Not many people know how to properly evaluate the Steelers heading into the 2025 season. It makes sense, as Aaron Rodgers, who’s a bit of a wild card himself at this point in his career, will be massively influential as to how the team ends up faring this year. Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio posted his post-minicamp power rankings on Monday, and he has the Steelers coming in smack-dab in the middle at 16th. His analysis illustrates just how challenging he finds it to evaluate the Steelers.
“They’re going to skew one way or the other,” Florio wrote.
It’s certainly not the most detailed analysis from Florio. But in a video posted to the NFL on NBC’s YouTube channel on Monday, he gave some further explanation.
“I put the Steelers dead in the middle,” Florio said. “I guarantee you they’re not gonna finish the season dead in the middle. This Aaron Rodgers thing is either going to work really well, and they’ll be a top-seven team. Or, it’s going to be a crapshow, and they’re gonna be in the bottom-fourth of the league. They’re not gonna be in the middle when it’s all said and done… I don’t know which way it’s going to break. Do you? Does anyone?”
Around the middle of the pack is where most seem to expect Pittsburgh to finish. It makes sense, given the numerous changes this offseason, but the roster doesn’t seem significantly better or worse than last year.
As is the case seemingly every summer lately, many also share the low expectations Florio has for Pittsburgh. He thinks they could finish in the bottom-fourth of the league, similar to power rankings from Fox Sports earlier this offseason that had the Steelers all the way down in 30th.
All things considered, a season like that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Make no mistake, it wouldn’t be good either. The Steelers have never had a losing season under Mike Tomlin, and things could get toxic quickly if that were to happen. However, that would also result in Pittsburgh picking much higher in the draft than they have in many years. After all, the team marks the 2026 Draft as a chance to find their next franchise quarterback. The less they win, the fewer assets they might have to part with in order to find that quarterback.
Yet there are reasons for optimism as well. Pittsburgh got off to a 10-3 start last year and controlled their destiny in the division halfway through the season. If they can get out to a similar start this year and manage to keep from completely falling apart, they could be an actual contender in the AFC. With Rodgers, they’d have more confidence going into the playoffs than they’ve had with any quarterback since Ben Roethlisberger.
While Florio has the Steelers in the middle of the pack for now, he doesn’t expect them to finish there. Whether Pittsburgh does really well or really poorly, either of those options might be better than another year in football purgatory.
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