Steelers Quietly Becoming One of the Most Dangerous Threats in Crowded AFC

If you ask all your football-loving friends and family members to make a short list of Super Bowl LI contenders, few of those lists will include the Pittsburgh Steelers, unless you live in or near Allegheny County.

That, however, is probably about to change. 

On the surface, the Steelers don’t appear to be a major threat to AFC powerhouses like the 10-2 Oakland Raiders, the 10-2 New England Patriots or the 9-3 Kansas City Chiefs. After all, Pittsburgh is just 7-5 and is still technically out of the playoff picture. 

But it’s been a strange and complicated season for a team that hasn’t had two of its top three offensive weapons, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and running back Le’Veon Bell, for key stretches.

Without the suspended Bell in Week 3, they scored just three points in a blowout loss to the cross-state rival Philadelphia Eagles. Without a healthy Roethlisberger in Weeks 7 and 9 (he returned from a knee injury after the team’s Week 8 bye but wasn’t himself), they were defeated relatively easily by the New England Patriots and Baltimore Ravens. 

With those two active and unhindered, they’re 5-2. And that includes three consecutive wins.

Two weeks ago, they breezed against a bad Cleveland Browns team on the road, winning by a 15-point margin. Last week, they hammered the Indianapolis Colts by 21 points on short rest in Indy. And on Sunday, they outplayed a streaking New York Giants team from start to finish in a 24-14 victory. 

It wasn’t as close as the final score indicated, either, and it marked the fourth consecutive stellar game for an offense that we already knew required a Hazard Class 1 Explosive label. Before scoring 24 or more points against the Browns, Colts and Giants, they put up 30 in a tough home loss to the NFL-leading Dallas Cowboys.

The Steelers have flaws. The defense can still be had, and they …

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