NFL Week 12 reactions and overreactions

My weekly look at the NFL.

Talking about some football from the Pittsburgh Steelers to the rest of the NFL. Let’s get at it.

1. Going into the game against Chicago on Sunday I had this expectation for the Pittsburgh Steelers:

I see one of two potential outcomes in this game: The Steelers either lose a close, frustrating game, or they do what they did to the Indianapolis Colts and convincingly beat a team with a good record that everybody expects to beat them.

I had no idea it would be as frustrating as it actually was.

Caleb Williams had no accuracy for the Bears but still threw for everything he needed to, hit three touchdown passes and was not intercepted even though he tried to gift one to the Steelers at the end of the first half. Kyle Dugger’s drop resulted in three points for the Bears. They won by three points. Just one of the many small plays that add up into big game-changers.

The Bears had wide receivers running wide open all day.

The Steelers couldn’t get anybody open, couldn’t complete a pass more than five yards downfield, once again did not lean on a running game that was working (again), and did not exploit the middle of a Bears defense that was playing without, quite literally, all of its starting linebackers.

Mason Rudolph turned the ball over twice leading to 14 Bears points, and then kept throwing two-yard passes with no timeouts in the closing minute when they just needed to hit one medium depth pass to get into a reasonable Chris Boswell field goal range.

The Steelers could have been in field goal range with two minutes to play but had a long Rudolph run negated because the wide receivers could not line up properly.

Ugly stuff. Rancid, even.

It was another winnable game that they did not win, and now leaves them in a position where they are officially behind the Baltimore Ravens in the division. They went from looking like a playoff lock a month ago to now having to scratch and claw their way back into it while facing a really difficult schedule the rest of the way.

2. I feel like this stretch of games could be significant for Mike Tomlin and the Steelers organization as a whole.

I don’t think he’s going to get fired after this season no matter the outcome. But if things continue to go poorly I do wonder if we start to get closer to the end of this era or start the ball rolling in the direction of a “mutual parting of ways.”

Art Rooney loves stability. He loves the brand and identity the Steelers have cultivated for themselves as a stable, consistent franchise that is always competitive. And there is something to be said for that. Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio was on 93.7 The Fan a couple of weeks ago talking about the Steelers current standard and was asked about Rooney being content with “just being good enough,” and his response was something along the lines of “it’s really hard to just be good enough.”

And it is.

But I can’t imagine that Rooney has his head buried so deep in the sand that he can’t see when things start to turn embarrassing for the organization.

Losing the division after starting the season 5-2 to a team that was 1-5 would be embarrassing.

Former players calling out your coaching staff and schemes as “trash” is embarrassing.

Having your home stadium get taken over by out of town fans, forcing your team into using a silent count at home is embarrassing.

It already happened one time this season against Green Bay. It has happened more often than it used to in previous seasons (remember that San Francisco home opener a couple of years ago?). It is likely to happen again on Sunday when the Bills Mafia buys up those thousands upon thousands of tickets that are available on the second-hand market. Imagine a second game, at home, on national television where they lose by double digits with out-of-town fans taking over the stadium.

That would be embarrassing.

And it would speak to the staleness that is starting to overtake the organization and the fan base as a whole.

If that does not get attention, I am not sure what else would.

3. This is, however, going to be the Steelers’ ceiling no matter who the head coach is as long as they keep rotating through the NFL’s quarterback retirement home and until they are able to find their franchise guy.

That really is the difference with everything.

They might very likely be worse with somebody else on the sidelines. But they are not going to be better until the quarterback is better.

There is also the million dollar question of whether or not this coaching staff can actually develop the right quarterback. Do they play the way they play on offense because that is how they WANT to play? Or do they play that way because they know their quarterbacks are not any good? What can they do with a real, young talent at the position? Do they deserve the chance to find out?

Those might be different questions for a different day.

The bottom line is this is a quarterback league. If you have one, you are going to contend no matter what else is happening with your team. If you do not have one, your ceiling is … well … whatever this has been for the past five years.

And that’s the thing I keep going back to with this team. The Steelers have done more with sub-standard quarterback play than most teams in the NFL have been able to do with comparable levels of quarterback play.

Since the start of the 2019 (the year Ben Roethlisberger’s elbow exploded in Week 2) the Steelers cumulative passer rating as an organization is only 86.8.

That is 24th in the NFL over that stretch.

They still have a .581 winning percentage during that time (ninth-best in the NFL).

They are one of only two teams that rank lower than 17th in passer rating over that time that have a winning record. The Indianapolis Colts (87.1 passer rating) have a .508 winning percentage over that time.

Excluding the Steelers, the teams that rank 18-32 in passer rating since the start of the 2019 season have a combined .400 winning percentage.

The Steelers are, again, at .581.

Teams with quarterback play this bad are supposed to be dramatically worse than this.

Even if you just look at the seasons since Roethlisberger retired they are only 19th in cumulative passer rating. They have a .565 winning percentage, 11th best in the NFL. They are the only team that ranks lower than 17th in passer rating during that time that has a winning record. The other teams in that range, excluding the Steelers, have a .378 winning percentage.

Again … when your quarterback play is this bad, your team is supposed to be bad.

The Steelers haven’t been.

They’ve done about everything they can with the quarterback situation being what it is.

I hate to simplify it that much, but it really is the difference.

Look at the team that is coming into Pittsburgh on Sunday. That Bills roster mostly stinks. Like 90 percent of it is brutal. Their defense is bad. Their wide receiver room might be worse than the Steelers wide receiver room. The only real playmaker they have at a skill position on offense is running back James Cook. The head coach is completely forgettable.

Despite all of that they are still a legitimate Super Bowl contender. They are still likely to win comfortably on Sunday.

Why? Because one of the few guys on the roster that doesn’t stink is the quarterback (Josh Allen). He just happens to be one of the five best players in football. Suddenly your flaws disappear when you have that.

4. Having said that, a lot of the things that allowed the Steelers to remain competitive with sub-standard quarterback play are starting to go away. The talent evaluation has not been great in the draft. It has not been great at the NFL level. They have invested major money in the defense in the hopes that it could carry them, and it has not. In fact, it has become almost as big of a detriment as the offense has at times. Those are also the types of things that can not be ignored.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying the next few weeks, and especially Sunday’s game against Buffalo, are all extremely important games. Not only for the outcome of this season, but also for the head coach, the front office and the owner.

As for the rest of the NFL, let’s talk about the Indianapolis Colts, the Houston Texans, the Baltimore Ravens and more.