There are many fans and media analysts who are surprised to see the Pittsburgh Steelers entering Week 13 of the season with a 7-4 record and holding the top Wild-Card seed in the AFC.
Multiple media personalities, like ESPN’s Mike Greenberg, have criticized the Steelers as a pretender, seeing how bad they have been playing on offense and how that doesn’t match up with their winning record. The scoring offense ranks 28th in the league and while the defense ranks fifth in points allowed, the Steelers sit at 25th in football in yards allowed as they have surrendered large amounts of yardage albeit while doing a good job of keeping opponents out of the end zone.
Still, Pittsburgh has defied the odds and looks to be trending in the right direction after firing OC Matt Canada and racking up another win in Cincinnati last weekend. The cast of NBC Sports’ Fantasy Football Happy Hour spoke about Pittsburgh’s Week 12 win against the Bengals. Show co-host Jay Croucher stated that the Steelers are positioned to go on a run the next month of the season and for head coach Mike Tomlin to make a serious case to win an award that has eluded him despite all of his success.
“Their next four games: one, they get to play the Bengals again in a month and in between now and then, Arizona, New England, and Indianapolis,” Croucher said via video from NFL on NBC’s YouTube Channel. “This team is going to be 11-4! They might be the 25th-best team in football. They’re going to be 11-4. Mike Tomlin has to win Coach of the Year if they get to 11-4.”
The Steelers find themselves in a pretty sweet spot as they are scheduled to play the 2-10 Arizona Cardinals this weekend and the 2-9 New England Patriots the following Thursday. They’ll face the 6-5 Indianapolis Colts, who are led by QB Gardner Minshew with rookie QB Anthony Richardson out for the season after undergoing surgery on his throwing shoulder. The Colts may be without RB Jonathan Taylor, who is having surgery on his thumb and is expected to miss a couple of weeks, when they host the Steelers on Dec. 17 . The Steelers will finish that four-game stretch by playing the Bengals again in Pittsburgh with QB Jake Browning again leading that offense with starting QB Joe Burrow out for the year due to a wrist injury.
Should Pittsburgh rattle off all four wins in a row, it would be locked into a playoff spot with a chance to take the AFC North crown from the Baltimore Ravens at the end of the year. Should Pittsburgh make it to 11-4 with two games left in the year, it would be hard to keep the NFL Coach of the Year award away from Tomlin. He would have managed to overcome an in-season coordinator change, losing multiple starters to injury for the season while having many others miss extensive time throughout the season, while still winning games with an offense failing to score over 20 points several times this season.
If I would have told you at the beginning of the season that this team would win 11 games in 2023, you would’ve signed up for that in a heartbeat. The wins may not have come in the way we want, with an efficient offense and Pickett tearing it up in the passing game, but the offense appears to be hitting its stride with six regular-season games to go.
It’s best not to write anything in pen as we sit here today. But when looking at the Steelers’ upcoming opponents and how they looked against the Bengals last week, getting to 11 wins after this four-game stretch looks like a real possibility for the Black and Gold.
