Bye week blues: Steelers' task looks tougher as AFC contenders score big wins
One of the best things about an NFL bye week is that you can’t lose. Literally. You can’t lose if you don’t play a game. Teams crave the bye because they get healthier, and they can catch their breath and regroup for the rest of the season. To hear just about everyone around the Steelers – players, coaches, reporters who cover the team – tell it, the bye week turned their season around last year.
Perhaps the same will happen this year; maybe a team whose wretched offense has taken what would otherwise be a respectable 3-2 start and surrounded it with bad vibes will find answers on that side of the ball, and look like a different group the rest of the way.
We won’t start to get answers on that front until this Sunday, when the Steelers head to Los Angeles to take on the Rams.
Judged solely by what happened to other AFC teams this past weekend, the bye week brought nothing but bad news for Mike Tomlin’s team. Where do you want to start?
I don’t blame you if you thought the Browns were dead meat against the vaunted 49ers, even with Cleveland’s defense standing tall as perhaps the second-best in the league behind San Francisco’s. After all, P.J. Walker was starting at quarterback for the still-injured Deshaun Watson, and the Niners had looked more or less unstoppable all season.
All Cleveland did was pull their biggest upset – they were 9.5-point underdogs – since 2010, winning 19-17, stifling Brock Purdy and San Francisco’s high-powered offense, moving their record to 3-2 and making it very clear that their defense is going to be a force to be reckoned with every game this season. Seeing what they did to the 49ers makes it feel like a miracle that the Steelers beat them.
Baltimore went over to London and handled their business against the Tennessee Titans, and wouldn’t you know it, Lamar Jackson looks like a pretty good passer when his receivers are actually catching the football. What’s more, the Ravens still played far from a perfect game and could easily have blown Tennessee’s doors off. But they’re still 4-2, and I came away from watching their game thinking that they’ll keep improving.
Cincinnati’s defense, almost as big an early-season problem as Joe Burrow’s gimpy calf, showed up in a big way and powered the team to a win over a good Seattle team. The Bengals’ 1-3 start seems like a distant memory, and suddenly they’re only a game out of first place, and unless Burrow has a setback, they look well-positioned to be a force the rest of the way.
Not only that, but the Texans scored an impressive win over New Orleans; the Raiders snuck past the Patriots; and the Jets, down both starting cornerbacks, including reigning defensive rookie of the year Sauce Gardner, pulled a stunner on the level of Cleveland’s win over San Francisco, and downed the defending NFC champion Eagles, allowing the 1972 Miami Dolphins to pop champagne pretty early this year.
I’m skeptical that the Raiders will have staying power, but much like Cleveland, the Jets’ defense should keep them in every game, and there’s always the chance that Zach Wilson keeps coming along as the season progresses. Houston? I think the Texans will be there right until the end, and they have a head-to-head win over the Steelers. C.J. Stroud finally threw an interception, then engineered a touchdown drive the next time he had the ball. That looks like a team on the rise.
Suddenly there’s quite the logjam in the AFC; 12 of the conference’s 16 teams have at least 3 wins, and that number could get to 13 after Monday Night. In other words, it’s shaping up that there will be quite the battle for the seven available playoff spots. As currently constructed, I don’t like the way the Steelers stack up against most of them; the offense is bad, as we know, and the defense is vulnerable when it isn’t forcing turnovers.
A conference that was supposed to be brutal coming into the season actually looks a little less imposing at the top but deeper than it previously appeared. The hill to climb for a playoff berth seems steeper now than it did Sunday morning.
You can’t lose on a bye week, but after seeing Sunday’s results? Well, let’s just say things could have gone better for the Steelers.
This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Bye week blues: Steelers' task looks tougher as AFC contenders score big wins
