After beating the Tennessee Titans 20-16 on Thursday Night Football to move to 5-3 on the season, former NFL defensive lineman and current ESPN analyst Chris Canty is confident that the Pittsburgh Steelers will be playing beyond Week 18. On Get Up! this morning, Canty was asked about whether the Steelers are legitimate playoff contenders. He unequivocally believes that they are.
“They’re gonna be in the playoffs. Nobody can muck up a game like Mike Tomlin’s business,” Canty said. “When you look at the remaining schedule, there’s no world that exists in which the Pittsburgh Steelers don’t find themselves in the playoffs.”
He added that he liked that Pittsburgh won the toss and chose to receive, giving the offense a chance to prove itself, which it did with an opening drive touchdown.
“That was the first touchdown that they had on an opening drive all season; they were one of two teams not to get it done. That just shows you how smart Mike Tomlin is, knowing what his football team needs each and every week,” Canty said.
Pittsburgh still has four games left against the rest of the AFC North, and three of those games are on the road. But the schedule is fairly favorable when it comes to the Steelers winning at least 10 games, with clear winnable matchups against the Green Bay Packers, Arizona Cardinals, New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts still on the schedule. If you assume the Steelers can win at least three of those games and at least two games against the rest of their division and the Seattle Seahawks, who they face in Week 17, it sure looks like Pittsburgh could be a 10-plus win team this season.
This is still a flawed group, and the offense needs to get better, particularly QB Kenny Pickett. But Pittsburgh just finds a way to win games, and with a supremely talented defense (although one that will need to weather the losses of LB Cole Holcomb and FS Minkah Fitzpatrick), it’s hard to see this team significantly faltering down the stretch. It has the talent to not just make the playoffs but win in the playoffs. The Steelers haven’t won a playoff game since 2016, a streak that’s gone on for far too long, and one that really should be snapped this year.
But it’s going to come down to whether the offense can put the talent together and turn that into execution and improve what’s been a really lackluster performance for much of this season. The remaining schedule is favorable, and last night’s win was incredibly important. We’ll see if that momentum can carry over the next few weeks.
