And that’s because it is.
Let’s look at the Steelers’ point difference through six games, which stands at -24. Another way to look at this is an average of -4 points per game, which we can apply to historical full seasons to see if there are any comparisons for the Steelers. There are only three teams to ever make the playoffs (not counting the wonky 1982 strike season) with a season-long point differential that bad. Those teams are the 2004 St. Louis Rams, who went 8-8, the 2010 Beastquake Seattle Seahawks, who went 7-9, and the 2011 Denver Broncos led by Tim Tebow who went 8-8 (and delivered a brutal playoff loss to the Steelers).
Even if we loosen up the requirement to half of the negative point differential per game, just -2, we still only have 14 historical examples of playoff teams. None of them went better than 10-7.
As Bart Scott alluded to, something has gotta give. Either the Steelers will start losing games, or their offense will need to step up. There just isn’t a historical precedent for anything in between.
