Maybe you've heard this one before: The Pittsburgh Steelers lost a game they were highly favored to win, against one of the dregs of the NFL, blowing their chance to clinch the AFC North title. Now, whether or not the Steelers make the playoffs will come down to their Week 18 game against the Ravens.
It was all set up for the Steelers on Sunday. They faced a Cleveland Browns team that was 3-12 coming into the game and quarterbacked by Shedeur Sanders, who doesn't currently seem capable of throwing for more than 200 yards. Without DK Metcalf, suspended after hitting a fan last week in Detroit, the Steelers seemed resigned to scoring fewer than 20 points, which they did, losing 13-6. Pittsburgh's offensive gameplan was so anemic and confounding that Myles Garrett is out here proposing a theory about the Steelers caring more about preventing him from getting the single-season sack record than they did winning the game.
"I mean, to an extent. I feel like they were more worried about keeping me away from Aaron [Rodgers] than getting the win, and I think that's what came back to bite him," Garrett told the media after the game. Aaron Rodgers went 21-of-39 for 168 yards with no touchdowns, while Sanders was 17-of-23 and 186 yards with 1 TD and two interceptions. Even with Garrett neutralized by the Steelers' quick and useless passing attack, Cleveland's defense was up to the task, though it's not like they needed too much help.
If you're a Mike Tomlin defender, the one excuse you've leaned on again and again throughout the last decade of ineptitude and playoff losses is that the Steelers have not had a consistently good quarterback since Ben Roethlisberger's body finally fell apart. This was the year that was supposed to change. Sure, the husk of Aaron Rodgers is not exactly elite, but he's the best quarterback they've had in years, and as long as he's healthy he should be reliable. There were a few weeks there where everything seemed to be working out exactly as the Steelers wanted: Rodgers wasn't amazing, but he was efficient, Metcalf was a perfect security blanket for a QB obsessed with making his stats look pristine, and the defense could hold its own. With Baltimore going through an identity crisis and the Bengals being the Bengals, the AFC was right there for the taking. The Steelers had their chance to win the division, so of course they had to blow it. Because that's who the Steelers have become now, a team that—once you buy into their potential—completely trip all over themselves and flame out in glorious 4K definition.
Yesterday's result was so predictable that it seemed cliché to believe it actually might happen. And now this tepid, somehow-still-alive Baltimore Ravens team, with its quarterback getting destroyed in the press for not being made of steel, and its coach who seems to forget that he has one of the all-time great running backs on his team, is still alive for the AFC North title. Either the Steelers will escape with a close win and march off with their 10-7 record to yet another first-round exit, or the Ravens will win by two scores and trick a bunch of people into believing that a playoff run is possible. There are really no other options for these two miserable teams.
