Football Footnotes: Steelers are a surprise in only 1 way

At 7-4, some are suggesting that the 2023 Pittsburgh Steelers are an overachieving surprise. That’s usually being done by way of advancing Mike Tomlin’s Coach of the Year candidacy.

If you judge by the preseason NFL over-under win totals, I suppose you could make that argument. Like many sportsbooks at the time, DraftKings had the Steelers at O/U 8.5 heading into Week 1 of the regular season.

The Steelers have seven wins already. If they beat the 2-10 Arizona Cardinals on Sunday and the 2-9 New England Patriots on Thursday, they’ll surpass that 8.5-win mark with four games to go.

However, most in Pittsburgh thought the Steelers would be better than that, especially after the franchise’s offense looked like the 1984 San Francisco 49ers during the preseason.

For those of us who had the Steelers in that nine- to 11-win range (I had them at 10-7), this Steelers team is actually exactly where it should be, based on who they have played thus far (and the quarterback injuries those teams have endured).

The only real surprise about the Steelers’ 7-4 record is the circuitous route that the club took to get here given their hideous offense and oft-injured defense that lost the likes of Cameron Heyward, Minkah Fitzpatrick, Kwon Alexander, Cole Holcomb and Montravius Adams at various times this season.

But if you thought the Steelers were going to be a 10- to 11-win team, they are right on pace. You probably expected that they’d have six to seven wins by now. Especially given that five of their seven wins have come against teams currently under .500.

So, are the Steelers a surprise NFL team? No.

Is it surprising how they got here? Yes.

For this week’s “Football Footnotes,” let’s look at some NFL results that clearly are NFL surprises and others that are not.

Not a surprise: The NFC South.

It’s every bit as bad as we thought it would be. In fact, it’s even worse than I anticipated, with the Panthers being 1-10. The Falcons lead the division at 5-6. A sub-.500 team might win that division for the second year in a row.

Surprise: The AFC South. It’s much better than expected.

As predicted by me and just about everyone else who pays attention to the league, the Jaguars are in first place at 8-3. But the fact that the Indianapolis Colts (6-5) and Houston Texans (6-5) both have winning records this late into the season is a shocker.

At the start of the year, I thought the AFC North would get three teams in — the Bengals, Ravens and Steelers. As of today, the Ravens, Steelers and Browns all hold spots. It’s a long shot, but by the end of the year, it’s the South that may get three teams (or at least two) into the playoff bracket.

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Not a surprise: That Houston quarterback C.J. Stroud is a Rookie of the Year candidate.

In advance of training camps this summer, the Ohio State University product was third on the board, according to Caesars. Now they have him listed at minus-3000 to win it.

Surprise: That Stroud is an MVP candidate.

He hasn’t just been great “for a rookie.” He’s been great, period.

Stroud is seventh on Caesar’s MVP board at plus-2000. That number will shrink if he gets Houston to the playoffs in his first year after the Texans won just three times last year.

Not a surprise: That the Patriots, Los Angeles Chargers and Buffalo Bills have regressed in the AFC.

I thought the Bills would slip from a 13-win team in ‘22 to a 10-win team this year. I felt as if the Chargers would win no more than nine games and miss the playoffs after qualifying a season ago. And I predicted the Patriots would be the worst team in the AFC East.

Surprise: That all three teams are tracking to be even worse than expected.

I thought the Bills would still win the AFC East. But at 6-6 with a brutal schedule remaining, they may be lucky to get a wild card or even finish above .500.

The Chargers are 4-7 in the AFC West, losers of three in a row. And the Patriots are 2-9 with an offense so bad that fans in New England may be jealous of what they’ve seen from the Steelers this year.

Not a surprise: That the Lions will make the playoffs.

At 8-3, that’s going to happen. I figured they’d at least be a wild card and thought they had a legitimate shot at winning the NFC North.

Surprise: They might be the two-seed in the NFC and host at least one playoff game.

The Lions aren’t just going to win the North. I think they may win it by multiple games. And if they can fend off the San Francisco 49ers for that second slot in the conference, they’ll get a mediocre opponent as the last wild card team in from the NFC.

Not a surprise: That the Denver Broncos are better this year.

After going 5-12 last year and replacing head coach Nathaniel Hackett with Sean Payton, things couldn’t have gotten worse.

Surprise: That they have improved as much as they have.

The Broncos have won five in a row (just a few weeks after losing 70-20 to Miami) and are a wild-card contender in December. At 6-5, they have already surpassed last year’s win total, and four of their remaining six games are against teams that currently have losing records.

Listen: Tim Benz interviews Arizona Cardinals’ play-by-play man Dave Pasch about Sunday’s Steelers-Cardinals game