After the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Miami Dolphins on “Monday Night Football,” Aaron Rodgers had a message during his postgame interview.
“Hopefully, the belief can pick up because it’s tough to play in the cold weather. And if we can take care of business, we’ll be hosting a game right here,” Rodgers said. “That’s why I wanted to come back. To be a part of something special. This is a great organization. We are playing meaningful football games. We are up by a game in the division. A lot left to play for.”
That “belief” Rodgers mentioned can be a two-pronged thing. If Rodgers was talking about his fellow teammates believing, it doesn’t sound like that is going to be much of a problem.
“We’ve always had belief,” linebacker Jack Sawyer said Thursday. “Even with some of our early season struggles, we’ve never lost faith. It’s a long season. Getting hot at the right time matters the most. We’re trending in the right direction.”
Veteran defensive lineman Cameron Heyward also said the team didn’t necessarily need the affirmation of a two-game win streak to believe that this club could be a threat in the postseason.
“Not heightened,” Heyward said of the level of belief in the room. “The confidence comes when you do your job, play in and play out. Make the plays you are supposed to.”
So that part of the equation seems to be taking care of itself.
As it should be. Because if the players themselves can’t believe in the team, why should anyone else?
But what about the fans? If Rodgers wants their level of “belief” to go up, that’s going to be a harder sell.
As it should be. Because this team that has constantly believed in itself the last eight years, has also constantly told the public it should be subscribing as well.
For a long time, most of Pittsburgh did.
Sometime around that 28-0 first-quarter deficit at home to the Cleveland Browns in the 2020-21 playoffs, that belief really started to fade.
As it should have. The next four years of empty postseason results have fortified that skepticism. So did the 6-6 record to start this year.
If Rodgers was also partially talking about the fans (and maybe the media as well), that may be an indication of how he may still not have a handle on how this team really is perceived in town over roughly the past decade.
Clearly, Rodgers came here with an idealized version of what the Steelers are — and have been in recent years — with how frequently he gushes about Mike Tomlin’s track record and the team’s winning tradition. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much to gush about since the end of the 2017 regular season.
While Rodgers was in Green Bay, the longest that organization went without a playoff win was two years. Prior to his arrival, you had to go back to 1983-92 to find a slump longer than three years.
For as long as Rodgers has been in the league, this is something new for him. Even when he went to the New York Jets — a team that hasn’t won a playoff game since 2010 — Rodgers’ arrival was heralded as if they had just won a Super Bowl, and the goal was just get back to .500.
He was viewed as the cure. Not the latest attempt at maintaining the status quo, as was the case when he signed here.
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Of course, that changed right away when he got injured on the first series of 2023, but it was still a very different set of circumstances.
Right now, most of the Steelers’ fan base is well beyond blind faith or unbridled belief. It has long since graduated to “We’ll believe it when we see it.”
For that, they can’t be blamed. That result can’t be seen until the playoffs.
Rodgers is to be commended for espousing that kind of positivity and for helping the locker room maintain a level of buy-in even when things were looking bleak at the end of November.
Everyone else outside of those walls, though? They are going to need some convincing. And that’s not the kind of belief you can earn with a mid-December win over the Dolphins.
Going to Detroit and winning there? Yeah, that could help. Pull that off Sunday, and we will revisit the conversation.
Listen: Tim Benz and “Locked on Lions” host Matt Dery preview the Steelers-Lions game on Sunday
