Seeing as the Pittsburgh Steelers have lost back-to-back games to teams with 2-10 records, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to say that the remaining teams on their schedule wouldn’t be fearing a team that looks lost themselves out there on the football field.
That’s the way that ESPN Radio’s Mike Golic sees it, appearing as a guest on The Dan Patrick Show to talk about the state of the AFC North. When addressing the current state of the division and Pittsburgh’s odds of making the postseason, Golic was skeptical, given the caliber of football they’ve played thus far.
“I don’t think anybody fears Pittsburgh,” Golic said on The Dan Patrick Show. “It’s just the fact that it’s Mike Tomlin, and he always has a winning record, and if this team got into the playoffs, you would be like, if I’m a team playing them in the playoffs, I’m not fearing them too much.”
The Steelers have been playing uninspiring football the last few weeks, losing two straight games to teams with losing records after narrowly beating the Cincinnati Bengals in their first game without OC Matt Canada. Before their two losses, Pittsburgh was sitting at 7-4 with a strong chance to go on a run if they would just show up for the games and take care of business by playing good football. In both cases, the offense failed to show up at the beginning of the game, and the defense got gashed by both the Patriots’ and Cardinals’ tight ends in the passing game. They also struggled against the likes of RBs James Conner and Ezekiel Elliott, both of whom had success against them on the ground.
Pittsburgh fell out of the playoff seeding with their loss on Thursday night but reclaimed the sixth seed after Sunday’s slate of games based on the other teams that lost. Still, Golic doesn’t see them holding onto that spot with four games left to go, stating they aren’t playing well enough to convince him that they can close out the season strong.
“I have a hard time believing Pittsburgh’s going to hang on to that,” Golic said. “Right now, they’re in the sixth slot of the Wildcard. I have a hard time believing they’re going to hold onto that.”
Golic compared Pittsburgh, who is sitting at 7-6, to the Denver Broncos, who are sitting at 7-6. He believes that teams would rather fear Denver due to the fact that they are playing hot right now, having started the season 1-5, but have battled back and have won six of their last seven games. Pittsburgh, on the other hand, is playing flat right now, squandering an opportunity to get hot down the stretch by losing to teams that they should beat.
With six teams in the AFC sitting with a 7-6 record, including the Steelers, each team’s play down the stretch is going to be critical for their respective chances at a postseason berth. Pittsburgh must get these internal issues addressed and go back to that team you don’t want hanging around into the second half of games like they were in the first half of the season. Otherwise, Golic’s prediction will become a reality as the Steelers see another potentially promising season fall flat once again.
