Steelers keep positive outlook on playoff hopes despite seeing lead in AFC North evaporate

Last season as he celebrated Thanksgiving, Brandin Echols was playing for a 3-9 football team.

The year before that, a Black Friday defeat dropped his team to 4-7.

As a rookie in 2021, if Echols, likewise, looked at the standings on Turkey Day, he’d have seen he was on a last-place team.

As such, rest assured Echols wasn’t sulking in the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex locker room Monday just because the Pittsburgh Steelers had fallen into a mere tie for first place.

“I was just talking to (teammate Donte Kent) earlier,” Echols, the Steelers starting slot corner, said Monday, “I’m like, ‘(Dang), I mean, this is about the most I’ve won up to this point.”

Echols’ perspective is valuable for a Steelers team that has watched its 3¹⁄₂-game AFC North lead evaporate via a stretch of four losses over their past six games.

Sure, that’s far from ideal. But as Echols — who played his first four NFL seasons for the lowly New York Jets — can tell you, there are far worse lots of life around the league. At 6-5 and still controlling their fate for a division title, the Steelers have everything they want in front of them.

“This is what I’ve been looking for (since starting) my career,” Echols said of a down-the-stretch playoff race, “and I’m glad to be getting a taste of it right now.”

The day after a 31-28 defeat at the Chicago Bears, the mood across the Steelers locker room remained upbeat Monday. Even with the formidable Buffalo Bills coming to town for a 4:25 p.m. Sunday game, the Steelers know that no matter what happens this coming weekend that the Dec. 7 game in Baltimore against the Ravens will be for first place.

And then, even if they lose that one, four weeks remain, with Baltimore coming to Acrisure Stadium for the regular-season finale.

While much of the capital built via a 4-1 start has been squandered over the past six weeks, the Steelers recognize that no team in the division has a better record this season, and all they need is a win Sunday to reverse their season outlook back to sunny.

“Most definitely,” veteran running back Kenneth Gainwell said. “It’s a one-day-at-a-time type of thing. We can’t be looking forward to the future.

“It’s a play-to-play type of thing, and we just have to go in the next week and try to be 1-0.”

Though they were selected just 50 picks apart late on the final day of the 2021 draft, Gainwell’s NFL experience has been the polar opposite of Echols’ in that he has played for one of the winningest teams over that span: the Philadelphia Eagles.

Gainwell also offers perspective in that in three of his four pro seasons, the Eagles had a winning streak of at least four games after late November. In the lone other season (2023), Philadelphia closed by losing six of seven.

The 2025 Steelers appear to be at similar fulcrum point.

“We’ve got to just bounce back this week (and) attack the fine details for sure,” starting right guard Mason McCormick said. “I feel like there was some missed detail in the last game, and so we’ve gotta be better as players. And we will be.”

The Ravens, technically, at this moment hold the tiebreaker over the Steelers by way of their better intra-division record.

By the end of the season, that will work itself out: The teams play each other twice as well as each having one additional AFC North game. The Steelers and Ravens, of course, are in the thick of the conference wild-card picture, though as things stand as Week 12 was ending Monday night, each trailed a trio of 7-4 teams (the Los Angeles Chargers, Jacksonville Jaguars and Bills).

“The truth is, if you win games, you start to take control (of playoff positioning) back with every game you win,” veteran offensive tackle Calvin Anderson said. “So I think our mission is to take it one week at a time but handle the things we know we can handle. And I think things will shape out well for us if we do.”