The Pittsburgh Steelers may have qualified for the playoffs, but their three-game win streak to end the season hasn’t earned them a different image in the eyes of the oddsmakers or the media. Many are expecting the Sunday afternoon game to be a walk in the park for the Buffalo Bills. They are entering the postseason on a five-game winning streak and they needed every last one of them. They have more or less been in playoff mode for the last month-plus of the season. Currently the Steelers are 10-point underdogs.
Former NFL player and executive and now prominent member of the media, Louis Riddick, joined the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Brian Batko on his Chipped Ham and Football podcast and offered a counter opinion to the Steelers underdog narrative.
“This is a team that has a lot of resolve,” Riddick said via the video posted on Post-Gazette Sports’ YouTube channel. “They don’t hear a lot of noise even when things are going bad. And they’re uniquely, I think, qualified to go into this kind of environment and shock some people if they stay true to who they are and can execute.”
Some may have guessed the Steelers would finish 10-7 but not many would have correctly picked the path to get there. The once 7-4 team found itself at 7-7 on the outside looking in at the AFC playoff field before winning the final three games of the season. The Bills and Steelers are similar in that way, as both dealt with a slew of negative media narratives at one point in the season.
More than the intangible factors of this matchup, Riddick discussed some on-field reasons why the Steelers have a chance.
“Pittsburgh’s one of the very best in turnover differential in the league this year, okay? So in playoff football, cold weather, they’re used to protecting the football, number one,” Riddick said. “Controlling field position, number two. Number three, what started this three-game run they’re on? Basically they’ve been leading the league in number of rushes per game.”
His point about turnover differential could play a huge factor in this game. Mason Rudolph has not thrown an interception this season in his three starts. Kenny Pickett was also excelling in that area, so beyond the play of the quarterbacks the offensive system as a whole does a nice job avoiding turnovers. The Steelers finished the season with a plus-11 turnover differential with 27 takeaways and only 16 giveaways. The Bills have done a nice job taking the ball away, but they had 30 giveaways during the regular sesaon, the fifth-most in the league.
As for the running game, the Steelers have been one of the best rushing units in the league over the second half of the season. The Bills have allowed 4.6 yards per carry, which is the fifth-most in the league. As long as the Steelers can stay competitive in the game and not be forced to abandon the run, they will have a very good chance of replicating their recent rushing success.
“I think this will be one of those games where people are gonna think Buffalo should kind of just roll right through this one. No, no, no, no. I don’t see it that way,” Riddick said.
