The didn’t get many style points in Week 3, but the Pittsburgh Steelers found a way to win an ugly game on the road against the New England Patriots. Five forced turnovers will help with that.
Despite the win, there are a lot of questions about the Steelers moving forward. There’s no question though that with the win, the Steelers moved up in NFL power rankings across the media landscape entering Week 4.
After falling into a fringe top-20 situation in Week 3, the Steelers jumped back up to middle of the pack, thanks to that rock-fight win in Foxboro, a place where they hadn’t won since 2008.
Below is a chart of aggregate power rankings from several major outlets.
| Outlet | Rank | +/- |
| CBS Sports/Prisco | 18 | +3 |
| ESPN | 17 | +4 |
| NFL.com/Edholm | 16 | +4 |
| Pro Football Talk/Florio | 13 | +4 |
| The Athletic | 15 | +2 |
| Average Rank | 15.8 | +3.4 |
Across the board, the Steelers sit right around No. 15-16 in power rankings. The one that has the Steelers the lowest is put together by CBS Sports’ Pete Prisco, who has Pittsburgh at No. 18 entering its Week 4 trip to Dublin to take on the Minnesota Vikings.
On the other hand, Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio has the Steelers at No. 13, which is surprising considering how harsh he’s been on them since March.
For NFL.com’s Eric Edholm, who has the Steelers at No. 16 in his power rankings, their situational football was “mostly good,” which played a key factor in their win and the improvement they made from Week 2 to Week 3.
“The Steelers started hot and finished strong, but the in-between was shockingly bad for stretches offensively. Even Pittsburgh’s defense, which came up with several big plays, had room for improvement, allowing New England to stay in the game until the final minutes despite ending up plus-four in the turnover margin,” Edholm writes. “There were too many negative plays offensively (nine, not counting kneel downs) and very few explosive gains. Defensively, critical penalties and steady gains from the Pats nearly undid the Steelers, but two massive red-zone takeaways bailed them out.
“The situational football was mostly good Sunday, but the Steelers have to come away from this game knowing they were fortunate not to blow all the extra possessions they gained. This was a much-needed win, but there’s still plenty to tidy up before Ireland.”
Yes, the Steelers still had plenty of issues offensively, and the defense had major issues with communication again, and failing to get off the field on 3rd and long. Those are concerning. But the most important thing is that the Steelers were able to weather those issues and find a way to win the football game.
It’s better to make the mistakes and do so in a win, learning from it in the process, than make those mistakes in a loss and have the pain of the mistakes and the loss combine.
September football can be very ugly across the board in the NFL, especially with the limited practices and guys simply not playing in preseason action anymore. It happens. The Steelers are no different from any other team.
They’re still building and growing, and doing so while winning is a major boost.
Now, they have to have a good week of practice ahead of a difficult trip to Dublin to take on the Vikings in the Black and Gold’s first international game since 2013.
