During his six years with the Carolina Panthers, new Steelers cornerback Donte Jackson never enjoyed a season above .500. As a result, he admits that he may not be the greatest judge of what a Super Bowl-caliber team looks like on the inside.

But he also knows how different this feels from what he’s used to experiencing.

“I haven’t done much winning,” Jackson admitted with a smile. “But I feel like I know what it takes to win. You could just tell from our first day of training at OTAs this team has that edge.”

Most people who made preseason predictions on this year’s Pittsburgh Steelers had them at nine or 10 wins. If you were optimistic about the Russell Wilson acquisition at quarterback, maybe you had them at 11. If you were pessimistic, you probably thought that 2024 would be Mike Tomlin’s first losing season.

I can’t think of anyone who said they’d win eight of their first 10 games, though — especially in the days leading up to the season-opener in Atlanta. That’s when we learned Wilson, Troy Fautanu, Roman Wilson and Isaac Seumalo would all begin the year injured … and that Brandon Aiyuk was staying in San Francisco.

So I think even for Steelers optimists, an 8-2 record through 10 games is a pleasant surprise.

That also raises the conversation of whether these Steelers are for real. Is this team that has spent the last three years flirting with playoff qualification or elimination all the way up to the last week of the season really worthy of conversation for a No. 1 seed in January 2025? Is this year’s edition of the team finally the one to break the seven-year playoff-win drought?

Or is 8-2 in 2024 simply a covid-free version of 11-0 in 2020? That year, the Steelers’ unbeaten start came to a crashing halt as the franchise dropped four of five to end the year, plus an embarrassing 48-37 home playoff loss to the Cleveland Browns.

Some of the numbers this year, however, suggest things could be different.

For one, the Steelers have already played five teams currently in the NFL playoff bracket — Baltimore, Washington, Denver, Atlanta and the Los Angeles Chargers. Pittsburgh has won all five games.

Defensively, the team is second-best in points allowed (16.2), fourth against the run (90.8 yards allowed per game), tied for third in takeaways (19) and eighth in total defense (305.3 yards allowed per game).

Offensively, the team is eighth in the NFL in rushing (136.7 yards per game). The passing game is improving with Wilson at quarterback, and their points per game (23.3) are right on par with at least two of the other division leaders in the conference — Houston (23.5) and Kansas City (24.0).

As for the special teams, they have been excellent all year.

From his point of view, Wilson, who has been part of a Super Bowl winner before, sees the ‘24 Steelers’ hot start as an indication of a club that could be playing late into January.

“I definitely think that we have that chance,” Wilson said Tuesday. “The biggest thing for us is to take every week as the most important week of it all.”

If you don’t buy that, I get it. You’re skeptical. You saw 2020. You saw a perceived contender in the 2017 Steelers lose at home in the playoffs to Jacksonville. You saw playoff dreams in 2018 evaporate as 7-2-1 faded into 9-6-1. You saw 8-5 in 2019 devolve into 8-8 and another playoff miss.

But if you dismiss the Steelers’ 8-2 record as being phony, then who in the AFC is for real? The Steelers have already beaten all three current wild-card teams — the Broncos, Chargers and Ravens.

Of course, we believe the Chiefs are real after winning the last two Super Bowls. Then again, their 9-0 start was being debunked as the “worst 9-0 start ever.” Via Yahoo’s Jeff Eisenberg, heading into Week 11, “seven of Kansas City’s nine wins have come by a single score. Four have been in doubt until the final play of the game. Thirty-four teams in NFL history began a season 9-0. The Chiefs’ plus-58 point differential was the lowest of any of them.” 

Then they promptly lost Sunday against 9-2 Buffalo.

How about those Bills, then, you ask? Sure. They are really good again. Plenty good enough to be on top of an AFC East that was overrated from the start of the season.

But Kansas City was the first current playoff team Buffalo has beaten since Week 1 at home against Arizona. They also lost 23-20 to South-leading Houston (7-4) and 35-10 to Baltimore (7-4).

Does that make the Bills fraudulent or flawed?

I’d argue they are flawed, just like the Steelers, Chiefs, Ravens and Chargers.

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“We feel like we have a lot of good personnel, good coaching and good schemes. We are just trying to put together good games week after week,” linebacker T.J. Watt said. “But it doesn’t do anything if we go out and lay an egg Thursday night (in Cleveland). … It’s hard to say if we have played our best yet. I hope we haven’t played our best yet.”

Maybe that’s it. Maybe we just haven’t seen the Steelers absolutely crush any given opponent (except perhaps Las Vegas, 32-13, in Week 6), so we feel they are vulnerable at any time.

Then again, that’s what many have been saying about the Chiefs.

Therefore, are the Steelers frauds, or is the debate itself flawed?

Based on the NFL in 2024, I’m not sure about the former. But I know the latter is 100% true.

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