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NFL Week 8 Reflections: Pittsburgh Is On The Run

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We might look at the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 27-12 win over the Washington Redskins on Sunday, their second straight victory and just dismiss it as the fruit of a soft schedule—beating the Bengals and Redskins two straight weeks can’t count for that much, given the teams are a combined 6-7 in games when they aren’t playing Pittsburgh. But it’s the way the Steelers are winning that has to give the rest of the AFC pause.

Mike Tomlin seems to have found a running game. After a preseason and early schedule marked by injuries and inconsistency in the offensive line, and then an injury to Rashard Mendenhall, the Steeler running game was positively pathetic. Now Jonathan Dwyer is inserted into the backfield, he’s ripped off consecutive 100-yard games and lo and behold, Pittsburgh is winning, looking good doing it and only a game back of Baltimore in the AFC North.

The Steelers did virtually everything well on Sunday in the home win over Washington. They stopped the run, with the previous productive Alfred Morris held under control with 59 yards. They contained Robert Griffin III and let RG3’s receivers beat themselves with dropped passes. Pittsburgh just played sound football, got a steady, if unspectacular game from Ben Roethlisberger and churned out an efficient win. That’s formula we’ve seen often out of this franchise.

Pittsburgh is now 4-3, in good position to make a push to the playoffs and they still have both games left with 5-2 Baltimore. While the Steelers do play the New York Giants on the road this week, the Ravens also have the Giants ahead of them (albeit at home) and Baltimore must also play improving Denver, a team Pittsburgh is finished with.

I wasn’t high on the Steelers at the start of the year, and if not for the weakness of the AFC in general and this division in particular, with all of Baltimore’s injuries, I don’t know that I’d be responding this positively to their recent play. But this is a conference that’s open to teams that can get their problems fixed and Tomlin has made some big strides with his team.

Let’s wrap up the rest of NFL Week 8 with a look at each division…

NFC EAST: Can someone please memo Jason Garrett and tell the Dallas head coach that when you throw the ball 62 times a game you’re probably going to get beat? Yes, I get they fell behind the New York Giants 23-0. It was still within 23-10 by halftime and the Cowboys had the lead early in the fourth quarter. There was plenty of time to get Felix Jones involved in the offense. Dallas didn’t, and consequently lost a 29-24 game at home. With the Cowboys, Eagles and Redskins all sub-.500 now, New York is looking home free early at 6-2.

NFC NORTH: Could the division’s favorites have made it look any uglier? Chicago did nothing well in beating Carolina 23-22 at home, relying on another massive mistake by Cam Newton, a pick-six deep in his own end. Green Bay can’t play the injuries excuse for their sloppy 24-15 win over Jacksonville at home—the Packers have key players out, but none as important to them as injured Maurice Jones-Drew was to Jacksonville.

Minnesota played a poor defensive game for the first time this season in losing to Tampa Bay, leaving the door open for Detroit to pick up a little ground, as Matthew Stafford was impressive against a good defense in beating Seattle 28-24 at home.

NFC SOUTH: Tampa Bay’s win over Minnesota was one of the most impressive anywhere in the league, as the Bucs overcame playing on Thursday night on the road, and got a big night both rushing and receiving from Doug Martin. At 3-4, the Bucs are right in the mix of the race for the final playoff berth in the NFC and this one will look good in the tiebreaker scenarios.

NFC WEST: San Francisco established that—no matter how competitive this division might be looking—that they are still the bully on the block, as they positively abused Arizona. The 49ers shut down what’s already a lousy Cardinal running game without Beanie Wells, ran the ball themselves and kept Larry Fitzgerald under wraps.

With Seattle’s defense letting them down in Detroit—the Seahawks got a good game from Marshawn Lynch and quarterback Russell Wilson had one of his best statistical outings, but the usually stout defense couldn’t contain Stafford—the 49ers took a two-game divisional lead at 6-2, have wins over both Arizona and Seattle in the last two weeks and completed a great day for their home city on top of Sunday night’s World Series clincher.

