Going into Tomorrow, the Steelers have 7 games left. This Jacksonville game is beyond critical to set up the final stretch. They had best not be giving lip service to us and better have been prepping like heck to dismantle this team.
The Jaguars are a 1-8 team with a pretty bad defense, and a pedestrian offense that doesn’t score a lot. More importantly, however is that they are an AFC team from the division our entire division must play.
Winning Sunday puts us at 10-0. We have a rather unexpectedly tough end of the year schedule coming up… The ravens, the defensively excellent Colts, the third best afc team in the Bills at their place, Division Rival Bengals and Browns on the road… with 8 other AFC teams at 6-3 or better, 9-0 isnt the playoff lock it would be in most seasons, even with a seventh teams making it in… at 10-0 the math gets a lot simpler…. It allows for a slip up or two without any real fear of an epic collapse happening…. It also gives us a chance to slam the division door shut Thursday
If we want to make a long run in the playoffs, the Bye and home field all the way through would be great, but winning the division is a near must.
Obviously, the Jags game isn’t as critical to us as the Ravens, Bengals, or Browns games are, or even the Colts game, for that matter, but for winning the division its theoretically more important than the Buffalo game (though that game is more important for the top seed) and of those games it should be the most winnable by far.
If we were to win against Jacksonville, then all the pressure for the Thanksgiving game is on the Ravens. This will be even more true if they drop the game against the Titans on Sunday. If we win Sunday, then take care of business at home vs the Ravens, its very possible the Ravens could be virtually eliminated from the division. If we lose twice this week, the division becomes a wide open crap shoot down the stretch with a less than favorable schedule for us…
Win this week, coupled with a ratbird loss would put us at 10-0 and them at 6-4, losing vs us Thursday basically puts them 5 games back with 5 games to go and no way to beat us head to head so they are out of the division race even in a three way tie…
Even with a Ratbird win vs the titans, they would be four games back with a loss to us Thursday with 5 to play and their only path forward would be us losing out and them winning out
Now if we were to lose vs the Jags, then a loss to the ravens leaves the door open to both them and the browns passing us in the division race should we falter down the stretch
The Browns play an eagles team better than their record and without sir-whacks-a-lot Miles Garrett for at least this week. It would be nice if they lose, but that isn’t something we should be relying on… beating the Jags and the Ravens gives us a minimum 3 game lead o the Browns with 5 games to go. Not ideal especially if we lose out on the bye and want to rest starters in that last game of the year…
Beat the Jags, and the back end of the schedules gets way more manageable… lose, and we are all hanging onto our butts
