Steelers' hope lies in the North's ineptitude

Photo creds to Behind the Steel Curtain 

At 6:00 Sunday evening, I thought the Steelers were done.

1-4. 1.5 games out of first place. There was no reason to believe that Pittsburgh can get off the canvas. The Steelers needed to beat the hated dirty birds at home and didn't do it.
By midnight Tuesday morning,  the Cleveland Browns changed my mind when they got embarrassed in primetime in the City by the Bay. The Browns reminded me that the AFC North is terrible.

Now, I'm not suggesting that the Steelers will win the division. This team has a lot of work to do to make that happen and will have to do so with somebody not named Ben Roethlisberger as its field general. What I'm saying is that the AFC North is so bad, it'd be unfair not to think the Steelers at least have a chance. Not a great chance, but maybe a chance similar to the shot I have of getting married before the age of 30. Not great, but not entirely unreasonable.

Sure, the Ravens got a win in Heinz Field Sunday, but did Baltimore impress anybody? The birdies needed overtime to fend off Devlin Hodges. At 3-2, the Ravens record is bland, and so is their resume. Their two other wins have been against a Dolphins team that's the worst in the NFL and a
Cardinals squad in transition, the latter of which was a six-point squeaker in Baltimore.

The Browns were thought by some to be Super Bowl contenders. Instead, they are 2-3 with two of their losses coming by an average of 29 points. In one of Cleveland's wins, however, it put up 40 points against the Ravens in Baltimore. So yeah, the first place Ravens are quite vulnerable, and they're currently the kings of the North.

Coming into the season, every team in the division sans Cincinitti was a projected playoff contender. The three over teams had their share of concerns, but none were supposed to be bad. Right now, it looks like all three of them might be bad. So relative to the rest of the division, the Steelers aren't too far behind.

I know what the 1-4 record looks like. I know the Steelers are starting a quarterback that began the year on the practice squad.

I also know that there are also some positives to take away from the first five weeks.

I know that three of the Steelers' four losses have come by a combined total of nine points.

I know that the Steelers defense is greatly improved. Last year, that unit couldn't force a turnover if moving the team to North Korea was the only alternative. Now, no other defense in the league has forced more, and only the great Patriots have forced as many.

I remember last season, when it looked impossible for the Steelers to miss the playoffs, and they found a way to do that. Maybe the reverse can be true in 2019.

The Steelers have thrown themselves in a ditch. There's no sugarcoating that. If they are to make the postseason, they'll likely have to finish no worse than 9-7. To do that, they must go 8-3 the rest of the way, and that'd be a tall task with Ben Roethlisberger behind center, let alone Hodges or Mason Rudolph, the former of which must beat a future Hall of Famer in Phillip Rivers next Sunday to keep the season alive.

Winning the AFC North for the fourth time in six years doesn't look likely. Because of how bad the rest of the division and, for that matter, the rest of the AFC is, it's possible.