Steelers Bi Polar Season Stays Alive For One Final Week

The Steelers continued their bi polar season on Sunday when they went into Green Bay and took out the Packers 38-31.  With the win the Steelers improved to 7-8 and more importantly were able to keep their playoff hopes alive with the help of some other teams losing.

The team will tell you they are simply playing one game at a time and are not concerned with what the Ravens, Dolphins and Chargers do. While that may be true for them; that’s certainly not the case for everyone else.  Anyone with a rooting interest in this team is scoreboard watching these days. 

While the Steelers can’t just beat the Browns this upcoming week and get into the playoffs in doing so, they can win and hope everything else falls into place accordingly.  

By now you know the scenario but here it is again.

First off, the Steelers must beat the Browns. If they fail to do so, it’s over, they fall to 7-9 and have their first losing record since 2003 when Bill Cowher was coaching and Tommy Maddox was the quarterback.  If they win, they can avoid the losing season and then hope for some help.

They’ll need to have the Ravens lose to the Bengals in Cincinnati. This seems like a strong possibility as the Bengals haven’t lost at home this year and are still playing for the #2 seed and a first round bye.

Maybe a little more challenging is having the Dolphins lose at home to the Jets. The Jets are 7-8 but even if they win and get to 8-8, they lose all tie breakers and can’t get in. They are playing for nothing but pride and knocking out the rival Dolphins. There still is a possibility this could happen but it seems like it could be difficult.

Lastly, if all else comes through, at 4pm, the team will become Chiefs fans. The Chargers will need to lose at home to Kansas City. This on paper may look great as the Chiefs are an 11-4 ball club and have played well all year, but, since the Chiefs lost last week, they have absolutely nothing to play for this week. They are locked into the #5 seed and can’t do any better or worse. Kansas City has absolutely nothing to play for and will likely rest guys and scale back their offense as well.  Unless they’d truly like to stick it to San Diego, this seems like the least likely outcome of the group.

One can hope and pray and if the first three games go the right way and the final game doesn’t, it’ will put a stamp on the bi polar season this team had with one final bi polar Sunday filled with a raucous high and a devastating low.