Friday Football Footnotes: Steelers 'staying on schedule' after win over Titans

In this week’s “Friday Football Footnotes,” we look at the Pittsburgh Steelers in the big picture after Thursday’s win. We lay out the local college football slate of games.

There is plenty of good NFL viewing on Sunday. And the Browns-Cardinals game could be quite a quarterback conundrum.

• The most important thing about the Steelers win on Thursday night is that they “stayed on schedule” with … the schedule.

“Staying on schedule” has morphed into a football cliche over the years, usually referring to an offense that is good at creating advantageous down-and-distance situations for itself. See also: “staying ahead of the chains” in your Football Coach Speak pocket dictionary.

But with the 2023 Steelers, for all of their problems on offense, they’ve at least maintained a win-loss pace that hasn’t put them in a corner — as was the case after a 2-6 start a season ago.

Now, this year, they are 5-3 after eight weeks, roughly halfway through the grind of 17 regular-season games. And if you break up the season into segments, the Steelers are pretty much staying “on schedule.”

It’d be nice to see them be ahead of schedule. But, hey, let’s not get crazy.

The first chunk of the calendar was the five games before the bye. At the outset of the season, if you had told me that the Steelers would be 3-2 over that stretch with two of those wins being the divisional victories over the Ravens and Browns, I absolutely would have signed up for that.

I might have been a little leery if your crystal ball had also been able to tell me that the losses would include a 30-6 defeat in Houston, of all places. But I still woulda made that deal.

Similarly, if you looked at these four games coming out the bye before the back-to-back AFC North road games in Cleveland and Cincinnati as a separate mini-season itself, I think you’d have to be happy with 3-1.

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Going 4-0 in any stretch in the NFL is a bit greedy, especially with the Steelers’ limitations. But grabbing three out of four within the stretch against the Rams, Jaguars, Titans and Packers (with the last three in a row at home) seemed essential.

And the Steelers are on track to do that if they take care of business next Sunday against Green Bay, a team that’ll likely come to Acrisure Stadium as a moderate underdog.

On Tuesday, Mike Tomlin talked about his team having the goal of being something better than “flimsy” — so whatever minimal success they did have in games couldn’t be derailed by a bad break, a bad call or an injury.

What we are talking about now is that same sentiment in a macro sense.

The Steelers are at least building themselves a buffer so that if things go poorly in their next mini-chunk of the schedule — the back-to-back road games in Ohio — in a worst-case scenario, the club will still have at least 6 wins and will be assured of having a winning record to start December with six games remaining.

That’s if they do the job against the Packers next week, of course. And after the way things went against Houston, we should assume nothing.

At least for now, though, the Steelers remain “on schedule.”

• In terms of tracking the rest of the league Sunday, the NFL viewing chart sets up nicely for Steelers fans while their team is idle. There is a good game in every window.

You can have breakfast in Frankfurt with the Dolphins and Chiefs at 9:30 a.m. That’s the best game of the day.

Then the AFC North-leading Baltimore Ravens host the NFC West-leading Seattle Seahawks at 1 p.m. There’s a good NFC game in the 4 p.m. window as the Dallas Cowboys visit the Philadelphia Eagles. Plus, the Sunday night game sees the Bengals hosting the Buffalo Bills, with tons of AFC playoff implications on the line.

• The only AFC North team we haven’t previewed yet for this weekend is the Cleveland Browns. They host the Arizona Cardinals at 1 p.m.

Via the Arizona Republic, it still appears that Kyler Murray will be waiting one more week before returning to action for the first time since his ACL surgery in December of last year. As of Thursday evening, the outlet said, indications are Clayton Tune will be the starter.

As for the Browns QB situation, it’s dicey too. Deshaun Watson continues to be limited with a shoulder injury, but he did practice Thursday. According to Zac Jackson of The Athletic, Watson “was first in every line and made his standard early-practice throws.” Yet his status is unclear.

The Browns can dress a third emergency QB this week because all three are on the active roster. But right now I have zero idea whether Watson will play or not. https://t.co/9T7smrMmv2

— Zac Jackson (@AkronJackson) November 2, 2023

Cleveland is an eight-point favorite.

• On the college front, Pitt is a 21.5-point underdog at home against Florida State. That’s understandable seeing as how the Panthers just lost by 51 points at Notre Dame and the Seminoles are 8-0. They are ranked fourth in the country.

Eleventh-ranked Penn State is an eight-point favorite at Maryland. The Nittany Lions won that matchup 30-0 last year.

West Virginia is a 13-point favorite at home against BYU. WVU is 3-2 in Big 12 play, and the Cougars are 2-3.

On the FCS level, NEC-leading Duquesne (5-3) looks to improve to 5-0 in conference play at Wagner (3-5/3-2). Robert Morris (2-6) is at Southeast Missouri State (4-4).