Tag: Steelers season

Steelers vs Falcons: Steelers Wire staff picks

Steelers Wire staff make their picks for this week’s game.

It’s finally time to see the Pittsburgh Steelers kick off the regular season. This week the Steelers travel to Atlanta to take on the Falcons in a reunion with Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith to the team he used to coach. This is one of those games where neither side knows what to expect from the other.

Our staff decided to make their picks for this week’s game and you can see the whole thing below as we call for a sweep of the Falcons this week.

The Steelers understand how important it is to get off to a fast start. So much will depend on the quarterback position and since we don’t know who will actually start for Pittsburgh, it muddies the waters even more. The Steelers defense is so good and we just don’t know what we will get with Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins. I expect the Steelers defense to attack Cousins and keep him off balance, making life easier on the Steelers offense. Pittsburgh pulls off the close win thanks to the foot of kicker Chris Boswell. Steelers 20, Falcons 17 – Curt Popejoy, Managing Editor

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Predicting the Pittsburgh Steelers in the first week of the season is tough. With a new quarterback and coordinator, no one knows what this offense will look like. Though Falcons safeties Jessie Bates and Justin Simmons will make life harder on the passing game, I think Russell Wilson won’t commit turnovers and manage the game well enough to pull out a win. The defense will do what it does best and keep Kirk Cousins and Company under wraps. The Steelers will start the season 1-0 in a fairly low-scoring game Steelers 13, Falcons 10 – Allison Kohler, Contributor

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Steelers’ offense will prove that its struggles in the preseason were the building blocks needed to vastly improve from last year’s offensive woes, ultimately resulting in a satisfying victory over Atlanta. Steelers 31, Falcons 17 – Andrew Vasquez, Contributor

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Steelers writer says the quiet part out loud about this team

It is time for the Steelers and their fans to raise their expectations.

You can always count on Pittsburgh Steelers writer Mark Madden to write something controversial. But at the same time, Madden always finds his way to making a lot of sense in his critiques of this team but his detractors never give it that much thought.

This is what happened with his latest column where he lays out that the best thing for the Steelers future is a losing season in 2024.

The best thing that could realistically happen for the Steelers is to go 8-9 or worse.

To get out from under the phony non-achievement of Coach T never having a losing season. To then set the bar higher and take a hard look at the team as it really is, adjusting accordingly.

The Steelers have become a team content with mediocrity. The fans are just as guilty. It’s hard to argue that a four or five-win season might not be the best thing for this franchise. It could serve as a wake-up call that being middle of the road doesn’t lead anywhere.

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Steelers vs Falcons: Pick the winner

The Steelers open the season on the road against the Falcons.

On Sunday, the Pittsburgh Steelers will kick off the regular season on the road against the Atlanta Falcons. Last season the Steelers miraculously finished 10-7 and snuck into the playoffs.

Meanwhile the Falcons struggled without a viable quarterback and finished 7-10. This cost then-head coach Arthur Smith his job but Smith soon found himself as the offensive coordinator of the Steelers. So this is something of a family reunion.

The Falcons are currently three-point favorites, due in large part to the addition of Kirk Cousins at quarterback. The Steelers changed quarterbacks as well but the jury is still out on just how much of an improvement it will be.

The Steelers cannot afford to get off to a slow start. The team’s final eight games are as tough as any team has in the league. This is as close to a must-win in Week One as you can get.

Cast your vote and tell us who you think will win this week.

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NFL Network sets modest win projections for Steelers

The Steelers should once again hover around a .500 record.

If you think you have a good grasp on how good or bad the Pittsburgh Steelers will be this season, you are probably kidding yourself. Every year the Steelers head into the season with more questions than answers about the players and staff only to find their way above .500 and more often than not sneak into the playoffs.

However, you can take comfort in knowing the Steelers are going just barely to get past .500 and if they do make the playoffs, they are longshot to get a win.

Cynthia Frelund of the NFL Network took on the massive project of running countless simulations of the full NFL regular season to put together her projections for all 32 teams.

Here is what Frelund had to say about the Steelers as she projected 8.6 wins.

In the NFL’s most stacked division, questions about the Steelers’ offensive line get magnified in the win projection. However, the offense gained +216 rushing yards over expected on designed runs in 2023 (sixth-most in the league, per NGS). The arrival of new offensive coordinator in Arthur Smith, who has shown creative and effective run strategies, could help mitigate some of the O-line concerns. 

Frelund has the Steelers win ceiling at 10.4 and the floor at 5.9. Both are very fair estimates. The Steelers have one of the toughest schedules in the league and it is back loaded. Pittsburgh often gets off to a slow start and if this happens the team might not be able to make up that ground late in the season.

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Justin Fields had teammates lobbying for him to start for the Steelers

Justin Fields could bring an added dimension to the Steelers offense as a starter.

From the moment the Steelers traded for quarterback Justin Fields we knew this could be a problem. Having already signed Russell Wilson just a day before, we wondered how the rest of the team would accept these two quarterbacks who are so different.

According to NFL reporter Albert Breer, there are players within the Steelers who were pushing for Fields to be the starter over Wilson.

“This isn’t anyone’s first rodeo in Pittsburgh, and Fields took some fundamental changes that the offensive coaches gave him (one being a return to the type of footwork he’d used at Ohio State), and really worked on them over the past few weeks of camp,” Breer said. “It was enough to have some folks internally push for Fields to start. There was, too, plenty of merit to the idea. But the way it is now, again, to give yourself two shots, also makes plenty of sense.”

