Pittsburgh Steelers 5th Seed Were Season To End Today

Time to talk playoffs.  Playoff?!  Playoffs?!?! (Thank you Jim Mora, this will never get old)

Even though there is still the Monday Night game yet to play – it has no effect on the overall standings, and so the playoff picture has become a bit clearer.  Let’s look at where the Steelers land and who they would play were the season ends today.  Yeah I know there’s 6 more games to be played, but it’s fun to talk about playoffs now.

The Ravens own the tiebreaker against the Steelers and therefore have the #1 seed in the AFC.  The Texans are next as division leaders of the AFC and with the 7-3 record (see how these conference loses are biting us in the rear?)  The next two division leaders – Patriots and Raiders (wow who would have seen that coming) – take the #3 and #4 seeds repsectively.  That puts the Steelers back at the #5 seed, and the Bengals take the final Wild Card spot at the #6 spot.  I hear you.  There are three AFC North teams represented in the playoffs were they to end today.  This could mean one of two things, and I’d like to think it’s because the AFC North is such a tough division and not that because the Colts, Chargers and Jets are having bad seasons.

So the Steelers would match up against the Raiders in a Wild Card round… as an away game.  This is why it is crucial that the Steelers stay on point and practically win out.  I pointed out yesterday that the Steelers and Ravens have similar strength of schedule.  And even though this isn’t the BCS, strength of schedule matters in the sense that neither team can afford to make a mistake.  The 49’ers are the team to circle on the calendar for both teams.  The Ravens play them on Thanksgiving, and the Steelers hit them up in three weeks.  Nothing is ever a guarantee in the NFL, except for maybe Goodell being a total ass clown, but both teams have ‘easy’ weeks aside from the Niners.

The Steelers have proven before that they can win out on the road, but it sure would be nice to have at least one game at home.  Be even better if that home game also had a bye week come along with it.  It will certainly be an interesting rest of the season for both the Ravens and the Steelers, as well as the rest of the AFC with teams who are in unfamiliar playoff territory.