Sitting at 7-7 and on a three-game losing streak, the odds of the Pittsburgh Steelers making the playoffs are dwindling. Not impossible, the book isn’t closed, but it’ll take them winning out and getting help in the process.
But not all hope is lost. Even if you’re fed up and done with the season, there’s still several storylines to watch that don’t deal directly with Pittsburgh’s playoff chances. No ESPN simulators here (besides that one in the link). We’re just looking at individual storylines even assuming the next three games are all the Steelers will play this year.
1. Kenny Pickett’s Return And Play
Even if he doesn’t play this weekend, it’s looking like QB Kenny Pickett will be healthy enough to play out the final two weeks of the season. A pair of road contests against the Seattle Seahawks in Week 17 and the Baltimore Ravens in Week 18.
And even if the games mean little or nothing, Pickett still needs the evaluation from playing without Matt Canada. That was a driving reason behind firing Canada; Pickett wasn’t developing the way the team needs him to. Since, we’ve only gotten to see 1.5 games of him with Eddie Faulkner and Mike Sullivan, performing well against the Cincinnati Bengals and struggling in the first half of the Arizona Cardinals game before getting hurt.
While it seems clear Faulkner and Sullivan won’t be leading the offense in 2024, there’s still value in judging Pickett’s performance without Canada calling the plays, especially given the promising early returns. Was that a one-game fluke or can it be replicated? Let’s find out.
2. T.J. Watt Looks To Break Sack Record
As we wrote Sunday night, Watt enters Week 16 as the NFL’s sack leader with 16 of them. If he can manage seven over his final three games, he’ll own the NFL single-season sack record he currently holds a share of. Getting there will be tough but all it takes is a classic-Watt game with two or three sacks to make things interesting reading into the Week 18 finale.
And if the Baltimore Ravens rest their starters for that last week? Maybe he can tack on a couple sacks in the finale against Tyler Huntley. Watt has 4.5 sacks in regular-season finales throughout his career with at least a half-sack in every single one of those games.
3. Does Any Young/New Face Emerge For 2024?
If Mike Tomlin is going to make the personnel changes he’s floated, will there be a new face who either hasn’t played or logged just a handful of snaps who can suddenly become part of the team’s 2024 plans? We’ve seen S Trenton Thompson go from practice squader to seeing regular playing time as Pittsburgh’s been hit hard by injuries.
Could someone like rookie CB Darius Rush get a hat again these final few weeks and log extra reps to pad out his bumpy first year, bouncing from team to team?
Would somebody like a Spencer Anderson ever get to see the field along the offensive line, especially if Pittsburgh is officially eliminated from the playoffs with games to play? They’re not going to give snaps just for the sake of it, but injuries could create an opportunity, especially if OG Isaac Seumalo gets shut down after battling through a shoulder injury.
4. The Fight In The Group
Will this Steelers team fight until the end? Culture seems like a real concern right now and this group is struggling to play hard throughout the whole game with the season on the line. Now that the Steelers’ playoffs chances have all but dried up, what will this group look like? What happens if the Steelers are eliminated? Does the feeling and look of this team change any more? It’s not often this team plays meaningless games.
How these players finish at the end of the year, their fight and resolve and toughness, may define them as much as the actual outcome of whether or not they’re playing in the postseason.
