By and large, the Pittsburgh Steelers team that went 13-3 is not dramatically different than the one that just went 9-6-1. There are a couple of notable pieces missing, but new ones have been added, and internal growth, at least hypothetically, should have done a lot of balancing out.
While not having players like Ryan Shazier and Le’Veon Bell can be difficult to understate, the performances of players like James Conner, T.J. Watt, and JuJu Smith-Schuster this season made this what should have been a very competitive group, which did not live up to its potential in 2018.