The Steelers were 8-2 and riding a five-game win streak just a week ago. Then they lost to the Cleveland Browns on the road on Thursday Night Football in the snow. Suddenly, the sky is falling in the eyes of some television football analysts. Could the loss to the Browns have triggered the beginning of the end for the Steelers’ season? One analyst seems to think so.
“Is the panic button pushed if they lose in Cincinnati?” Jason McIntyre said on FS1’s The Herd. “I know people will scoff at the Browns, but it’s that division. It’s gonna be a dog fight. And then it’s the Eagles, who are arguably the second or third best team in the league. The Ravens, we know that’s gonna be a comeback revenge game for Baltimore. Kansas City, probably trying to lock up the number one seed and then the Bengals trying to get it.
“There’s a world where, the Steelers, if they lose this, they lose out. They don’t win another game this season.”
Personally, this is a wild overreaction to a loss against the division rival Browns in the snow, on the road, on Thursday night. The Ravens lost to that same team with far less excuses than that, and nobody was talking about them losing out. I will remind everybody that, if the Steelers beat the Bengals, they are guaranteed to enter the final four weeks of the season with the AFC North lead.
That being said, I get what McIntyre is saying about the difficult schedule. We have known this since way back when the schedule was announced in the offseason. The Steelers got off to a great start on the final stretch with wins over the Washington Commanders and Ravens, and now there’s already talk of them losing out after one loss?
That would be a seven-game losing streak to finish the season. That would be worse than the monumental collapse at the end of the 2020 season when the Steelers lost four of the last five to back their way into the playoffs at 12-4. Tomlin’s teams have been pretty good at avoiding back-to-back losses over the years, let alone seven in a row.
To be fair, McIntyre’s co-host Colin Cowherd shut down this idea pretty firmly.
“No, Pittsburgh’s gonna beat Cincinnati,” Cowherd said.
This is an outlandish take by McIntyre, but it gives us all a sneak preview at the kind of negativity that will be surrounding the Steelers if they end up losing on the road to the Bengals this Sunday.