The Steelers got to see much more of Fields in the preseason and while he’s still a work in progress, you cannot argue how his athleticism adds a dimension to the offense Wilson doesn’t have and does seem to fit with what offensive coordinator Arthur Smith likes to do.

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Russell Wilson posts personal hype video ahead of first Steelers game

Russell Wilson is ready to ride for the Steelers this week.

In just one week, quarterback Russell Wilson will make his first regular-season start with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Wilson was the Steelers’ marquee free-agent addition of the offseason. Pittsburgh signed Wilson from the Denver Broncos to replace Kenny Pickett as the starter and in turn traded Pickett to the Philadelphia Eagles.

Wilson is excited to get to work for the Steelers and shared her own personal hype video on Social media on Sunday. If you needed another reason to be excited about this week’s showdown against the Atlanta Falcons, this video might do it for you.

Wilson has had a stellar NFL career but his production fell off in his two seasons with the Denver Broncos. Wilson spent his first 10 seasons with the Seattle Seahawks.

https://twitter.com/DangeRussWilson/status/1830316647594230262

Wilson dealt with a calf injury for a good chunk of the preseason and training camp and saw limited reps in the team’s final two preseason games.

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Steelers QB just a season away from making NFL history

Russell Wilson has a chance to join elite company in 2023.

There are plenty of questions surrounding the Pittsburgh Steelers and the quarterback position this season. Going back to 2022, the first year after Ben Roethlisberger retired, it has felt like this staff has been grasping at straws trying to replace him.

After two seasons of Kenny Pickett among others, the Steelers now turn to longtime veteran Russell Wilson. Wilson is heading into his 13th NFL season and all other things aside, has the opportunity to do something only one other quarterback in NFL history has done.

If Wilson can throw for at least 3,000 yards in 2024 with the Steelers, he will join legend Peyton Manning as the only two quarterbacks to throw for at least 3,000 yards in each of their first 13 seasons, per Pro Football Reference.

Unfortunately for the Steelers, they are going to need a lot more out of Wilson than just a 3,000-yard passing season. Averaging just over 175 yards per game is a low bar in an NFL where everything is skewed toward the passing offense and there is a 17-game season.

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The Steelers cannot afford to be patient with the offensive line

Pittsburgh’s offensive line has struggled in the preseason.

One of the hallmarks of a Pittsburgh Steelers team under head coach Mike Tomlin is a slow start with a fast finish. This has been the case for some time and we have all grown accustomed to it.

Whether it’s a single game or a single season, you can expect this team to come out of the blocks slowly and we all have to have patience.

This is the growing sentiment surrounding the Steelers new offense, especially the offensive line. This was the case in 2023 and most assume it will be a repeat performance in 2024 with new starters and struggling returning veterans.

Unfortunately, if the Steelers goal is to finish with a winning record and make the playoffs, there’s no time to be patient with this group. The schedule simply won’t allow it. The most winnable portion of the schedule is the first eight games. Then he bye week hits and after a showdown with the Washington Commanders, things get brutal.

If the Steelers aren’t well over .500 at the bye week, there’s almost no shot and if the offensive line doesn’t come out of the gates playing well, this season could be over before it starts.

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Steelers OT Troy Fautanu making ‘slow progression’ with knee injury

Troy Fautanu was supposed to be the team’s starting right tackle this season but has remained sidelined with a knee injury.

The Pittsburgh Steelers had a plan. Draft offensive tackle Troy Fautanu out of Washington, let him work his way into the starting lineup and then prosper. Those plans were derailed almost immediately when Fautanu suffered a knee injury in the team’s first preseason game against the Houston Texans.

Now the Steelers are headed into their third and final preseason game and Fautanu is still on the mend. There’s been no timetable set by head coach Mike Tomlin for Fautaunu’s return and according to the talented rookie, it is a slow progression.

Fautaunu spoke to the media and while he remained optimistic there was clearly frustration that he is not able to contribute.

Fautanu’s absence means the Steelers’ starting offensive tackles remain Dan Moore Jr. on the left and Broderick Jones on the right. It isn’t clear how the Steelers will handle Fautanu’s injury at the start of the season but he could find himself on IR to start the year.

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Was the Steelers’ hire of Arthur Smith a mistake?

The new Steelers offense looks an awful lot like the old Steelers offense.

The biggest move of a very busy offseason for the Pittsburgh Steelers was the hire of new offensive coordinator Arthur Smith. Despite his struggles as the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons, his tenure as the Tennessee Titans offensive coordinator gave Steelers’ fans hope.

However, reports from training camp about how good the new offense has looked at practice, it’s looked just as bad in two preseason games. In fact, a case can be made this new offensive is worse than the old one under Matt Canada.

Perhaps more than the struggles, it’s the style of offense Smith is bringing in that is worrisome. The NFL has become a league that focuses heavily on scoring in bunches and throwing the ball. Smith’s offense feels ultra-conservative and almost a step backward.

Did the Steelers make a mistake hiring Smith as opposed to another offense coordinator this offseason? There were plenty of big names and up-and-coming young guys out there with more modern approaches to the offense. Have you seen enough to call your shot or do you want to wait and see? Cast your vote.

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