After a demoralizing loss to the Buffalo Bills a week ago, nearly all of Planet Earth was counting out the Pittsburgh Steelers. While it’s hard to blame people for doing so, the Steelers showed a completely different version of themselves in their 27-22 win over the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday. Former Steelers head coach Bill Cowher wasn’t so quick to count his former team out. And even after that Buffalo loss, he believed the Steelers wouldn’t let the outside noise affect them. It didn’t on Sunday, and Cowher thinks the Steelers are gearing up for the playoffs.
“I’ll just say this. Just talking to that building. The sense of urgency was in that building, in terms of their preparation. And I don’t know if it was there the week before. I just think right now, the sense of urgency, they’re in playoff mode,” Cowher said Sunday on CBS’ The NFL Today. “They need to keep that sense of urgency, keep that chip on their shoulder right now, the rest of this season.”
As is the story of this season, we seem to see a different version of the Steelers every week. Sometimes they do just enough to win, like they did on Sunday and during the first month of the season. There are a couple of comfortable victories mixed in between. And other times we see abysmal efforts like they had against Buffalo in Week 13.
Perhaps it just took them 14 weeks to wake up. Or maybe Ravens week was enough to energize a locker room that seemed defeated the week prior. Either way, the Steelers did what was necessary to come out with a win in their most important game of the season so far. They now sit at 7-6, one game up on Baltimore in the AFC North with four to play.
The most encouraging aspect in Sunday’s win may have been the Steelers’ ability to deal with adversity. Time and time again we’ve seen the Steelers take a lead into halftime and subsequently collapse. They held a 17-3 advantage in the second quarter on Sunday and twice had 11-point leads in the second half.
We’ve seen the team absolutely blow up once the opponent gets some second-half momentum. But that didn’t happen in Baltimore. The defense certainly bent, but it didn’t break. And while the offense was quiet in the fourth quarter, there weren’t any catastrophic mistakes to give the game away.
Being in “playoff mode” is a positive way for Cowher to describe the Steelers after how the mood felt a week ago. Right now, many would still see them as underdogs, even as the fourth seed. But the Steelers certainly gave themselves some momentum to build on with Sunday’s win. We’ll see if they can develop some sort of consistency over the final month of the regular season.
