Fresh off their Week 5 bye week, the Pittsburgh Steelers are sitting pretty in the AFC North.
Around them, the Cleveland Browns are selling off assets, the Cincinnati Bengals look disastrous without Joe Burrow, and the Baltimore Ravens are just a mess top to bottom, especially on defense.
Injuries are wreaking havoc within the AFC North, too, as the Browns, Bengals and Ravens are all without key players. The Steelers have been without key pieces, too, battered by the injury bug early in the season. Yet, they’re doing what others in the division aren’t doing: finding ways to win.
Entering Week 6 against the Browns, the Steelers sit at 3-1 and have a chance to extend their lead in the AFC North over the next two weeks. Doing so could really put a stranglehold on the division for the Black and Gold, even with a lot of time left.
For ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky, who appeared on Get Up Thursday, the Steelers have to win the division. If not, it’s a huge disappointment.
“I mean, this is the easiest division in football to win,” Orlovsky said, according to video via ESPN. “It would be a massive disappointment of Pittsburgh, right now, if it does not win this division.”
With the way the other three teams have looked, the door is open for the Steelers. They’ve taken care of business to this point, and now they have a real opportunity in the next two weeks against Cleveland and then on a short week against Cincinnati to extend that divisional lead.
Doing so would put the Steelers in a great position moving forward, especially with some tough matchups from Weeks 8-10 featuring the Green Bay Packers, Indianapolis Colts and Los Angeles Chargers. They have to take advantage of the opportunity in front of them the next two weeks.
But Orlovsky saying that if they don’t win the tough division in Week 6 seems like a major stretch. The Steelers still have 13 games to go, and all six division matchups. A lot can happen. If this were later in the season and the Steelers had a two-game lead, and everything else was transpiring the way it has around the division with injuries and poor play, of course it would be expected that the Steelers need to win the division.
We’re just not at that point yet. Maybe things continue to develop that way, but for now it’s too early to say definitively that the Steelers must win the division when it’s Week 6 and there’s still a ton of action left in the season.
That said, it’s there for the taking.
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