Over the last few seasons, the Pittsburgh Steelers haven’t had the highest outside expectations, lacking a playoff win in nearly a decade. This year is different after a flurry of moves that defined the type of offseason many Steelers fans have never seen before. That’s raised their expectations, at least for Adam Schein.
“I think the Pittsburgh Steelers are going to be excellent this year. Tremendous,” Schein said Wednesday on his Schein On Sports show. “Now what does excellent mean? I think the Steelers are going to win 11 games. I think the Steelers are going to fight Baltimore for the division. Steelers’ defense, I believe, is going to be top five in the NFL. And I think people are genuinely sleeping on how great Pittsburgh’s gonna be this year.”
“I believe Pittsburgh’s winning a playoff game this year. I think Pittsburgh is going to challenge everybody.”
Schein has come a long way on the Steelers. Earlier in the offseason he was extremely low on them, expecting them to win only five or six games. To be fair, a lot has happened since then, including some major additions in Aaron Rodgers and Jalen Ramsey. That’s part of the reason he’s so excited about Pittsburgh, which he further clarified in a post to his X account Wednesday.
Schein is “obsessed” with those additions, and he’s got reason to feel that way. While the Steelers don’t have a ton of depth behind DK Metcalf, he presents a playmaking option they haven’t seen at the receiver position in quite some time and has several years of consistent production.
Defensively, Darius Slay and Jalen Ramsey help transform a secondary that struggled last year. The defense was solid for most of the season, but during the Steelers’ five-game skid to end the year the secondary was simply picked apart. Pittsburgh’s putting an emphasis on communication after falling apart late last year.
They should be able to steer clear of that with their offseason additions. Most importantly, Slay and Ramsey represent the mentality the front office has shown in building this roster, which is an effort to acquire players with that playoff experience. Slay just won the Super Bowl with the Philadelphia Eagles. Ramsey has been a key part of many playoff runs in his day and won a Super Bowl with the Los Angeles Rams in 2021. Aaron Rodgers has one championship under his belt and has been a frequent flyer in the playoffs as well.
Whether this is all enough for the Steelers to finally taste a playoff win remains to see been. However, there certainly seems to be more optimism this offseason. We’ll see if this unit has what it takes to live up to the hype.
