The Pittsburgh Steelers unbelievably are preparing for a playoff game this week. If you read the preseason prognostications, you wouldn’t have seen that coming. If you saw the way people discussed this team when they sat at 1-3, or at a million other points along the way, you would’ve buried them then and there. Their quarterback was cooked; their offensive line was hopeless; their receivers were immature; their rush defense was the worst the league’s ever seen. And of course, their coach was surely going to jump to the college level.
Some of these critiques were unfounded, of course (after all, there’s not a booster with a big enough check.