AFC EAST: Is Miami ready to make a run at New England? There was no faulting the performance of the Patriots, who destroyed St. Louis 45-7 over in London and got to a much-needed bye week for their injured players. But the Dolphins, at 4-3, are tied with the Pats in the loss column and completely took apart the Jets on the road. Miami is not statistically dominant—a nice way of saying you look at the box score and try and figure out how the hell they won—but they play good defense and are finding ways to stay in games.

AFC SOUTH: In last week’s recap we talked about the potential rise of Indianapolis and Tennessee as wild-card contenders. The Colts won the head-to-head battle, taking a 19-13 win in overtime because they ran the ball effectively and Andrew Luck managed the game like a veteran. At 4-3, the Colts would be tied with the Dolphins and Steelers for the two wild-card spots if the season ended today.

AFC WEST: How do Norv Turner and A.J. Smith still have jobs? The Charger coach and general manager aren’t the most incompetent duo to ever work together, but they are certainly the longest-running.  The 7-6 loss to Cleveland on Sunday hit a nadir. The Chargers and Raiders might be 3-4, but the gulf between them and Denver looks positively huge, as the Broncos played an outstanding all-around game in pounding New Orleans. They ran the ball with ease, Peyton Manning was locked in and I think we can give Denver the AFC West.

So how many division races look to have clear front-runners? I’m looking at the NFC East (Giants), NFC South (Falcons), NFC West (49ers), AFC South (Texans) and AFC West (Broncos). And in spite of what I wrote above about Miami, we can also include the AFC East (Patriots). That leaves the AFC North & NFC North as the only divisions that look truly open, with the other six dependent on a sudden collapse.

NFL Week 6 Recap: The Collapsing AFC North

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The AFC North looks ready to make a run at the honor of being the NFL’s worst division this year, quite a turnabout from 2011 when they produced three playoff teams in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh & Baltimore, with the latter two each winning twelve games and the Ravens coming within a dropped ball of making it to the Super Bowl. But this year is different.

Baltimore is about as unimpressive as it’s possible to be for a team that’s 5-1. The softest part of their schedule is behind them, having already played four home games. They struggled to beat Cleveland and Kansas City. And the Ravens did not play well on Sunday in another narrow escape against Dallas. Baltimore’s 31-29 win wasn’t secure until a two-point conversion was stopped late in the fourth quarter, and the result was more about Dallas’ tendency to beat itself with penalties than it was with Raven excellence.

I suppose there’s something to be said for just not beating yourself and finding a way to win—it’s what a better Baltimore team couldn’t do a year ago and why they ultimately lost homefield advantage in the AFC playoffs and ultimately the conference championship game in New England. And even if the 2012 edition of the Ravens does dump some regular season games, the rest of the division looks worse with each passing week.

Pittsburgh’s running game continues to show zero signs of improvement, and given the current state of the rush game is anemic, that says a lot. But the Steelers could do nothing on the ground this past Thursday night at Tennessee, while Chris Johnson was able to grind out 91 yards for the Titans and eventually help set up a 26-23 win for Tennessee. Pittsburgh’s playmaking ability on defense is declining and the team is reduced to whatever Ben Roethlisberger can provide.

That’s enough to keep you in a lot of games and will keep the Steelers on the fringes of the playoff conversation—the far fringes—but this team is a long way from being what it used.

Cincinnati is 3-3 and could feasibly get back in the race, but they lost at Cleveland, a game which saw Andy Dalton throw three interceptions. Dalton hasn’t been the quietly efficient, if unspectacular quarterback, he was a year ago.

This year’s version of Dalton is up and down, capable of monster showings, and also of games like this where his mistakes are the only thing preventing his team from winning. Cincy could live with the shortcomings of last year’s Dalton. It can’t live with the mistakes that have marked 2012.

