Road to the Playoffs. Welcome to Relevant December Football!!

LOL
Every week it's another thread popping up about how that last loss doesn't matter... win our next one, and we are on our way to the playoffs. Haha. Maybe we make it, I don't know... but if we do make it, we're an early exit.

 

Look, I'd love for us to be relevent in the playoffs, I just don't see it. How many more losses before its "win the next two and we get a chance at the wildcard?" Hope springs eternal, I guess.

 

The two teams we'd likely play (Indianapolis and Cincinnati) in the first round, we beat this year... just saying.

 

Not a knock but can you tell me how you reached this conclusion? We were 3-0 , now we are 5-6..losers of 6 out of our last 8..cant hold a lead to save our asses. Just asking how our last 5 are considered "winnable".

 

Good thread VT..

Travis, that is the million dollar question, and it's something I've been talking about for a year now, without ever getting legitimate discussion as to why or why not, but if this coaching staff agreed to instruct their Qb to not use his entire skillset to win a game and point blank game planned without calling plays that took advantage of his entire skillset, then I simply cannot trust their philosophies..that's ridiculous considering the oline they knew they had.

We saw the moving pocket that we all Have Been clamoring for and what happened??.. Exactly..

Ryan needs to play with a more sense of urgency from the first play, he needs to train his own mindset to think fourth down on every play, someone needs to instruct this into his head..

He's not deft I believe in the art of escapability, but he can do it on occasion and if he wants to be the best Qb he can be, he better start being more aware of down and distance and what gives him the better chance of getting a first down, him escaping the rush and finding an outlet and running for a first down, or throwing a two yard out pattern on third and three on a guy with no separation.

It's a MUST win for this staff, you simply cannot lose to a rebuilding jet team with that rookie Qb, not in your 2nd year, it would show regression..

As mad as I was yesterday at the offense not being able to pick up critical first downs and score any freakin points relative to oppurtunities, there was some encouraging signs of improvement as a whole..the deep ball was in play, the coordinator getting his head out of his *** and start using the entire skillset you drafted, and Ryan actually escaping the pocket at first sign of trouble instead of waiting to long..

Also our defense played HUNGRY...they played with fire, and the fans joined them on their feet...I'm so sorry those fans weren't rewarded..a lot of them looked like they were really trying to make a difference...I hadn't seen that in a long time..

Some folks like the dude above says how can we just forget the last game all the time, to that I say well, we have put ourselves into this position to be relevant, the goal of this season is to improve upon last year, with the Qb, and the team, both in their 2nd year..they have that chance to do so, and if they can get some playoff experience in the process, then that's the bonus..

 

Steelers could, they are getting hot at the right time, schedule isn't easy (Fins, Ravens, Packers, Bengals), but I could see them running the table.

Tenn has Houston, Jags, Cards at home, Bronco's and Colts. They could win 4 out of 5

 

I could honestly see the Steelers winning four of their last five games.

I wrote this on Twitter yesterday morning too because I saw the line on the PIT-CLE game favored CLE by 1 point and I asked everyone, what am I missing here? Are there some injuries or big factors I'm missing? The response I got was just weak stuff like "the Steelers suck" or "Cleveland is at home" etc. That told me I needed to go big on the Steelers. They'd won 4 of their last 6 games while the Browns had dropped 4 of their last 5 games.

This is another instance where how a team started out the season just immediately colored everyone's opinion of the team and then they just fail to update that opinion with newer and more relevant information.

Steelers have now won 5 of their last 7. Yeah they got Brady'd but that's a unique opponent, IMO. They won't play another team that strong again. A 93-yard touchdown run by a QUARTERBACK lost them the Raiders game.

Otherwise that's a two-time Super Bowl winning quarterback and a Super Bowl winning head coach, surrounded by a young team that just had to learn to play some better football as the season went on. They're going to benefit from some further upside when Lamarr Woodley and Brett Keisel get back healthy.

I think they're really a team to watch.

 

Well, this week is possibly losable (kills me to admit it ). Up in Buffalo ? Tough game, possibly a loss. Home against the Patriots ? Very tough game especially if they need it for seeding purposes. At Pittsburgh ? VERY tough game especially the way they`ve been playing. Home against the Jets? OK, winnable.

 

They're all winnable. Problem is they aren't all (or most) games we should win. And that's the real problem.

 

I`m not saying they`re guarenteed losses, but I wouldnt lable a very tough game "winnable". A very tough game is more losable than winnable. Having said that, lets go 5-0 and shut me up. Would love it.

 

Great freakin thread. Needed the positive laid out for me to get out of this post-crushing-loss funk. We did see some positives yesterday.

I wanna see Egnew used more in the passing game dammit. He's tall, he's caught a few passes already on big drives. Plus we've been using him as a blocker for awhile so some play-action should work well. NE has killed teams with two tight ends catching passes in the past. how about on first play of the game, we try some play action to Egnew instead of a run up the gut by Lamar Miller??? that's all i'm asking here....end rant. i'm not as x and o as many of you here, but does this seem so outlandish???

 

I see us beating jets and then losing to steelers.

 

We sit with the fewest (3) CONF losses for all AFC teams tied at 5-6. We certainly control our destiny which will be greatly improved with WIN vs. JETS...then and only then will I look at the PIT game.

 

Exactly, we are still quite alive and basically have our fate in our hands...still

Basically, imo, if we cannot at least beat the Patsies once we probably don't belong in the playoffs

 

Sad, only team in this crappy league that has not scored at least 27 pts in a game.

 

And that has been the real difference this season, in the past when we were mediocre, we'd have 5-6 AFC losses that doomed us from the wildcard

This yr, our fate is in our hands, AFC games the rest of the way, including 2 v the Jests.

 

I'd go further and say even a loss to the patsies won't doom our chances, even a split with the Jest would work fine except for we would not also control our own fate at that point

Bills game is going to be tough, have to win it.

 

We couldn't gain 20 yds rushing this past Sunday, what makes you think we can run against the Jets front 4? Our ground game is non existant, no team respects it, play action does not work because of it.

 

I hope that cognito and pouncey had a little bit of class in their soul, we could use them for this run.