The Pittsburgh Steelers made it through the first half of their schedule with a .667 winning percentage. But they only had to go through two AFC North opponents along the way, defeating the Cleveland Browns and the Baltimore Ravens.
Half of their remaining schedule will come against their divisional opponents, including each of the next two against the Browns and the Cincinnati Bengals. Even with both of them having lost their quarterbacks this past week, the Steelers understand how these games go, and how critical the division will be in deciding their fate.
“We’re about to go through this gauntlet of AFC North opponents”, CB Patrick Peterson said on Friday, via the team’s website. “That could be the difference in where we end up at the end of the year”, he added, noting their four remaining games, including two against the Bengals and a finale against the Ravens.
The 2022 season was an unusual one in which every single team in the division split with their rivals. The Steelers, for example, beat the Browns once and lost to them once, and so on with the Ravens and the Bengals. Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Baltimore all followed the same pattern within the division.
That won’t happen this year since the Ravens already beat the Bengals twice. In fact, they have nearly all of their divisional play in the rearview mirror, currently 3-2 overall, with only the finale against the Steelers remaining.
The Browns, meanwhile, are currently 2-2, splitting with the Ravens and beating the Bengals while losing to the Steelers. Cincinnati has not had a good time of it at all, currently 0-3 in the division with a pair of losses to the Ravens and one to the Browns. Next week’s game against the Steelers will be the first meeting of the season between the two.
Generally speaking, the NFL prefers to schedule a decent chunk of divisional games in the second half of teams’ seasons. They have certainly done so for the Steelers this year, though they did the exact opposite for the Ravens. That makes these final two months particularly important for Pittsburgh as they work to position themselves to battle for the AFC North in the final week of the season.
“November football is important for everybody because that’s when those division games [come] and you start to separate yourself on the back half of the season”, Peterson acknowledged. For the Steelers, three of their four remaining divisional games will come against backup quarterbacks.
Pittsburgh is only 4-3 outside of the division this year with losses to the San Francisco 49ers, the Houston Texans, and the Jacksonville Jaguars, so they had better stack victories in-house. A strong record inside of the AFC North will be a prerequisite for making the playoffs, let alone claiming a division title.