Then, as though things needed to get worse for the AFC North, we get word that Ray Lewis and Lardarius Webb are both out for the season in Baltimore. Lewis’ ability to be a major difference-maker is gone, but he was still a big piece of the Baltimore defense. Webb’s ability as a lockdown corner was the one bright spot on a defense that’s otherwise become mediocre.

Normally we might take the injuries from Baltimore as a sign to look for a new leader in the AFC North. But you can’t beat a declining team with nobody, and this division is a whole lot of nobodies right now.

A look around the rest of the league on a division-by-division basis, as we wrap up NFL Week 6…

AFC EAST: When Mario Williams decides to play football, the Buffalo Bills look pretty good. Williams had 1.5 sacks and two additional QB hits and the Bills defense did a solid job in pulling out a 19-16 win in Arizona.

Because this team looks so bad when it loses, it’s easy to overlook that they are 3-3—a record shared by the New England Patriots after they abandoned their newfound running game, threw it 58 times and predictably coughed up a 23-10 lead in Seattle, losing by one. With Miami and the New York Jets also winning, all four teams in this division are 3-3.

AFC SOUTH: Houston looked lousy in its Sunday night defeat to Green Bay, but for now I’m ready to give the Texans a pass. They were due to play a bad game and the Packers were a talented team that was desperate and had taken a media pounding all week long.

Indianapolis was also due for a bad game—they’re not good enough to play two good games in a row anyway, and after the emotion-driven win the previous week for Chuck Pagano the letdown was predictable.

AFC WEST: Is it possible for a 3-3 team to own its division more than Denver does right now? They did their usual digging of a 20-plus point deficit last night in San Diego, falling behind 24-0 at half. Then the Broncos promptly ripped off 35 consecutive points after intermission and won. They protected Peyton Manning, and San Diego could not do the same for Philip Rivers.

The Broncos are tied with the Chargers, still have a home game with them ahead, and have completed their games with New England, Atlanta and Houston.

NFC EAST: Trent Dilfer said it best on ESPN last night—when we talk about the best team in the NFL are we talking about who’s playing the best so far this season—in this case the record tells us the answer is Atlanta. But what if the answer is which team has the highest ceiling? How can the New York Giants not be in the heart of that conversation?

Since its mid-October, that’s the more appropriate way to look at it and we again saw how dangerous New York can be as the beat up San Francisco 26-3, in any every way imaginable.

NFC NORTH: Detroit got a survival win in Philadelphia to get to 2-3, but this was a case of Eagles’ turnovers trumping Lion penalties in a battle between two teams working to beat themselves. Minnesota showed it has problems when Christian Ponder is forced to throw frequently, as he tossed two interceptions in a 38-26 loss at Washington.

Now our eyes focus on Green Bay, as we see if they can take the complete game they played in Houston and sustain it for a winning streak, as the Packers still trail the idle Bears by a game and a half.

NFC SOUTH:  Pounding Kansas City might not count for much among good teams, but does the fact Tampa Bay did the pounding on Sunday mean the Buccaneers are good enough to get in the playoff conversation? The 38-10 win was a complete beatdown, but before we get ahead of ourselves, Tampa still didn’t get any pressure on the quarterback.

Atlanta didn’t play well in its 23-20 win over Oakland, but with the Falcons undefeated, they’re not going to play well every week and it says something good that they survived.

NFC WEST: The division tightened this week, as Arizona showed us again how deficient they are offensively in the loss to Buffalo. The media love for San Francisco as a Super Bowl favorite—rather than just one 10-12 teams that have a decent shot—should end after their horrible showing against the Giants. Meanwhile, Seattle played its most complete game in rallying to beat New England. Neither team ran the ball well, but somehow Russell Wilson outgunned Tom Brady at the end.

Maybe I’m reading too much of Bill Simmons over Grantland.com, who picked the Seahawks to go the Super Bowl, but between a game like this and the whole Monday Night saga against Green Bay, do you at all get the feeling that there’s something magical going on in the Pacific Northwest? I do.