What Do You Think About the Steelers?

Someone asked me this on Sunday night and, when I actually stopped and thought about it, I have to say that I feel very good about the Steelers.

We're 6-2 and five of our last eight are at home. We've got the Bungles and the Browns in there and the rest of the games are definitely winnable. We'll probably finish out at 11-5, but the match-ups look favorable.

That puts us in the playoffs, probably as the #3 seed, so that makes me think about whether or not we could get to the Super Bowl. If the season ended today, we'd be the #2 seed and the other playoff teams would be the Bills, the Patriots, the Jets, the Broncos, and the Titans.

Three teams on the bubble: hated Ravens, Colts, Chargers.

Bills:

They have a good defense, a great wide receiver that has a hot chick's name (Lee Evans), and Marshawn Lynch. With the way we've been stopping the run and taking away the other team's best receiver, that leaves things up to a defense that is good, but has been shaky, and... Trent Edwards.

Patriots:

No Tom Brady, Randy Moss is starting to give up, and their running game is suspect. The X-Factor in this one is that Bill Bellichick could send out 11 paraplegics on defense and still stop our offense.

As a matter of fact, they're the team that scares me the most. Hopefully, they either miss the playoffs or someone will take them out before we have to play them. Seriously. Brady or no Brady, these guys scare me.

Jets:

Favre in a playoff game, bad defense, no real running game. Let's move on.

Broncos:

Change "Favre" to "Cutler" and "bad" to "fucking terrible".

Titans:

They have been winning games by playing great defense and running the ball. We usually win games by playing great defense and running the ball.

So, let's say that the "great defense and running the ball" cancels itself out on both sides. At that point, it's a matter of, "who has the better quarterbacks and receivers?"

Kerry Collins is decent, but he's 100 years old and he's no Ben Roethlisberger. Our third receiver (Nate Washington) is better than their best receiver (Brandon Jones). As a matter of fact, Limas Sweed is probably better than every receiver on their roster.

We might lose the regular season game, but we won't lose to this team in the playoffs.

Colts:

They're on the bubble and I have them in the mix here because they're the Colts and they have Peyton Manning. They have a lot of other good players in addition to Manning, so you can't count them out.

Of course, we could do ourselves a big favor by beating them on Sunday.

The other thing to consider is this: Historically, the Colts have kicked ass early on in the season and sucked balls late. Maybe they're reversing that trend this year and they're going to come on strong in December. Stranger things have happened.

Chargers:

Same deal as the Colts, but just that they have too much talent in general to count them out. They lost two freaky games at the beginning of the season, so they could really be 5-3. They kind came unglued, though, after those first two games and have given up 199 points.

To put that number in perspective, the Lions are only giving up 5 points per game more and the Steelers are giving up over 10 points per game less. The Chargers have the best defense in the AFC West, but that's definitely a "leper with the best dick" scenario.

They can be squirrely, but they can also be beaten. And, conveniently enough, we play them after the Colts.

Hated Ravens:

I really think they fade in the next eight games and end up missing the playoffs, but I would not look forward to playing these guys then. They're the hated Ravens, they always play us tough, and they'd like nothing better than to screw our season up by knocking us out of the playoffs.

Then, you start thinking that unibrow afficianado Joe Flacco is going to be starting that playoff game and you start feeling a little better.

Don't start feeling too comfortable, though. Like the Patriots, this is a team that I would rather not see in the playoffs at all.

So, basically, the next two weeks are critical. If we can beat the Colts and Chargers back-to-back, then we get Cincinnati and maybe a chance to kill New England's season.

Playing a schedule that's as tough as ours is bad in that we play a lot of really good teams. But, it's good in that we can knock some of those teams out of the playoffs by beating them so we won't have to play them again.

That's the kind of stretch we're facing in the next four games, but the next two are the most critical.