The Pittsburgh Steelers picked up a 34-32 victory over the New York Jets to open the 2025 NFL season this past Sunday. It was an offensive shootout that saw the Steelers surpass 30-plus points against the Jets for the second consecutive season. Still, that scoring output was just the seventh time that the Steelers have surpassed the 30-point mark since the start of the 2022 season, a reminder of the team’s struggles since Ben Roethlisberger retired.
New quarterback Aaron Rodgers shined in his Steelers debut, passing for 244 yards and four touchdowns against his old team. It marked the 28th time Rodgers has thrown four or more touchdowns with zero interceptions in a contest in his storied career, tying Tom Brady for the most in NFL history.
Alongside Rodgers’ strong performance was a less than expected one from the Steelers defense. A unit that surrendered 394 total yards to the Justin Fields-led Jets offense, including 182 yards on the ground on 39 carries, a 4.7 yards per carry on average. It was a performance not aligned with the expectations from the NFL’s top-paid defensive unit.
On both ends, Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd thinks the Steelers’ showing was an outlier.
“So this idea that they scored a bunch of [points],” he said on The Herd Friday afternoon. “Pittsburgh was a mirage in Week One. First of all, their defense will be much better against Seattle. They got all these new pieces. Pittsburgh’s defense is not that bad. It’s gonna be much better against the Seahawks. And Aaron is not gonna go four touchdowns and no picks and have that time to throw…stats and scoreboard can be way overvalued.”
Seattle faced the San Francisco 49ers in Week One, an offense led by Brock Purdy, forcing two interceptions despite a 17-13 loss. In that game, Purdy got the football out of his at 3.05 seconds on average, which ranked 4th in the NFL per NFL Next Gen Stats in Week One behind Justin Fields (3.53), Jalen Hurts (3.17), and Jared Goff (3.09). In comparison, Aaron Rodgers got the football out at 2.43 seconds, the third-lowest mark last week just ahead of Matthew Stafford (2.42) and Patrick Mahomes (2.38).
San Francisco held the Seahawks offense to 230 total yards on offense and 4.6 yards per play, 1.8 yards per play less than what the Jets (6.4) had against the Steelers in Week One. With Pittsburgh eager for a bounce-back performance for its first home game, Cowherd expects better results.
“I think what you’re gonna see, the Steelers defense is gonna come to play,” Cowherd said. “They’re gonna play much better. They’re at home, they can’t play worse, and Seattle is gonna just try to pound it out and put Darnold in very few positions to fail.”
After an offensive fireworks show to begin the year, Cowherd expects the encore performance to look like the Steelers of old.
“I think it’s a very close, very low scoring game.”
