The Pittsburgh Steelers entered the final week of the regular season needing help in order to get to the playoffs. The interesting thing is that they needed help to get in—regardless of whether they won or not. Of course, winning provided more pathways, but they could neither secure a playoff spot nor be eliminated simply by winning or losing.
As it turned out, the Steelers got all the help they needed, but only because they handled their own business. There was a scenario in which they could have lost Saturday’s game to the Baltimore Ravens and have still qualified for the postseason at 9-8. They needed three different games to break their way to reach the postseason in the event of a loss, only two of which happened, as I broke down last week explaining how and why it was possible.
The point is, we shouldn’t really look at this as the Steelers “needing help”, although technically true. All the teams involved needed to take care of their own business to get their results. Some of them did, some of them didn’t. Who controlled their destiny and who didn’t at times came down to random factors about who they beat and who they lost to rather than who might be better or worse.
The Jaguars losing was the only help they needed that they actually got, as it turned out. The Buffalo Bills beat the Miami Dolphins. So even though they knew by yesterday afternoon that they were locked into the postseason, the reality is the margins ended up being slim. All the more reason to give them their respect for handling their business and posting a 10-7 record against a formidable schedule.
As a reminder of the three things that needed to happen:
- Jaguars lose
Done done and done. although they efforted to make it interesting late, the Tennessee Titans were in control for most of the game, from the middle of the second quarter on. They had an eight-point lead by halftime and later made it 15. Jacksonville was only down by one possession for basically the entire fourth quarter (28-20, the final score), but could never find the end zone again.
The Steelers needed the Jaguars to lose in the event that they also lost because they both went into the final week with 9-7 records. Jacksonville would have claimed a postseason spot as the division winner if they won, with the Houston Texans (or Indianapolis Colts) getting one Wildcard spot.
- Broncos win
The Steelers needed the Broncos to win because not only could they not have the Jaguars finish with a better record than them, because it was impossible for Jacksonville to finish with a worse record if Pittsburgh lost, they needed another team that could enter a three-way tiebreaker scenario. That’s because Jacksonville beat them head to head, so a Wildcard contender from a third division was necessary.
That would have been the Broncos had they managed to beat the Las Vegas Raiders, but they couldn’t. in fact it wasn’t really even that close. The final score was 27-14 and the Broncos didn’t get their second touchdown until five minutes into the fourth quarter. They spent the entire second half down by two scores.
- Colts and Texans don’t tie
This is an interesting one because the Steelers wanted them to tie since they won. Had they tied, Pittsburgh’s win would have been enough to get them into the postseason. In a loss, they would have needed one or other of the Colts or Texans to lose so that they don’t both finish with a better record (9-7-1) than the Steelers (9-8). In that event, both could have made the playoffs over Pittsburgh.
And yet even that game was interesting. The game was tied in the second half for about 13 minutes combined on two separate occasions, though a missed extra point kind of screwed things up. Houston ultimately won, and with the Jaguars’ loss, claimed the division title in C.J. Stroud’s rookie year.
While the Steelers are the seventh seed, they finish tied in the AFC for the sixth-best record and, by a good margin, the best strength of victory in the entire NFL. They also played the fourth-toughest schedule overall in the NFL, beating the 13-4 Baltimore Ravens twice. They recorded five wins over teams who qualified for the playoffs, 5-3 overall.
