It wasn’t so long ago that the Pittsburgh Steelers were 7-4 and seemingly in comfortable position. They controlled their own playoff fate and even remained in position to compete for home-field advantage if they could beat the Baltimore Ravens in the season finale.
Fast forward five weeks and now the finale against the Ravens means something very different—for both teams. Baltimore has already locked up home-field advantage in the AFC playoffs. The Steelers, in most qualifying scenarios, would need to win the game and still get help outside just to qualify for the postseason.
But given the developments of the past couple of weeks, it would be a shame if that did not happen from the perspective of ESPN’s Bill Simmons. With the success of the ground game and the performance of QB Mason Rudolph, Pittsburgh would “be easily the best team that didn’t make the playoffs”, he said on the Bill Simmons podcast.
QB Kenny Pickett went down with an ankle injury during the start of a three-game losing streak that sent the Steelers’ season into a tailspin. They lost to two two-win teams with Mitch Trubisky playing all or most of the game, then lost to the Indianapolis Colts, before the team benched him in favor of Rudolph. They’re 2-0 since then with 64 points. And that could be a bigger chapter in Mike Tomlin’s story than some realize, Simmons argues.
“Pittsburgh in games that Mitch Trubisky didn’t play at least half of is 9-3. So the non-Trubisky Steelers, 9-3”, he said. “Rudolph, I gotta say, I think this goes on Tomlin’s legacy that he has Mason Rudolph and Mitch Trubisky on his roster the last two years and each time he picked Trubisky in any situation over Mason Rudolph, who isn’t just clearly better, he’s like markedly, noticeably, unquestionably better in every respect”.
He added that Rudolph is better than Pickett as well and that the Steelers are perhaps one of the very few teams who could potentially threaten the Ravens in Baltimore. I’m not sure how compelling a point that is, however, given that two of their three losses on the season have been at home. And they had to go to overtime to beat the Los Angeles Rams.
Conversely, the Ravens’ only loss on the road was actually to the Steelers though that was an odd game. They had no business losing that one, if only they could have stopped getting in their own way. They dropped multiple passes in the end zone, for one thing, the only game in which they scored fewer than 19 points all season.
But would the Steelers be the best team not to make the playoffs? There are still a number of different ways this thing could go. At the moment, they are competing with the Buffalo Bills, the Colts, the Houston Texans, and the Jacksonville Jaguars for playoff positioning. An argument could be made for several of them that they are better, even if they don’t make the playoffs.
