The Pittsburgh Steelers come into Sunday’s game against the Buffalo Bills as big underdogs. Not many are picking them to go into Highmark Stadium and come out with a victory.
The only team to pull that off this season was the Denver Broncos in Week 10, when they pulled off a 24-22 road win on Monday night football.
But it goes deeper than that for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Three weeks ago, they were sitting at 7-7, coming off three straight horrible losses. They had dropped back-to-back games to two-win teams in the Cardinals and the Patriots and then got thoroughly dominated by the Colts. If this wasn’t bad enough, they were preparing to hand the rock to their third-string quarterback in Week 16. In other words, they were left for dead.
But the Zombie Steelers did what they’ve done best all season: lull everyone to sleep early, and come through late to win the game, or in this case, make the playoffs.
With this up-and-down season has come a fair share of doubters in the media. But for WR Diontae Johnson, it only serves to motivate him, as he shared in a press conference today via Steelers.com.
“I feel like everybody has great energy, nobody was expecting us to be here.” Johnson noted. “For us to overcome all that stuff we’ve been through this year, it is great, cause that shows that we are still together, we stick together with one another and we’re chasing this goal, taking it one day at a time and just trying to win, that’s all it is…They going to count us out regardless. Because we’re just the Steelers and they are the Bills. This is politics. So you can’t really feed into it.”
Looking at the Wild Card game odds courtesy of VSiN, we see that Johnson is right. The Steelers are ten-point underdogs against the Bills, the highest spread of the six games by two and a half points.
The hype has been building around the Buffalo Bills, who made a similar move to the Steelers when they fired offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey midseason. Since then, the team has been on a tear, winning their last five games to pick up an improbable AFC East title.
But can’t a lot of the reasons the Bills have so much hype be used to hype the Steelers too? Recent OC change, getting hot at the right time, a lot of coaches/players who are used to the bright lights? You can make the argument sure, but it’s going to be hard for a lot of people to bet on Mason Rudolph performing better than Josh Allen in a playoff game until Rudolph proves the lights aren’t too bright for him.
For Johnson and the Steelers, being an underdog is just a fact of life right now. But win just one game on Sunday, and the narrative shifts.
