Wednesday morning, 10 members of Sports Illustrated’s NFL staff put out their 2023 NFL season predictions, and five of them picked the Pittsburgh Steelers to make the playoffs, with editor Mitch Goldich also predicting T.J. Watt would win Defensive Player of the Year.
The Steelers were predicted to be the seventh seed in the AFC by every analyst who picked them to make it, with none predicting they’d advance past the first round. The most intriguing matchup was Michael Rosenberg’s prediction of a Steelers-Ravens first round matchup, with all four others predicting a Steelers-Bengals matchup in the first round.